President Joe Biden's son Hunter has cut a deal to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses, while a third charge of illegally possessing a weapon (after lying about his drug use on a form) has also been filed but will be withdrawn if Hunter successfully completes two years of probation. Hunter Biden will likely avoid any prison sentence as a result of the plea deal.

Republicans reacted predictably, decrying it as a "sweetheart deal," while there were zero Democrats out there screaming about Hunter being charged as part of a "witch-hunt" or swearing up and down that it was fully legal for Hunter to do these things. That's the difference between the parties in a nutshell: Democrats support the rule of law even when one of their own is caught, while Republicans want the book thrown at all Democrats while giving a free pass to all Republicans for all crimes.

It wasn't a sweetheart deal. Hunter Biden was charged rather harshly, in fact. The weapons charge is rarely used by prosecutors, and Biden has already paid his back taxes. But the facts of Biden's case don't really matter to Republicans, who have built a fantasy world where "the Biden crime family" routinely profits off of Joe Biden's power, which he (they assert without a shred of proof) sells to the highest bidder.

Consider the fact that the prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case was appointed by Donald Trump. When Joe Biden took over, his attorney general allowed the Trump prosecutor to finish his investigation and has not interfered with it in any way. The prosecutor himself attested to this in a letter he sent to Congress: "I want to make clear that, as the Attorney General has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges." This was, in essence, Trump's Justice Department investigating Hunter Biden. So where does the accusation of a sweetheart deal even come from? Trump hand-picked a prosecutor who would give Hunter Biden a free pass? How does that even make sense?

This prosecutor investigated Hunter Biden for five years. And this is all he could come up with. No charges dealing with any foreign money or bribes or influence-selling, and zero nefarious connections between Hunter and his father at all. They had five whole years to investigate all the fever-swamp accusations and they found nothing.

When Republicans took over the House of Representatives, it gave them the power to launch oversight investigations of their own, which they promptly did. They have been trying to uncover evidence which would prove their "Biden crime family" storyline, and after half a year they have nothing to show for it. Zero. Nada. This is not some "weaponized Justice Department" investigation, mind you, this is being undertaken by the most rabid of the MAGA House members. If there's any "weaponizing" or "bias" involved, it comes from Republicans and not the other way around. And even with this built-in advantage, they have uncovered precisely nothing.

The other complaint the GOP is making is that somehow all of this proves there is a "two-tiered system of justice" in the country. The term is normally used to point out the unmistakable fact that those with money or power or influence in this country can quite often get away with things that average citizens would pay a heavy price for. But to Republicans, there is no "rich person's tier" and "everyone else tier," but instead there is a political divide, where Democrats get to skate on things while Republicans get the book thrown at them.

This is all an effort to excuse anything illegal Donald Trump has ever done, of course. What Republicans really want is a two-tier system that works the other way, where Trump is allowed to do anything he wishes without regard to what the law says. There just is no parallel with the crimes Trump has been accused of, because he's the only one who refused to obey a legally-issued subpoena and instead decided to obstruct justice. Conflating that with a case of tax evasion and lying on a form to buy a gun is flat-out ridiculous on the face of it.

The justice system works for all. If Trump, like Hunter Biden, had made restitution (by giving the documents back) and admitted to his wrongdoing (as Biden did), then he almost certainly could have made a plea bargain of his own -- if he was even charged. If the National Archives had gotten all the stolen documents back even after they had issued their subpoena, there likely wouldn't have been any charges filed at all -- which is proven by the fact that Trump was not charged for any of the classified documents he returned before a search warrant had to be executed on his home, just those that were seized during the search.

Republicans are masters of accusing Democrats of the things they are most guilty of doing. They are openly calling for the politicization of the Justice Department, while accusing Democrats of doing the same thing. Donald Trump, if he is elected president again, is promising to persecute not only the Biden family but anyone else who angers him for any reason, using the Department of Justice not only as a political attack dog, but as a personal one. You think Trump would stop at persecuting Democrats? I don't -- I think he'd go after any Republican who ever crossed him even more harshly than he would against the Bidens, or Hillary Clinton, or any other pesky Democrat.

Now consider what Joe Biden has done. Did he instruct his attorney general to drop the investigation into his son? No, he did not. In fact, Biden has not tried to interfere in any of his attorney general's decisions on any investigation into any political figure -- on either side of the aisle. He did not quash the investigation into his own son, and he did not direct that investigations be opened against any of his political opponents. He even allowed a special counsel to be appointed to investigate himself (over his own belated return of classified documents). He let his own attorney general independently make these decisions, which is the way it is supposed to work. And then he didn't go out and whip up public opinion either for the investigations or against them. A starker difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is hard to imagine, in this regard.

Biden could have interfered, if he were of the same mind as Trump and his GOP enablers. Biden could have directed his Justice Department to fully investigate Jared Kushner as well as Ivanka, Donald Junior, and Eric Trump. Unlike Hunter Biden, Trump's relatives were a part of his White House team. And they have plenty of fishy and unexplained income from foreign countries that might be worth looking into. Donald Trump himself continues to do deals in the Middle East and elsewhere that would be compromising if he ever served as president again. Many have pointed out how ironic it is for Trump to be complaining about being treated leniently on tax laws, since Biden's Justice Department hasn't raised a finger to investigate Trump's taxes -- even though other jurisdictions have charged Trump's company for committing tax fraud.

If there is a two-tiered system of justice split along political lines in this country, currently it treats Republicans -- Donald Trump and his relatives in particular -- a lot more leniently than it just treated Hunter Biden. For all the weeping and wailing from Republicans, that is the actual truth of the matter.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant