Friday Round Up! 6/14/24

I, for one, will not be voting for Hunter Biden for president!

I’ve got good news for everyone — our justice system isn’t a rigged, Deep State facade designed solely to interfere with the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump! I know a lot of you had been losing sleep over that for a while, so just wanted to clear that up.

Indeed, last Tuesday, Hunter Biden was convicted on all counts related to the unlawful possession of a firearm while being addicted to illegal drugs. Hunter was in many ways a sympathetic defendant, but whatever the criticisms might be that this prosecution shouldn’t have been brought in the first place (and there are many), it was an important vindication for the principle that no one is above the law.

Of course, that didn’t stop the MAGA crowd from finding a way to make this part of the conspiracy against Trump nonetheless: Within hours of the verdict, the right-wing talking point was that the Hunter Biden prosecution was all an “op” set up by Democrats to protect Joe Biden. So I guess the Trump-appointee holdover who began the investigation under Trump’s Justice Department and was made even more independent by Merrick Garland, who appointed him as a Special Counsel, was doing it all along to HELP JOE BIDEN (with assistance from the Trump-appointed judge in the case, who rejected the prosecution’s plea deal). That is some pretty impressive political chess!

Seriously, though, it’s actually a great example of the “sealed logic” of conspiracy theories, which never change in light of new information, but simply adapt to make the new information “part of the plan.” I’ll be discussing this in my Substack course in the coming weeks. Unfortunately I don’t have a podcast episode for this week — Renato and I recorded right before the verdict came out so it ended up being OBE, and this is graduation week for my son so we couldn’t find time to record again! But we’ll be back next week with a full debrief.

My articles from this week:

• I wrote some reflections for CAFE Insider on the state of U.S. democracy against the backdrop of a Latin American legal conference I was attending last weekend. Hopefully we will avoid the hard lessons learned by Chile and Colombia.

• This is an oldie but goodie which I coauthored with Texas A&M Professor Jennifer Mercieca for Zocalo Public Square, on the Greek roots of the concept of “equal justice under the law,” which is an apropos reminder this week.

  Other articles worth reading:

Other articles worth reading:

• Stop what you’re doing and read up on this New York Times piece outlining Trump’s plans for a second term. They are telling us in advance what is to come, so we have no excuse if we allow it to happen.

Noteworthy clips from this week:

Some thoughts on how the Hunter verdict illustrates the proper exercise of presidential restraint:

And also why Hunter may have a strong Second Amendment case on appeal:

Upcoming events:

• Zoom Office Hours, Tuesday, June 18, 2-3 p.m. EDT. We’ll discuss the latest (which may include the Supreme Court’s decision, if one ever comes, on Trump’s immunity argument). Zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers at 11 a.m. Zoom office hours are not recorded.

• Freedom Academy Book Club, Wednesday, July 10, 10-11 a.m.. I’m very excited that my former CNN colleague, Jim Sciutto, will be joining us to discuss The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War. I love Jim’s work and insights into national security issues and this is a discussion you won’t want to miss! Paid subscribers will receive a Zoom link three hours before.

I’m working on lining up more speakers for the summer, so stay tuned!