Hunter Biden Verdict Sparks Unbelievable MAGA Conspiracy Theories

Conservatives are reacting to Hunter Biden’s felony conviction on Tuesday in seemingly the only way they know how: claiming it’s part of an elaborate conspiracy by the Department of Justice to weaken their outrage over Trump’s own felony convictions.

The reactions from the MAGAsphere were practically instantaneous on Tuesday, led by former White House policy advisor Stephen Miller who declared that Biden’s conviction is part of a plot to avoid pursuing foreign agent charges that would lead back to Biden.

“The gun charges are a giant misdirection,” asserted Miller. “An easy op for DOJ to sell to a pliant media that is all too willing to be duped. Don’t be gaslit. This is all about protecting Joe Biden and only Joe Biden.”

Similar to Miller, End Wokeness, a far-right account with over a million followers that frequently disseminates racist and conspiratorial content, opted to seize Biden’s conviction by pivoting to Ukraine conspiracies, announcing “Hunter Biden is a red herring. The real person of interest in the Ukraine bribery/laundering is the Big Guy. We all know exactly who that is.” The Joe Biden-Ukraine conspiracy alleges that during his time as vice president, Biden took a bribe to pressure Ukraine away from investigating a gas company to protect his son who sat on the board, a conspiracy led by an FBI informant who was recently charged for fabricating the whole story.

“Hunter Biden operated as an unregistered foreign agent and profited millions. The gun case was nothing more than smoke and mirrors from the Biden DOJ,” Texas Representative Lance Gooden declared on X (formerly Twitter).

Other far-right influencers have opted to paint Biden’s conviction as a tactic by the Justice Department to help them swallow the bitter pill about their dear leader’s own conviction. “Hunter got a fair trial, unlike Trump,” wrote conservative activist Tom Fitton. Conservative influencer Tim Young claimed he “predicted the Hunter Biden verdict” and linked to an interview he gave to a right-wing media outlet where he claimed the routine prosecution of Biden’s gun charge was a plot to create an “illusion of balance” following Trump’s guilty verdict. Young’s “prediction” does not include Biden being found guilty on all counts. Charlie Kirk, who leads the white nationalist-friendly Turning Point USA, accused the conviction of being a “fake trial to make the Justice system appear ‘balanced’” and advised his followers, “Don’t fall for it.”

Representative Matt Gaetz, in contrast, has had relatively little to say, writing off the conviction as “kinda dumb tbh.” That may be due to the fact that the last time he tried joining the hating Hunter Biden bandwagon, it blew up in his face.

The conservative reactions manage to be simultaneously totally unsurprising and completely unexpected: Conservatives have desperately sought to take down Hunter Biden, viewing his messy past as a lynchpin to bring about his father’s demise. That they’d adamantly avoid celebrating Biden’s conviction seems purely motivated by fear of reinforcing their already apparent hypocrisy.

Local television news broadcasters are airing suspiciously similar attacks on Joe Biden’s mental acuity and how it will affect the coming election—and it appears to be part of a coordinated effort.

The Sinclair Broadcast Group owns or operates 185 local television stations across the country, and dozens of their stations aired a segment from national correspondent Matthew Galka citing a Wall Street Journal article that makes dubious attacks on Biden’s age and mental awareness. The stations that aired the segment introduced it using startlingly similar, if not identical language, the Popular Information and Public Notice newsletters reported.

It’s not the first time Sinclair, owned by right-wing businessman David D. Smith, has appeared to be running a conservative propaganda campaign. Infamously in 2018, dozens of the company’s TV stations were caught airing an identical editorial about the dangers of biased and false news. This time around, the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, as well as Murdoch’s cable news stations Fox News and Fox Business, have gotten in on the act.

Smith himself has long been a donor to Republican causes through his family foundation, which counts right-wing nonprofits Young Americans for Liberty, Project Veritas, Turning Point USA, and Moms for Liberty among its recipients. In 2016, the Donald Trump campaign cut a deal with Sinclair that exchanged extensive access to Trump in return for positive coverage without fact-checking. That same year, Smith met with Trump and reportedly told him, “We are here to deliver your message.”

Earlier this year, Smith purchased The Baltimore Sun, insulting its staff and laying out a vision to steer it in the conservative direction of his TV stations. It’s quite obvious that Smith, Murdoch, and other conservative millionaires and billionaires are taking over as many media outlets as possible to push right-wing political propaganda, with the Biden age article and subsequent TV segments as examples of the end product they want. They’re finding vast opportunities in America’s declining news deserts, as well as the skeletal newspapers gutted by hedge funds and profit-seeking corporations. It doesn’t just bode well for the next election, but also portends a scary future for American democracy for decades to come.

After publication, a Sinclair spokesperson reached out to The New Republic to clarify that “using a preproduced script for a package that has been provided by another media outlet is a common practice across the industry.”

This article has been updated.

