The Nonsense of ‘Botherism’
Terry H. Schwadron
June 22, 2023
“Botherism” is the generic term being bandied about in demands for “comparative” treatment of cases arising with the justice system involving politicians or public figures from the political Left or Right — however inappropriate the facts might be to the cases.
Somehow, the thinking goes that if the FBI and Justice are prosecuting Donald Trump on serious crimes for which Trump seems to be acknowledging, Hunter Biden should go to jail for 10 years rather than facing probation for crimes of avoiding, but finally paying federal income taxes, and getting probation for lying under influence of cocaine on a gun form.
The differing facts seem to have no relationship to the idea that if our guy is facing possible prison, the other guy should be too.
Lost along the way are the nature of the criminal charges or the appropriateness of matching sentences to crimes, to say nothing of one coming about as the result of a plea bargain in which Hunter Biden pleads guilty rather than Trump’s crowing that “I am innocent” on every right-leaning news channel and his own social media company.
Indeed, Republicans including Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Rep. James Comer, who’s taken the lead on pushing his Oversight Committee to declare that there must be substance to a single third-hand report that the Bidens, including President Joe Biden, took millions of dollars in bribes nine years ago from a Ukrainian power broker. Comer now wants the Hunter Biden prosecutor to testify as to why he didn’t charge the president’s son.
For the record, Hunter Biden pleaded to the two tax counts and the gun paperwork lie, and accepted probation and participation in a diversion program to assure no substance abuse. There is no charge related to Biden Crime Family bribes. But who knows, maybe there could be if only these investigators come up with, say, evidence beyond a verbal allegation that no one has been able to run to ground.
Game-Playing Gets Us Nowhere
The game-playing over finding equal cause for disgust itself is disgusting, not because we care whether one side or the other has a perceived setback resulting from crime, but because it is such a waste of time and listening.
If Republicans or the FBI and Justice have the goods on Hunter or other Bidens, bring ’em. If not, either work harder or move on. The idea of sitting on “botherism” complaints is just tiresome and doesn’t win any friends or votes. It’s become trite, repetitive, and unfortunate in its constancy. If there’s a prosecution and conviction for bribery, Hunter Biden will indeed go to jail.
We’re still hearing about Hillary Clinton years after the Justice Department under two administrations found no reason to charge her with crimes related to storing State Department emails on a personal server in her home. We’re still hearing about imagined crimes by Bill Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, even the scrupulously drama-resistant Barack Obama — all because some Democrat is perceived as having to pay a crime price equal to the more serious crimes charged in the currently unfolding indictments against Trump.
No the discovery of classified documents in the Biden home is not the same as the case of Trump’s obstruction charges for the fact that Biden, like former Vice President Mike Pence, has cooperated.
Despite what appears a solid case involving taking, holding, and hiding the nation’s military secret documents — whether among golf shirts or not — it will still be surprising if Donald Trump gets convicted by a unanimous jury before a judge he appointed and is sentenced at all, never mind whether it involved a jail term. Yet we already have rival Republican candidates talking and promising pardons or the interruption of prosecution in the name of “weaponization” and unfair bias against Trump.
In the case of Hunter Biden, the two charges followed five years of investigation by U.S. Attorney David Weiss who was named by Trump and kept at arm’s length by Attorney General Merrick Garland, involving a first-time defendant. Looking at equivalent cases, that prosecutor set the possibility of two years jail for a misdemeanor and the alternative gun sentence, and still, Speaker McCarthy is deriding “the Biden justice department” for avoiding setting a 10-year prison term as “a slap on the wrist.”
Too Quick to Blame
We’re too quick to dip every issue into the partisan political divide.
As The Washington Post showed this week, the Justice Department and FBI instead leaned heavily backward to avoid charging Donald Trump for a year while Trump continued to obstruct efforts to retrieve classified documents from him.
The abortion decision by the Supreme Court was bad because it overturned perceived rights of women, upended 50 years of precedent, and created havoc — not because it was “Republican.” Book bans are bad policy and lead to bad results, not because they are embraced by MAGA fans. And crimes of extorting votes or interfering with Congress or lying to federal officials and the like that envelop our politicians are bad on their own merits — not in pursuit of “botherism.”
Rep. George Santos, R-NY, faces indictment on fraud charges because he couldn’t handle money without lying about it all on official forms, not because of his party. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, faced criminal charges of bribery, for which he was found not guilty, because he did something illegal, not because of his party designation.
In short, how about dropping the cries for perceived equality before investigators and spend more effort on keeping your fellow politicians from crossing criminal lines. Do oversight, do the investigation, and wait until you have something to charge before waving around a single sheet of paper announcing that someone’s got to go to jail.
“Botherism” demands finding the evidence regardless of party.
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