WASHINGTON ― Republicans called new federal charges against Donald Trump an elaborate conspiracy to distract the public from President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
A grand jury on Tuesday indicted the former president in connection with several crimes related to the efforts to undo his 2020 election loss, which included schemes to change Electoral College votes in several states as well as obstructing the congressional certification of the election result.
But according to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the Department of Justice brought the charges on Tuesday partly because on Monday lawmakers had interviewed an obscure former business partner of Hunter Biden’s, whom Republicans claimed presented damning evidence against the president.
McCarthy also noted that on Monday a new poll showed that Trump is Biden’s leading Republican opponent.
“Everyone in America could see what was going to come next: DOJ’s attempt to distract from the news and attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, President Trump,” McCarthy said in a social media post. “House Republicans will continue to uncover the truth about Biden Inc. and the two-tiered system of justice.”
Never mind that literally every poll for months has shown Trump far ahead of his rivals in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, the idea that President Biden wields the Justice Department against his political enemies while protecting his son has become an unquestionable assumption among Republicans.
As Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) put it: “A sweetheart plea deal for Hunter Biden. Another sham indictment of Donald Trump. Anyone else seeing this two-tiered system of justice on full display?”
(Hunter Biden currently faces federal gun and tax charges that Republicans insist are far less severe than he deserves.)
Earlier this year, House Republicans created a “Weaponization of Government” committee entirely devoted to flogging Trump’s grievances, and at hearings this year several GOP lawmakers have suggested the federal government itself tricked Trump supporters into attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In truth, as the new indictment says, Trump and his co-conspirators “repeated knowingly false claims of election fraud to gathered supporters, falsely told them that the Vice President had the authority to and might alter the election results, and directed them to the Capitol to obstruct the certification proceeding and exert pressure on the Vice President to take the fraudulent actions he had previously refused.”
On Monday, Republicans conducted a closed-door interview with Devon Archer, a former associate of Hunter Biden’s, who told them that over their decade in business together, Hunter Biden would occasionally put his dad on speakerphone while Hunter Biden was with Archer and other business associates.
The older Biden has repeatedly said he never talked business with his son, who received millions of dollars over the years from foreign nationals, including in Ukraine and China. Republicans claimed Archer’s testimony contradicted the president’s past statements, though a Democratic lawmaker present for the interview said Archer testified that the elder Biden only exchanged pleasantries on the calls and never talked business.
House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said Tuesday evening that the indictment against Trump ― his third so far this year ― was either an attempt to stop Trump from winning the next election or an effort to distract from his committee’s investigation of Hunter Biden.
“I think the American people see what’s going on, whether or not this is a weaponized Department of Justice trying to divert attention away from Biden corruption or whether they’re trying to take out their top political opponent in the upcoming election, the American people see through this,” Comer said on Fox News.
Comer has sought all year to tie President Biden to his son’s business deals, but he hasn’t been able to establish anything more than thin circumstantial evidence of a connection, much less an actual act of corruption. But Comer has remained unfazed about finding the missing link eventually.
“There’s a whole lot more evidence out there that would prove Joe Biden has committed crimes than there are of Donald Trump committing crimes,” Comer said.