GOP's Hunter Biden hysteria makes even less sense after plea deal gets put on hold

There are two versions of what happened to Hunter Biden in federal court Wednesday. One is grounded in reality, and one is the kind of slobbering right-wing fan fiction that comes from people who use terms like “the Deep State” and “the Biden Crime Family” and expect to be taken seriously.

Let’s start with reality, as that’s generally a safer space to inhabit.

President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was in court to accept a deal with federal prosecutors in which he would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and agree to enter a diversion program for a firearms charge.

Hunter Biden's plea deal delayed after courtroom confusion

Confusion arose in the hearing in part because Hunter Biden thought the plea deal shielded him from other potential criminal charges. The Department of Justice prosecutors said it did not, and Biden’s attorneys said the deal was off.

U.S. attorney David Weiss' team told U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika that there is an “ongoing” investigation into Biden.

The two sides hammered out a modified plea agreement that more specifically addressed the immunity issues, but the judge told the prosecution and the defense to keep working on the new agreement. There will be another hearing in the coming weeks once Noreika has had time to review details of the new deal.

As a formality, Biden entered a not guilty plea, which can change at the next hearing if a deal is approved.

Meanwhile, in the conspiratorial world where Hunter Biden is an archcriminal...

So that’s the news, assuming you’ve got at least one oar in the river of reality.

If you’re oarless and rudderless – as many in the Hunter-Biden-conspiracy world are – Wednesday’s developments required some high-level mental gymnastics.

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You see, the plea deal was a “sweetheart deal” that came about because President Biden controls a thing called the Deep State, and the Deep State controls the Department of Justice, so the DOJ sneakily used a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney – Weiss – to protect the president’s son by … getting him to plead guilty to fairly serious tax evasion charges.

If that doesn’t make sense, then you’re following along perfectly.

Sometimes this Deep State conspiracy is REALLY confusing

Now, the judge in Wednesday’s hearing was nominated to the court by Trump, so she was FOR SURE going to unravel the whole giant scandal. And she did that by … asking basic legal questions that revealed a sizable misunderstanding between the two sides, blew up the supposedly “sweetheart” deal AND showed that the DOJ is continuing to investigate the president’s son!

AH-HAH!! So Joe Biden's nefarious Deep State ordered the DOJ to give Hunter Biden a sweetheart plea deal, but that very same DOJ and the very same prosecutor supposedly doing the president’s bidding are also still investigating Hunter Biden.

Again, if this makes absolutely zero logical sense, then you’re right where you should be.

So Joe Biden protected Hunter Biden by letting him get charged?

An objective person might say what happened Wednesday completely punctures the right’s hysterical nonsense about a sweetheart deal. Or, a nonobjective and loosely-tethered-to-reality person like U.S. Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana – an actual living, breathing elected official – might tweet this about what happened in federal court: “Sure feels like this is the beginning of the Democrat apparatus effort to boot Biden from being their 2024 nominee.”

(Please wrap your head in tin foil if you plan to continue reading.)

So Banks’ argument, one that sounds like the sort of thing we’ll be hearing on Fox News any minute now, is this: President Biden ordered Deep State federal prosecutors to go easy on his son, which they did, but then somewhere before Wednesday’s hearing, the Democratic Party decided it no longer wants Biden to run for reelection, so some all-powerful Democratic officials redirected the Deep State and got it to force a Trump-nominated judge to ask question that would muck up a Trump-appointed prosecutor's plea deal with Hunter Biden.

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And this would keep Joe Biden from running for reelection because … well, the reasoning for that is a bit vague, which I assume is EXACTLY what the Deep State wants.

There's not enough tinfoil in the world to protect our heads from right-wing Hunter Biden conspiracies

Anyway, that’s basically where the MAGA crowd and other Fox-News-addled folks are at right now. It seems worth mentioning that Hunter Biden is not now and never has been an elected official and has played no role whatsoever in his father’s administration.

Or as Republican pollster Frank Luntz recently told Semafor: “Independents and Democrats have zero interest in Hunter Biden – zero. It didn’t matter in 2020 or 2022, either. Republicans are a different matter. To them, anything that reflects badly on any Biden is a good thing.”

That darn Deep State sure is a confusing thing. Or person. Or imaginary enemy.

Whatever.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hunter Biden plea deal drama unravels bizarre GOP conspiracy theories