I’ve generally avoided talking about Hunter Biden, although I did discuss him at length in one episode of our podcast. My general take is that Hunter has lived a difficult and trying life, beginning with the car accident that took the lives of his mother and baby sister. After his brother Beau died of brain cancer, he seemed to fall into a life of debauchery, and basically set a new land speed record for making irresponsible decisions. That included not paying his taxes. That included lying about his addiction problems when purchasing a gun. But he’s turned his life around. As far as I know he’s sober and has been sober for several years. He’s paid his tax bill, and he’s been ready to take responsibility for his mistakes.

But he’s not getting any quarter from the Department of Justice. US attorney David Weiss, who has been elevated to a special prosecutor in Hunter’s case, has slapped Hunter with three gun charges and on Thursday added “nine counts, including failure to file and pay taxes; evasion of assessment; and false or fraudulent tax return.” The president’s son is facing the prospect of serious jail time.

And I am generally in favor of holding the children of powerful people to the same standard as everyone one else, but the truth is that Hunter is getting worse treatment than we’d normally expect. He’s facing a theoretical 17 years in prison on the tax charges alone, and he’s paid his tax bill. Ordinarily, that’s what the government is most interested in, and they don’t spend resources locking up tax deadbeats who’ve settled their accounts.

On the gun charges, he no longer is in active addiction and he no longer owns a gun. He was willing to take responsibility on a lesser charge, and that should have been the end of it.

In fact, it looked like that was where this all was heading until everything fell apart.

The case had been close to being resolved in July when a plea deal fell apart…The probe appeared to be winding down this summer when Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors, and prosecutors would recommend no jail time. They also agreed that a gun charge would be dropped in two years if he stayed out of legal trouble.

But both proposed deals collapsed after scrutiny from a federal judge and disagreements over the fine print. Then Weiss indicted Hunter Biden in September on three charges related to his purchase of a gun from a shop in Delaware in 2018 at a time prosecutors say he was an illegal drug user. He has pleaded not guilty in the gun possession and false statements case.

Perhaps Hunter’s lawyers made a catastrophic miscalculation at some point, but the fact that the plea deal was on the table at all shows that the DOJ didn’t initially think they were dealing with a hardened criminal who needs to be locked up for years. But Weiss, who was appointed as a US Attorney by Donald Trump, has been under tremendous pressure from the right to bring the hammer down. Here’s how Hunter sees it:

Hunter Biden said in a podcast interview published Friday that Republicans and the right-wing media are trying to destroy him in order to bring down his father’s presidency.

“What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle, and so therefore destroying a presidency in that way,” Hunter Biden said in a podcast interview with the musician Moby.

It’s remarkable that he would say something like that, but it’s probably true that the president would be overwhelmed by the loss of another child. And I don’t think Hunter had to die necessarily for it to be debilitating for his father. A lengthy and unjust prison sentence would weigh heavily on him.

Anyone who has dealt with a child with addiction problems knows how painful it is, and to have your political enemies relentlessly attack your child even as he navigates sobriety, well, that’s something that would fill me with unremitting rage. To see them succeed in imprisoning my son out of nothing more than a desire to hurt me?

Let’s just say that I’d have my pardon pen ready, damn the consequences.

But they’re not satisfied with this. They’re also going to try to impeach Joe Biden for the sins of his son, despite a complete lack of justification.

I think Hunter should have been allowed to take a deal that would punish him for his crimes but that was commensurate with the threat he poses to society, and that took into account the role addiction played in his behavior. I’m talking hefty fines and some court supervised probation.

What we have instead is just malicious.