U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) joined a chorus of Republicans blasting plea deals that would keep President Joe Biden’s ne’er-do-well son out of prison.
“Well first of all, this stinks to high heaven. It certainly proves we do not have equal application of justice under the law,” Johnson said this week on Fox News’ Jesse Waters Prime Time.
Johnson, who has for years been investigating allegations of corruption surrounding President Joe Biden and his family, said he has long been concerned that the Biden Department of Justice would enter into a plea deal, delivering lesser charges and no prison time for Hunter Biden. The bigger concern, the senator said, is that there will be a move to seal all of the records surrounding the case.
“What a great way to sweep Chuck Grassley’s whistleblower, talking about a $10 million bribery scheme under the rug [by] just saying, ‘Oh, yeah, we looked into it. There’s nothing to it,’” he told Waters.
A sham investigation within our multi-tiered justice system produces the predictable result: Hunter gets off with a light slap on the wrist, and the public will not learn the truth.https://t.co/F7SEIN8SFB
— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) June 20, 2023
This week, the younger Biden and his attorneys said they reached an agreement in which U.S. Attorney David Weiss would recommend probation on a charge that Hunter Biden failed to pay more than $200,000 in income taxes. He also would avoid prison time on a charge of lying about being a drug user while possessing a gun, “subject to a pretrial diversion agreement.”
Hunter Biden had faced a maximum of 12 years in prison on the charges.
Allegations of a political pay-to-play scheme surround the president. A house investigation is looking into claims that an executive with Ukraine natural gas provider Burisma Holdings paid Joe Biden $5 million when he was vice president. Hunter Biden was paid handsomely for serving on the Burisma board, allegedly for access to his powerful father.
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) earlier this month announced a “highly credible” FBI source had 17 audio recordings of Hunter and Joe Biden talking about the payments to the vice president at the time.
“The Burisma executive explained to the confidential source that the company had to “pay the Bidens” because Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma, and explained how difficult it would be to enter the U.S. market in the midst of that investigation,” Fox News reported.
Johnson said House Republicans need to keep pressing for congressional oversight. He and Grassley can only do so much in a Democrat-controlled Senate, he said.
“We just need to keep making the case and start pointing out all the corruption of the Biden family,” the Wisconsin senator said. “There is so much that should have been investigated, but we have whistleblowers who’ve said that Attorney Weiss didn’t have the resources to do a proper investigation and, of course, we have the whistleblower from the IRS saying that he was pulled off the case in an unprecedented fashion with the rest of his team. There is so much here that is just disgusting.”
Ohio entrepreneur and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy earlier this week called the plea deals “a joke.”
“It’s a feigned retreat and reveals they’re even more scared than ever of scrutiny for the real crimes,” Ramaswamy said.
Many of the Republican presidential candidates shared the same sentiment, including former President Donald Trump, who faces 37 felony counts and, effectively, life in prison, in a federal indictment related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents. The indictment was filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland.
“Today proves that there is a clear two-tiered system of justice—one for the Democrats and one against President Trump,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Dispatch. “As President Trump predicted earlier this month, Hunter was given a sweetheart deal that sweeps his crimes under the rug in a blatant attempt to interfere with the 2024 election.”
Democratic Party officials labeled the criticisms as a “minor political distraction,” according to the Associated Press. And so-called mainstream media outlets were quickly lurching to the Bidens’ defense, demanding that the original felony charges against Hunter are “rarely prosecuted.”
Veteran Democrat strategist Stephanie Cutter told AP that Hunter Biden’s prosecution “is not on most Americans’ radar.” She insisted that Hunter Biden pleading guilty to the reduced charges against him to avoid prison time “shows that no one is above the law and what taking responsibility looks like.”
That’s a sadly laughable assertion to those who see a politically weaponized justice system that goes easy on the powerfully connected.
“Looks like Hunter received a sweetheart deal and is not facing any charges on the massive corruption allegations,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s nearest rival for the GOP presidential nomination, wrote in a tweet this week. “If Hunter was not connected to the elite DC class he would have been put in jail a long time ago.”
Looks like Hunter received a sweetheart deal and is not facing any charges on the massive corruption allegations. If Hunter was not connected to the elite DC class he would have been put in jail a long time ago. pic.twitter.com/tZcZOY1uST
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) June 20, 2023
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Ron Johnson” by Ron Johnson.
