Attorney General Merrick Garland addressed the FBI’s raid of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Thursday afternoon, three days after the Department of Justice embarked on an unprecedented escalation of its persecution of political opponents.
“Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy,” Garland said. “Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor. Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing.”
President Joe Biden’s Justice Department, however, has done anything but apply the rule of law “evenly, without fear or favor.” Hunter Biden is Exhibit A.
In September of 2020, Senate investigators published an 87-page report detailing Hunter Biden’s extensive overseas networks with a series of potential conflicts of interest. The investigation included episodes of potentially criminal business activity flagged for the Justice Department such as a six-figure shopping spree financed by Chinese business leaders. The report also unearthed evidence of “organized prostitution and/or human trafficking.”
Records on file with the committee, investigators wrote, “confirm that Hunter Biden sent thousands of dollars to individuals who have either: 1) been involved in transactions consistent with possible human trafficking; 2) an association with the adult entertainment industry; or 3) potential association with prostitution.”
Hunter Biden’s home, however, which was featured in a glossy profile of the president’s son by Vanity Fair last December, has never by raided by federal law enforcement.
One month after lawmakers on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Senate Treasury Committee published their report, the New York Post published a series of emails from a laptop that had belonged to Hunter Biden and was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. Beyond unearthing a cache of documents contradicting the president’s claims of never speaking business with his son “or with anyone else,” the computer’s hard drive was full of salacious material of Hunter Biden’s escapades with illicit substances and hookers. In July, the Daily Mail reported that Hunter Biden now may face federal charges for prostitution.
But while charges could be in the pipeline, Hunter Biden’s home has never been raided by law enforcement.
In 2018, the Biden son reportedly bought a firearm that later went missing. When asked by the Firearms Transaction Record (Form 4473) whether he is an “unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance,” Hunter Biden said, “no.”
While it’s unclear whether Hunter was an active user at the time, his record of drug abuse is extensive and consistent, with repeated rehab visits in 2003, 2010, and 2014 for treatment with highly addictive substances. In 2014, Hunter was discharged from the Navy for cocaine use, and according to the New Yorker, he went on another cocaine binge two years later in 2016.
As The Federalist reported last year, “Hunter was … suspected of smoking crack cocaine in a Washington, D.C., strip club in late 2018. He purchased the firearm the same year on Oct. 12.”
Hunter Biden’s home has still never been raided by law enforcement.
On Monday, however, Trump’s 128-room mansion at Mar-a-Lago became the subject of a raid ostensibly over the Presidential Records Act, despite prosecutions under the 1978 law being exceedingly rare. While there are dozens of variables to be considered when determining whether to execute a raid, there has always been far more evidence to initiate a search warrant of Hunter Biden than Donald Trump, even as a DOJ investigation of the Biden’s finances is underway. Yet Trump remains public enemy number one, and his prosecution has remained the top item on Democrats’ policy agenda since he descended the golden escalator in 2015.
If Garland, who admitted Thursday to personally signing off on the warrant to search Trump’s home, applied the law “without fear or favor,” either Monday’s raid would not have been executed, or a raid of Hunter Biden’s residence is on the way.
