The Donald Trump and Hunter Biden trials are over – the consequences will linger
WASHINGTON ? Another milestone came Wednesday in Campaign 2024: No ongoing criminal trial of a former president or a current president's son.
The felony convictions of Donald Trump and Hunter Biden after a pair of trials over the past two months are changing the presidential race in ways the Trump and Biden teams are trying to assess. Both verdicts are expected to be fodder in the first presidential debate between Trump and President Joe Biden on June 27.
Trump is touting increased fundraising and trying to persuade voters that his trial was a "scam," and will be overturned on appeal.
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, said he "will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal."
Some other takeaways:
Trump's legal problems are probably bigger
There's more of a political impact on Trump ? he's the convicted felon actually running for president ? but it's uncertain how it will play out in the fall election.
So far, polls do not show much of a shift. Biden has picked up a few points in some surveys since the former president's end-of-May verdict, including in the six or seven battleground states. But those gains are within the margins of error.
The Trump team has also claimed a significant uptick in fundraising - from staunch supporters - since his conviction.
Trump still faces sentencing in the hush money case. He likely won't go to prison because he has vowed to appeal the case, but the ongoing legal fight will shadow the rest of his campaign.
Hunter Biden has another trial coming up on tax charges
The gun registration case was only Hunter Biden's first time in the courtroom this year.
The 54-year old businessman and attorney faces another federal trial Sept. 5 in Los Angeles on tax charges. A plea agreement that collapsed last July called for Hunter Biden to admit two misdemeanors for not paying taxes in 2017 and 2018.
The indictment on three felony and six misdemeanor charges alleges he engaged in a scheme in which he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed taxes from 2016 through 2019, and also evaded tax assessment for 2018 when he filed false returns.
Trump may (or may not) face another trial before the election
Trump has been indicted in three other cases, but it's uncertain whether he will go on trial on any of them.
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering Trump's request for immunity from prosecution for actions of a president.
The high court cases are part of pre-trial appeal in a federal case that accuses Trump of engaging in a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election from Biden.
Trump also faces similar charges in Georgia, but it is also on hold while Trump asks the state Court of Appeals to remove the prosecutor.
And a federal judge in Florida hasn’t set a trial date yet while she holds pretrial hearings on criminal charges Trump hoarded classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructed justice during the subsequent investigation.
Trials as soap operas
An already unusual election - Trump is trying to become the first candidate since Grover Cleveland in 1892 to re-take the White House after losing it four years previously - was made more unusual by the sordid details of this trial.
The Trump trial featured details of his assignation with porn star Stormy Daniels. She described the future president's appearance in a bath robe, and reported that he did not wear a condom.
Former first lady Melania Trump did not attend any part of the trial.
As for Hunter Biden, the evidence included pictures from his electronic devices of him holding a crack pipe and a text about waiting for an alleged drug dealer named Mookie. Former romantic partners including his ex-wife and his sister-in-law, Hallie Biden, the widow of brother Beau Biden, testified about searching his belongings for drugs and paraphernalia to protect their children.
Current first lady Jill Biden attended the trial every day.
Trials offer crash course in legal vocabulary
Neither the Trump nor Hunter Biden trials were broadcast on live TV. Court rules prevented that. But the nonstop news coverage of two people with such famous last names helped give Americans a crash course in their judicial system, albeit one filled with arcane terms, practices and decisions.
The language is literally foreign. “Voir dire,” a French term for speaking the truth, is the term for questioning potential jurors about whether they can judge a case fairly. Jurors remained anonymous in both cases to prevent harassment in the highly politicized cases.
“Oh man, I don’t want to be here,” one juror said after learning Hunter Biden was the defendant in her case, although she said her fears were unfounded. “I was expecting all of us to be at each other’s throats because you know of who his father is and how the political climate is in this country.”
Defendants are presumed innocent and neither Trump nor Biden testified in their trials. Trump offered hallway statements to reporters but decided against testifying because his lawyer said prosecutors could delve into other litigation. Defense lawyer Todd Blanche provided Trump’s explanation for his actions and defense lawyer Abbe Lowell provided Biden’s explanation.
