Last week, Trump was found guilty. Now, President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is on trial for federal gun charges. It’s a crazy time to be alive.
Whenever a political figure or their relative gets into legal trouble, one can’t help but wonder if the trial will be fair. In this scenario, there seems to be information pointing to both fairness and unfairness.
Jury selection is usually a long, grueling process. However, according to NBC, the panel for Hunter Biden’s case—12 jurors with a 50/50 gender split and four alternates, all women—was selected after only one day. For such a serious case, where Hunter faces three counts of possessing a gun while using narcotics, this is an alarmingly quick amount of time to make such an influential and important decision.
While precautions are taken, it’s not always a perfect science. Potential jurors were asked if they could be fair and impartial regarding their opinions towards the 2024 elections, gun rights, and politics in general. If false negatives and false positives were considered a possibility, it wasn’t mentioned. While it’s known that some people would say anything to get out of jury duty, would someone say anything to get on it? I wouldn’t be shocked if the answer was yes.
Similar to Trump’s hush-money case, Hunter Biden’s legal issues can serve as a roadblock in his father’s run for reelection. According to NBC News, conservative critics of Biden have been waiting to use his son’s legal issues against him. While Biden himself has denied involvement, investigations were still conducted by the Republican-led impeachment inquiry. Fortunately for Biden, they found nothing.
But what about the judges? According to Politico, the two judges tasked with overseeing the trial were both appointed to their positions by Trump. An interesting, but appropriate choice: any judge appointed by Biden would most likely be considered partial.
The judicial system has done what it can to ensure the opinions of those who really count—the jury—are as fair and impartial as possible. So, all in all, I’d say the case is pretty fair. How will the rest of the judicial system be? Well, we’ll just have to find out in the coming weeks.
