Why Hunter Biden Being Found Not Guilty Is Good for Donald Trump

A not guilty verdict for President Joe Biden’s son Hunter could be good news for Donald Trump.

The jury in Hunter’s gun trial resumed deliberations on Tuesday after a speedy trial that lasted just a week in Wilmington, Delaware. The jurors will decide whether the president’s son is guilty of three felonies in a case that has put Hunter squarely in the sights of his father’s Justice Department.

The conclusion of the trial would come less two weeks after the criminal trial that resulted in a guilty verdict for Trump on charges of falsifying business records. The former president accused Manhattan’s district attorney of going after him as part of a political “witch hunt,” and his campaign has aggressively used his recent conviction to appeal to his supporters. The Trump campaign reported a nearly $53 million fundraising haul in the 24 hours after the verdict.

Additionally, the presumptive Republican nominee, who is also facing criminal charges in two federal cases brought by the Department of Justice, has alleged that the Biden administration has weaponized the DOJ against him and is prosecuting him solely because he is the president’s political rival.

A guilty verdict for Hunter, however, could undercut Trump’s claims that federal prosecutors are only going after Republicans. So Trump may want a not guilty verdict to bolster his claims that the DOJ is being weaponized against him, but experts say neither outcome will do much to slow his attacks against the agency.

“While the Hunter Biden trial complicates Trump’s narrative of ‘witch hunt lawfare’ waged by President Biden, it will never stop Trump from repeating it ad nauseum,” political consultant Jay Townsend told Newsweek. “He won’t stop even if Hunter Biden is convicted of violating gun laws, or found guilty of tax evasion, or sentenced to prison.”

Republican strategist Matt Klink agreed that Trump’s justice system talking points will continue to be a “mainstay of his campaign” regardless of Hunter’s fate.

Klink told Newsweek that the former president will “continue to score points when he talks about the need to clean house at numerous federal law enforcement agencies.”

An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted after Trump’s conviction found that 47 percent of Americans think the charges against him in the New York case, which concerned a hush money payment to an adult film actress shortly before the 2016 election, were politically motivated. Only 38 percent said they were not. Those figures come even as the majority, 51 percent, think the former president intentionally did something illegal in the case.

Klink said: “Trump’s 90-plus federal and state charges by Democratic prosecutors is too strong of an argument for Trump supporters and many Republicans who see evidence of a corrupt federal government system as being stacked against the party and its candidates and to the benefit of Democrats.”

He added, “There’s ample evidence of a federal law enforcement bureaucracy that needs to be torn down, the hidden Democrat moles outed and the agencies rebuilt, which is why Trump’s weaponization messaging is so powerful and effective.”

But Townsend said a guilty verdict for Hunter will give Joe Biden “a chance to refute Trump’s narrative and perhaps peel off a few swing voters who conclude that Trump’s problem is not the justice system but his own conduct.”

Over the weekend, the president told ABC News that he would accept the outcome of his son’s trial and ruled out a pardon should Hunter be convicted. He also accused Trump of trying to “undermine” the law, saying his opponent “got a fair trial” from a jury of his own peers.