How could THIS take five years?

How does it take five years to come up with this?

As we’d long feared, the five-year Hunter Biden investigation is wrapping in a plea deal over charges the Justice Department simply couldn’t avoid bringing — because the public record established Hunter’s guilt on them long ago. 

It reeks — because if this were truly all Hunter is guilty of, it wouldn’t have taken this long, or be shrouded in so much mystery. 

Hunter basically admitted guilt on the tax-avoidance counts years ago, when he (or, rather, a wealthy “friend”) paid the back taxes. And he effectively confessed to the gun charge in his autobiography, writing up his vast drug use at the very time he applied for a gun license without mentioning it.

And we know the Secret Service retrieved the gun after his then-inamorata tossed it in a public trash bin.

But other obvious and apparent crimes didn’t get charged: He never registered as a foreign agent, even as his laptop and other evidence shows he was lobbying. He was blatantly peddling influence — the only possible explanation for the millions he scored in Ukraine and China is his last name.

Nor do prosecutors seem to have followed up on clear indications of money-laundering (money moved through a vast network of accounts to other members of the family) or even sex-trafficking (again, the laptop alone shows ample payment for hookers of all kinds).

On the money-laundering, especially, we know the IRS (apparently at Justice Department direction) axed the expert team that had been digging into Hunter’s vast web of accounts.

Were they getting too close? How could their replacements have possibly finished the work in bare weeks, so prosecutors could in good confidence opt against charges?

What of the whistleblower allegations of political interference in the case, and of retaliation against the whistleblowers?

David Weiss, the Delaware US attorney, claims the investigation is “ongoing,” but that sounds like a dodge to keep House Republicans off his back. Hunter’s lawyer and friends are treating this as the end of the story.

And what an end it is. Hunter gets off easy even by the low standards set by the charges. Misdemeanors for the taxes. The only felony he could have faced, over the gun, is waved away as long as Hunter straightens up and flies right. 

Again, this investigation began back in 2018, and we know the feds soon had enough evidence to convict on the charges finally brought — perhaps before, and surely soon after, the 2020 election.

Are we supposed to believe they held off so long because they were looking into more consequential crimes (as deploying a top IRS team indicates), only to suddenly decide (after firing that team!) that they couldn’t prove anything else?

Despite the obvious impropriety of the Justice Department investigating the president’s son (and as that president repeatedly, loudly and publicly declared his son innocent), Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to name an independent counsel to take this case.

If a special prosecutor of clear integrity had offered this plea deal now, it’d still stink but might be something the public could swallow.

But as things stand, the only possible conclusion is that Justice is corrupt.