With News Of Plea Deal, MRC’s Hunter Biden Derangement Went Into Overdrive

June started out as a slow month of Hunter Biden derangement at the Media Research Center, spending much of the early part of the month complaining that his alleged scandals weren’t being covered in the non-right-wing media as much as Donald Trump’s latest indictment. But with news of a plea deal, the MRC went into Hunter Derangement overdrive. Alex Christy complained in a June 20 post:

MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough had a curious reaction to the Tuesday news that Hunter Biden will be pleading guilty to tax and gun-related charges: lash out at Republicans and their “conspiracy theories.” Way Too Early host and Politico White House bureau chief Jonathan Lemire managed to one up Scarborough by adding that developments are “good news” for President Joe Biden.

After legal analyst Joyce Vance ran through the charges, Scarborough focused on what Hunter wasn’t charged with, “Yeah, and Jonathan Lemire, so obviously Republicans– Trump Republicans have been trying to stir up conspiracy theories left and right. One after another have been disproven. One after another, we found out as the Wall Street Journal  editorial page himself said no fire here. A lot of smoke all over the place, no fire.”

In something never said about Robert Mueller and Russia Collusion, Scarborough claimed “Not only have they proven nothing, they have senior members of the Senate saying we don’t care whether he’s guilty or not, we don’t care whether he did this stuff or not, it’s all been a show. Well, that show has just been exposed by Trump’s own prosecutor, Trump-appointed prosecutor in Delaware. He’s done a deal with him, a plea deal.”

As for Lemire, he also was focused on Republicans and what Hunter wasn’t charged with, “Certainly Republicans have for literally years now accused Hunter Biden of basically everything under the sun, including he’s the mastermind behind the Biden Crime Family and corruption and all that, a charge we don’t need to get into now because they were never brought.”

Just because Hunter wasn’t charged with anything corruption-related doesn’t mean what he did wasn’t sleazy and, again, Morning Joe would never say “we don’t need to get into” Russian collusion storylines because no charges of collusion were ever brought.

As Mueller himself pointed out, collusion is not a legal term, meaning that it is impossible for someone to be charged with it, and the Mueller report documented numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives that more than justified an investigation — something even Senate Republicans admitted.

Nicholas Fondacaro grumbled it was pointed out that the plea deal would be partisan fodder for Republicans:

Hunter Biden got a cushy plea deal from his father’s Justice Department on Tuesday, including the possible drop of a felony gun charge no average America would be afforded. Despite securing the sweetheart deal, one of the immediate reactions from CNN News Central was to whine that congressional Republicans were “not going to let this go” as their investigations into possible corruption from the Biden family and interference in the DOJ’s investigation reported by whistleblowers heated up.

“The political dynamics of this … cannot be understated,” senior Justice correspondent Evan Perez said. He went on to warn that“The Republicans are not going to let this go” as they investigate “what they believe are still some unanswered questions about those financial dealings that Hunter Biden had, other members of the family had overseas, but also just how the Justice Department handled this investigation.”

Fondacaro failed to explain what was supposedly “cushy” about the plea deal.

Christy returned to make the same complaint a couple hours later:

As Republicans reacted to Hunter Biden’s Tuesday plea deal by declaring it to be a “slap on the wrist” and raised concerns about a two-tiered system of justice, the Washington Post’s Leigh Ann Caldwell joined CNN’s Inside Politics to say that such allegations prove that the GOP tends to “leave out a lot of facts.” In an attempt to prove her point, Caldwell also insisted that the Durham Probe proved the FBI has not been politicized.

Host Dana Bash tried to make the argument that Republicans cannot complain because the prosecutor in the case was appointed by Donald Trump, “And as much as we understand the politics and we’re explaining and giving context around the politics, we also should talk about the facts which are it was a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Delaware intentionally kept there by Joe Biden because he knew the investigation was going on, and that these cases are quite different.”

Caldwell naturally agreed, “Yeah, they’re absolutely different and when Republicans talk about they leave out a lot of facts in each instance, that kind of walk around and dance around to make it seem like they are similar but these are obviously apple and oranges cases.”

Both Bash and Caldwell are arguing against a straw man. Republicans would agree that the Trump and Hunter cases are apple and oranges, but would say that is exactly the problem. Trump is facing serious accusations related to the retention of classified documents while Hunter avoids serious corruption charges, instead striking a deal on tax misdemeanor that will likely result in him avoiding jail, while the gun felony will likely be dropped as part of a pre-trial diversion agreement.

Like Fondacaro, Christy did not explain exactly how Hunter plea deal was so great.

Fondacaro, meanwhile, whined some more:

It’s not just the cast of ABC’s The View that makes fools of themselves on the show, sometimes it’s their guests. Such was the case on Tuesday when ABC chief Washington correspondent Jon Karl joined the cast to report the breaking news that Hunter Biden had agreed to a cushy plea deal with his father’s Justice Department. Karl clownishly claimed “there’s no evidence” to back up GOP claims about the Biden family’s corruption, but he did admit to Hunter’s dubious employment by the Ukraine energy firm, Burisma and the fact he received lavish gifts from China.

Karl’s denial of reality came in an answer to Joy Behar, who wondered: “But doesn’t this show, Karl, that Biden is not in the pocket of the DOJ?”

According to Karl, “it depends” on how you look at it. He argued Democrats would say “they prosecuted anyway. His son now has a criminal record.” He began to suggest the prosecution meant there was definitively no interference by the Biden administration but caught himself and hedged his bets. “Yes, that shows – it would seem to show there was no interference,” he said.

As if killing the investigation was the only President Biden could interfere, Karl proclaimed: “He didn’t pull the plug on the investigation. He didn’t order his attorney general to pull the plug on the investigation.” This didn’t take into account that Hunter would be getting out of a felony gun charge with a rehab program.

[…]

Karl’s hypocrisy didn’t stop him from decrying the “hypocrisy coming from the Republicans” and them “yelling and screaming about Hunter Biden.” “But that hypocrisy doesn’t mean there isn’t something fundamentally at issue here with Hunter Biden,” he reluctantly added.

Interns Cassandra DeVries and Ana Schau teamed up for their own complaint:

ABC and CBS both featured segments on Tuesday morning to break the news of Hunter Biden’s guilty plea to two federal charges of tax fraud in his current criminal investigation. Both shows then proceeded to praise his father, President Joe Biden, for his closeness to his son Hunter, and bemoaned the investigation’s negative effects on the President because of this close connection.

[…]

Instead of dwelling on Hunter Biden’s illegal actions, which likely would negatively impact Biden’s campaign, ABC and CBS ran a pair of fluff portraying the President as a supportive father, helping his son through a difficult time. Perhaps ABC and CBS should consider a future in political ads. 

When one commentator likened the accusations of corruption against Hunter to Trump in-law Jared Kushner getting a $2 billion payoff from Saudi Arabia, Christy lashed out:

Forget about Hunter Biden and any of the corruption or crimes he has been involved in, what really mattered was Jared Kushner. The problem with that whataboutism is that Hunter Biden was given a lucrative position at Burisma while he had no experience or qualifications for it, aside from being close to his father President Biden. Jared Kushner, however, does have significant qualifications from being, as The Times of Israel puts it, “instrumental in negotiating the Abraham Accords.”

Christy has previously insisted that Kushner deserved that Saudi payoff. And if the “Abraham Accords” — which involved three minor Muslim countries normalizing relations with Israel — were a factor, shouldn’t the money have come from Israel?

And this was all on June 20, the day the plea deal was announced. The MRC continued to whine further over the next couple days — more soon.