Hunter Biden, a son of the current president so often named in GOP conspiracy theories attempting to allege corruption among the Bidens, is seeking judicial permission for a subpoena of Donald Trump in the criminal case that Hunter is facing from Special Counsel David Weiss. Already brought are criminal allegations about Hunter’s handling of firearms, and tax charges are possible… none of which, by the way, seem to come anywhere close to implicating the president.
Hunter is evidently pursuing a claim that the prosecution he’s facing ties back to political pressure. There are specific legal guardrails against so-called selective and vindictive prosecution that, if his arguments hold up, could provide some legal shielding for Biden. “Mr. Biden seeks specific information from three former DOJ officials and the former President that goes to the heart of his defense that this is, possibly, a vindictive or selective prosecution arising from an unrelenting pressure campaign beginning in the last administration, in violation of Mr. Biden’s Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution,” Hunter Biden’s legal team said.
The others they want to subpoena include former Attorney General Bill Barr, and the proposed subpoenas would mandate that the targets turn over any documents — including copies of communications — discussing Hunter Biden within a certain, defined period. Trump himself has, since leaving office, repeatedly spoken in public about supposed corruption in which Hunter was involved, having also brought up such allegations on the campaign trail back in 2020, and all of those developments could point to an intention by the now former president to force an investigation into the younger Biden when he still held actual presidential power.
It doesn’t take a lot of looking to find the obsessive focus from Congressional Republicans on supposed corruption involving Hunter Biden, though the impeachment inquiry they made a show of purportedly starting that targeted the president in connection to these claims hasn’t really produced much. It’s not clear the House will even hold a final vote on impeaching the president, which itself wouldn’t go anywhere considering Democrats hold the Senate.
