Tuesday marked the first day of trial for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. He’s not on trial for sex trafficking, influence peddling, money laundering, or even operating as an unregistered foreign agent — even though there’s evidence of his participation in all of these crimes.

No, he’s on trial for lying on paperwork, and even then, it’s a trial the Justice Department never wanted to happen. The government only charged him after a judge called foul on an attempted sweetheart deal that sought to exculpate Hunter on all other alleged wrongdoings.  

Special Counsel David Weiss brought three federal charges against Hunter in September. Hunter is accused of lying on application paperwork while addicted to drugs in order to obtain a firearm and unlawfully possessing said firearm. 

Pouncing on the trial, CNN’s Oliver Darcy wrote on Tuesday that the “Hunter Biden trial shows America’s justice system isn’t so rigged after all.” Corporate media are desperate to convince Americans who just witnessed the ultimate weaponization of the justice system with the show trial conviction of former President Donald Trump that the system is working just fine, since Hunter is also facing charges.

The left wants you to believe that charging Hunter with what is possibly the least damning allegation stacked against him is somehow morally and legally equivalent to inventing a novel crime to weaponize the justice system against a political opponent.

But one of the many factors Darcy conveniently leaves out is what got Hunter to the point of appearing in the Delaware courthouse.

IRS whistleblowers came forward last year to reveal that the DOJ delayed investigations into Hunter and tried to interfere in the IRS investigators’ probe into apparent tax crimes by the younger Biden. The whistleblowers alleged the Justice Department “thwarted investigative efforts, ‘slow-walked’ cooperation with tax agents, and even concealed critical evidence implicating President Joe Biden in a criminal bribery scheme,” as my colleague Tristan Justice wrote.

Furthermore, “President Biden’s politically appointed U.S. Attorneys for D.C. and Central District of California denied the U.S. Attorney in Delaware’s request to bring charges, which … put Hunter Biden on the path to a sweetheart plea deal,” as the House Oversight Committee summarized.

The sweetheart deal would have permitted the president’s son to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses and “avoid responsibility almost entirely for his gun offenses by entering into a deferred prosecution agreement,” as explained by Steve Roberts, Jonathan Fahey, and Andrew Pardue for The Federalist. Hunter’s team also demanded the sweetheart deal include immunity for “any other federal crimes” he may have committed. 

“Such agreements are almost entirely unheard of for firearms offenses,” the trio wrote. 

A federal judge rejected the plea deal after it fell apart under her questioning, with prosecutors unwilling to publicly accept the broad immunity request. 

As Roberts, Fahey, and Pardue noted, Hunter also allegedly dodged more than $1.4 million in taxes by “understating his income and inflating his expenses,” a crime that carries a maximum of 17 years in prison. Since the plea deal fell apart, Hunter is set to stand trial on some of the tax charges in September. But the IRS whistleblowers alleged that the DOJ had allowed the statute of limitations to expire on Hunter’s apparent tax evasion from 2014 and 2015, letting him escape accountability for those.

Notably, 2014 was the year in which Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, where he was paid as much as $83,000 per month in exchange for the Biden “brand.” The same year, then-Vice President Joe Biden publicly pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor who was looking into Burisma leadership.

In addition to letting “some of the most egregious tax crimes” expire, prosecutors “haven’t even touched all his shady lobbying,” as the Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross notes. 

Hunter may be facing trial, but the charges he does face are “not the result of a get-Biden effort but the consequences of the failure of their let-Biden-off plan,” as my colleague Margot Cleveland explained. Hunter is getting off easy considering the other crimes he’s been implicated in — and corresponding charges he has thus far evaded, almost certainly because his last name is Biden.

Testimony and documentary evidence have implicated Hunter, Joe, and other members of the Biden family in a complex influence-peddling scheme in which Hunter appears to have sold access to then-Vice President Joe Biden in exchange for cash and gifts from foreign oligarchs. Despite evidence to the contrary, during the 2020 presidential debate, Joe Biden claimed Hunter had never “made money” from China. Four years later, Hunter admitted he received multiple payments from Chinese Communist Party-linked businesses and individuals while testifying behind closed doors to the House Oversight Committee. Hunter never registered as a foreign agent.

Hunter and his father have faced no repercussions for their influence-peddling schemes.

On top of that, the House Oversight Committee is also “concerned DOJ disregarded the victims who were sexually exploited by Hunter Biden” after Hunter allegedly paid prostitutes “and used such payments as tax expenses for one of his companies.”

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.