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"Equal Justice Under Law" is now officially dead.  

That lofty ideal chiseled on the pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court was blown to shreds with the indefensible plea deal for Hunter Biden that allows him to skate on severe criminal charges that would have landed anyone else in America behind bars. The preferential treatment for the president’s son makes a mockery of the law. 

We knew it was coming. The government’s investigation had stretched for more than five long years. By itself, that was absurd. The evidence against Hunter was clear and convincing.  

GOP RIPS HUNTER'S 'SWEETHEART' PLEA DEAL ON TAX AND GUN CRIMES, ZERO IN ON JOE BIDEN

He evaded taxes on millions of dollars that he pocketed from overseas sources — part of his elaborate influence-peddling schemes that leveraged access to his powerful father. He obviously lied on a gun form and broke the law when he purchased a firearm. 

Joe Biden's son Hunter's laptop was authenticated by NBC News on May 19

Hunter Biden and his father President Joe Biden. Hunter's new plea agreement still won't protect him from investigation by the House of Representatives. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for World Food Program USA)

But President Joe Biden and his consigliere at the Justice Department, Attorney General Merrick Garland, have rewritten the criminal codes with a special exemption. A Biden can defy the law with impunity. Everyone else must abide.  

There is no justifying this demolition of justice. Unequal application of the statutes is now the law of the land. Our legal system is as corrupt as the Bidens. They made it so.  

The privileged plea also calls into question the integrity of David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, who negotiated a slap on the wrist instead of pursuing other, more serious, felony charges.  

In a public statement he insisted that his investigation into further acts of potential wrongdoing continues. There is reason to be skeptical. His announcement of an ongoing probe smacks of a charade designed to prevent him from answering uncomfortable questions by a congressional committee that is digging deep into Biden family corruption. 

Whistleblowers warned that Garland’s DOJ, the FBI, and the IRS were running a protection racket for the Bidens by exerting undue influence and political favoritism to cover up brazen criminality. Tuesday’s plea fortifies their credibility.  

Hunter Biden’s laptop alone is a treasure trove of incriminating evidence that implicates his father as complicit in secret deals to profit from his public office. The sheer magnitude of the schemes is staggering. Who knew that selling out your country could be so lucrative?  

The House Oversight Committee may be the last refuge for anything resembling justice. It cannot prosecute, but it can expose.  

In the last five months committee members have combed through many of the 170 Suspicious Activity Reports, wire transfers and banking transactions showing that nine members of the Biden family received an astonishing amount of money from America’s adversaries.  

Hunter Biden exits at the Independence County Courthouse in Batesville, Arkansas on Monday, May 1, 2023. Biden, who is with attorney Abbe Lowell, was ordered to appear in court regarding the paternity case of his unacknowledged 4-year-old-daughter. (Mega for Fox News Digital)

The payments were disguised through a complex web of shell companies and limited liability corporations that appear to have no legitimate business purpose other than to serve as receptacles for hiding cash, according to Chairman James Comer, R-KY.  

In Washington, where influence-peddling and graft are endemic, the Bidens have taken them to dizzying heights. It is no coincidence that the money sources came from the very countries over which Joe Biden exerted control in foreign policy decisions as vice president.  

What was being bought? More to the point, what were the Bidens selling? In the process, did they sacrifice America’s national security to get rich? Did they conspire with malign foreign actors to betray our nation for self-enrichment? 

One answer may be found in the mining of an unclassified FBI document that allegedly depicts a "criminal scheme" involving the Bidens and a top executive at Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that was paying millions of dollars to Hunter to sit on its board.  

A trusted and "highly credible" confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI reported that the elder Biden accepted $5 million in exchange for "policy decisions" benefiting the company, while Hunter banked another $5 million. The money, according to the CHS, was secreted in a multitude of hidden accounts.  

This seems to be the same suspected "pay-to-play" scheme reflected in Joe Biden’s famous on-camera brag that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer aid to Ukraine unless the prosecutor investigating Burisma was fired. Within hours, Viktor Shokin was canned, and his investigation vanished overnight. Mission accomplished. 

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The Ukraine caper is similar to other Biden grifts in roughly a dozen foreign countries where Hunter negotiated "deals" that were dependent on his father, even setting up meetings between the vice president and overseas clients that are documented in his laptop and other records.  

The younger Biden never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as the law demands, which makes his transactions illegal. Others who have failed to do so have been criminally prosecuted, but not the president’s son.  

Hunter’s laptop alone is a treasure trove of incriminating evidence that implicates his father as complicit in secret deals to profit from his public office. The sheer magnitude of the schemes is staggering. Who knew that selling out your country could be so lucrative?  

Nor have any charges been leveled under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It is a crime for a public officeholder to confer a benefit to a foreign actor in exchange for personal financial gain. But given the partisan interference by our government institutions for the benefit of the Bidens, don’t expect that charges will ever be brought. The fix is in. 

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Where the Department of Justice refuses to act, Congress must. It has the backing of the American people who recognize corruption when they see it. A recent Harvard Harris poll found that 63% of voters believe that Hunter Biden engaged in illegal influence peddling, and a majority think Joe Biden was involved. 

In an upcoming election where the incumbent president’s DOJ is prosecuting his likely opponent on dubious charges while simultaneously protecting Biden, it is imperative that any evidence of criminality be exposed for all to see. The money trail uncovered so far is a damning indictment of corruption at the highest level of government — the current occupant of the White House.   

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