The juries in both trials reached verdicts relatively quickly. But Biden’s jurors said their first-blush vote was 6-6 during the first hour of deliberations before reaching a unanimous decision.
If either jury had deadlocked, Judge Juan Merchan in Trump’s case or Judge Maryellen Noreika in Biden’s case could have offered nudge to keep deliberating. The instruction is formally called an Allen charge, after an 1896 Supreme Court decision, but sometimes more casually called a “dynamite charge,” to get an answer after an arduous trial.
Another vocabulary lesson dealt with terms for relieving the burden of a conviction.
President Biden told ABC News during the trial he would respect the jury’s decision and not pardon his son, a power that could wipe out the guilty verdict.
But White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to rule out Wednesday that Biden could commute – or shorten – his son’s sentence. Hunter Biden’s sentence hasn’t been scheduled yet but he faces a maximum of up to 25 years in prison and could realistically be given months behind bars.
History books and law books
Every presidential campaign makes history; this one has made an inordinate amount of legal history.
Trump, already the first president to be impeached twice in the House (and acquitted in the Senate), is now the first former president and current presidential candidate to be charged with crimes – four times over.
The New York hush money verdict bestowed the title of first former president to become a convicted felon.
Hunter Biden’s case was also a landmark, as the first child of a sitting president to be charged and convicted.
Supreme Court decisions could affect Trump and Biden cases
As appeals moved forward, the embattled U.S. Supreme Court could become a refuge for each defendant.
Trump has argued he should be immune from federal charges as a former president or the post will be weakened by the threat of criminal charges for any contentious decision while in office.
Lower courts ruled that Trump could be charged and tried like anyone else. But when the high court heard arguments in April, justices sounded sympathetic to granting some immunity to presidential actions such as appointments and vetoes, and perhaps creating a test for whether former presidents could face charges for other actions.
Another case before the high court could affect Biden’s gun charges.
Zackey Rahimi is asking the justices to overturn his conviction under a law that was also the foundation of charges against Biden. Rahimi seeks to overturn restrictions against owning a gun while under a protective order.
Biden has argued the gun charges against him owning a gun because of drug use are unconstitutional.
Frequency of prosecutions criticized
Trump and Biden each complained they were charged under laws that are rarely enforced.
But Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said it is common to prosecute charges of falsifying business records. After Trump’s arrest a year ago, New York state court records showed 9,794 cases arraigned in local and superior courts under the same law as Trump since 2015, according to a report in the New York Law Journal.
Legal experts at Just Security, an online forum for analyzing legal issues, national security and rights, found dozens of cases in the past decade where felony charges were filed over failing to pay taxes or workers’ compensation, or for insurance fraud.
The gun charges against Biden are rarely prosecuted. A Justice Department study in 1990 described the difficulty in pursuing charges because the defendant must be proven to have knowingly lied about drug use, while federal law prohibits the disclosure of medical records about engaging in a drug rehabilitation program.
For example, fewer than 300 cases were filed against people who allegedly lied to buy firearms, according to a Washington Post review. The cases totaled 271 in 2018, 298 in 2019 and 243 in 2020.
Out of 8.6 million federal background checks in 2017, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives denied 112,090 applications and referred 12,710 cases to U.S. attorney’s offices, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Only 12 cases were prosecuted.
The campaign and consequences
The personal consequences for Trump and Hunter Biden remain unclear at this point, but will become more evident as the presidential campaign progresses.
Technically, each of Trump’s 34 counts of falsifying business records carries a maximum four-year sentence. Hunter Biden faces a maximum sentence of 25 years.
Each defendant is a first-time offender convicted of a nonviolent crime, and legal experts anticipate their sentences will be shorter than the maximum sentences possible.
Appeals could push off penalties indefinitely. Trump has vowed to appeal and Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said he “will pursue all legal challenges available.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump, Hunter Biden trials are over – the impact will linger
