Hunter Biden’s indictment is minimal compared to Manafort’s treatment.

Contrasting Treatment: Hunter Biden vs. Paul Manafort

After the Department of Justice (DOJ) secured a guilty plea from Hunter Biden to two misdemeanor counts of tax evasion, some commentators contrasted the DOJ’s treatment of the president’s son with that of former Trump 2016 campaign chair Paul Manafort.

Much like Hunter Biden, Manafort, a career campaign operative, had his foreign business dealings scrutinized by the government. But unlike Manafort’s, the indictment of Biden reveals nothing about his foreign business dealings.

According to GOP congressional investigations, Biden and his business partners operated dozens of shell companies that appeared to be designed to obfuscate movements of money from people and entities with ties to foreign governments, including those of China and Ukraine.

“Since the FBI’s investigation into Hunter Biden began nearly five years ago, I and my colleagues in Congress have uncovered extensive government and bank records indicative of money laundering as well as foreign business schemes that, in any other circumstance, would raise serious criminal and counterintelligence concerns,” commented Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in a release. “Hunter’s laptop, which the FBI has had since 2019, contains records corroborating much of this evidence, as well as evidence of other serious criminal violations.”

Republican lawmakers stressed that they haven’t been able to find a legitimate business of Hunter Biden’s—neither product nor service—save for his ability to facilitate access to and potentially favors from his father, especially during Joe Biden’s terms as vice president.

Yet the indictment, at barely two pages, offers no detail on Hunter Biden’s activities. It merely states that he “willfully” failed to pay somewhere above $200,000 in taxes on income exceeding $3 million from 2017 and 2018—charges so light he may avoid prison altogether. It mentions nothing about what made the behavior willful, not to mention where the money came from, or even exactly how much money was involved.

Biden also faced a separate charge for illegal gun possession, but was allowed to resolve it through pre-trial diversion, a program that allows him to avoid both incarceration and a criminal record.