For Democrats, this backfire is going to be bitter — and no one deserves it more.
The party that cheered for years as a ruthless prosecution team attacked former President Donald Trump and his associates by whatever means necessary is finding out that using the law as a political weapon has a way of coming back to bite.
And in the case of Hunter Biden, it’s already biting in a big way.
In an editorial published on Sunday, The Wall Street Journal pointed out that one of the elements that blew up Hunter Biden’s proposed plea deal last week was Judge Maryellen Norieka’s question about whether the president’s son was under investigation for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The law requires American citizens operating as “agents” of foreign governments to register with the U.S. government and report financial information related to that activity, according to the Justice Department’s website.
When Justice Department prosecutors — who have mainly acted more like Hunter’s hotel maids than representatives of the American people — acknowledged that he was, even as the plea deal attempted to shield him from prosecution for it, the deal fell apart.
And now President Joe Biden’s son could well face prosecution under a law Democrats thought they owned.
The act was originally passed in 1938, aimed at propaganda from supporters of Nazi Germany, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a liberal nonprofit news organization.
But, as the Journal noted, it had precious few applications between the time the shadows of fascism were looming over Europe on the eve of World War II and 21st century American politics.
Before former President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, in fact, the law had been used in only seven cases, according to the Journal, with three of them ending in convictions. Three convictions in a 75-year run doesn’t make for a compelling case for a federal law.
Then came special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump White House and those in the Trump camp — a high-powered, Democrat-run effort willing to use any legal weapon at hand.
And FARA was the weapon at hand, used to nail former Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort and used as part of the arsenal of the FBI and DOJ assault on original Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn.
Greg Craig, a former Obama White House counsel, was also caught up in a FARA investigation in a spin-off of the Mueller probe. That should have been a clue for Democrats that they were playing a dangerous game.
But now the stakes are high for the Biden White House, and they’re getting higher, and Democrats (not to mention an establishment media) who cheered on Mueller’s hunt with the bloodlust of a coliseum mob could well be finding out how sharp a two-edged sword can be.
“They may regret that legal standard now that federal prosecutors have confirmed to Judge Noreika that FARA charges could still be lodged against the President’s son. Based on Mr. Mueller’s prosecutions, Hunter is vulnerable,” the Journal’s editorial board wrote.
“We know Hunter set up a shell company to do business with CEFC China Energy, and that he didn’t register as a foreign agent. Shell companies are a common strategy for disguising ownership, and accepting money from a foreign entity would normally require FARA registration. Similar questions remain about Hunter’s dealings in Ukraine.”
Don’t expect Democrats to be interested in those questions about Hunter, of course. And the country can’t expect establishment media executives and correspondents — who spent five years looking under their own beds for evidence of Trump-Russia “collusion” — to ask anything that will make the Biden White House look bad.
But even under an evidently corrupt Democratic White House, with an attorney general whose vile performance in the post will rank in infamy, the law is the law.
“FARA has never been clearly defined and is used selectively. That is the definition of a bad law that is too easy for prosecutors to exploit against their political enemies,” the Journal noted.
“Democrats have reason to say that if everyone in Washington who violates FARA were prosecuted for it, half the lobbyists would be out of business. But this would be a more persuasive argument if they had made it when Robert Mueller was busy using it against their political enemies.”
That wasn’t the Democratic take during the Mueller sham, though.
Back then, FARA was the gun best suited for taking down Trump-related targets, and Robert Mueller could do no wrong. (Does anyone need to be reminded of the disgraceful spectacle Democrats staged when the Mueller report destroyed all of their hopes about the Trump administration? Has anyone forgotten just how unimpressive Mueller himself actually turned out to be — an obvious figurehead for the real Democratic operatives running an investigation in his name?)
Now, with the truth about Hunter Biden’s bagman operations coming out, with the Biden family shell corporations coming to light, collecting money largely from foreign entities with ties to their governments, FARA could well backfire on the Bidens, on Democrats, and on their mainstream media supporters.
And it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