Hunter Biden was found guilty Tuesday on three charges in his federal gun trial. He could face up to 25 years in prison for lying on a federal form about his drug use, lying to a gun dealer, and possessing a gun.

But as Republicans sprang into a frenzy, someone very unexpected downplayed  the first son’s conviction: Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.

“The Hunter Biden gun conviction is kinda dumb tbh,” Gaetz wrote on X moments after the ruling was released.

Gaetz wasn’t the only Republican rushing to retroactively claim that the gun possession conviction was pointless. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk also chimed into the conversation, revealing a deeper reason why conservatives might not want to jump on the bandwagon against Biden’s son—all in a thinly veiled effort to aid another convicted felon, Donald Trump.

“Hunter Biden guilty. Yawn,” Kirk wrote. “The true crimes of the Biden Crime Family remain untouched. This is a fake trial trying to make the Justice system appear ‘balanced.’ Don’t fall for it.”

President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has already indicated that he won’t be pardoning his son. In an interview with ABC News last week, Biden said that he would accept the outcome of his son’s trial and that a pardon wasn’t on the table. Conversely, Biden said that Donald Trump was trying to “undermine” the legal system by claiming that he had been unjustly targeted by the legal system.

Biden repeated his acceptance Tuesday, saying that above all else, he would keep supporting his son.

“I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal,” he said in a statement. “Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.”

Hunter has become a favorite target of Republicans over the last couple of years. Besides the gun trial—which dredged up emotional testimony from the 54-year-old’s ex-wife and sister-in-law about his drug use—conservatives have dogged Hunter with alleged tax evasion charges in California and with a sham inquiry remarkably devoid of evidence at the Congressional level, claiming that the president had netted millions off of his son’s connection to Ukrainian oil company Burisma. 

But that effort completely blew up in their face when their star informant Alexander Smirnov was indicted by the Department of Justice for lying to the FBI. Smirnov then reportedly admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in the smear campaign against the sitting president. And all of the other witnesses that Republicans called on in their year-long probe instead debunked every single accusation against the Biden family.

Democratic donors are test-running a series of party-style campaign events aimed at getting young voters to the polls—a nice idea, but some of their tactics seem downright dystopian.

Over the past few months, The Voter Project has been hosting parties in Pennsylvania, fine-tuning strategies under the banner Stand Up Strong ’24, according to The Washington Post.

“Turning people out to cultural events is not a hard thing to do. The key thing is to make it fun and keep out the doom and gloom,” Kevin Mack, the group’s lead strategist told the Post.

Stand Up Strong ’24 recently held an event in Philadelphia that had all the usual fixings of a community event, including beer, free giveaways, and music.

But there was one more thing: a raffle giving away one month’s rent to lucky attendees. A total of $8,000 was distributed, according to the Post.

Democrats are so desperate to reunite with young voters that they’ve resorted to paying them. Somehow, throwing money at the problem seems easier than making substantial policy changes.

Unfortunately for Biden, his glacial work to erase crippling student loans for millions of people hasn’t proven to be enough to keep young voters, especially not in the face of his disastrous Israel policy, which has actively backed the country’s catastrophic military campaign in Gaza.

For the Biden campaign, youth voter turnout may be the key to keeping the White House in November. In 2020, an astounding young voter turnout, higher than in any presidential election in nearly 50 years, lifted Biden to victory. Without their support, 2024 could look a lot like 2016—with even more dangerous results.

It’s undeniable that community events are essential tools in building public power and engaging young voters. Just look at the massive pro-Palestinian rallies across the country! If only Biden could think of some way to tap into that … oh well.

Fox News is attempting to downplay conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s astronomical $4 million in lavish vacations and gifts by fixating on gifts received by liberal justices—specifically, Beyoncé tickets given to Ketanji Brown Jackson by the superstar herself, which is just an unequivocally cool fact.

Jackson’s Beyoncé tickets, which the Supreme Court justice reported totaled $3,700, have consumed a substantial amount of Fox’s attention. According to an analysis by Mediaite, Fox spent multiple segments discussing Jackson’s tickets in detail while saying next to nothing about the real scandal of Thomas’s mind-boggling disclosure report. Fix the Court tallied all Supreme Court justice disclosures over the last 20 years, finding they collectively received more than $6.5 million in gifts—with a extreme majority of that total attributed solely to Thomas.

When Fox News does mention Thomas’s amended financial disclosure forms (which only come after bombshell reports expose that he failed to disclose them), it’s paired with mention of Jackson’s tickets, seemingly in an attempt to conflate being swayed by conservative billionaire interests with being swayed by the melodious rhythm of Queen Bey’s splashy bops.

According to Mediaite, in the week since Fix the Court’s findings, Fox News mentioned Clarence Thomas’s amended financial disclosures three times, each time omitting the astronomical quantity of his gifts. Every time Fox News mentioned Thomas, it brought up Jackson’s Beyoncé tickets and noted the price.

“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is acknowledging previously unreported trips that were paid for by a conservative billionaire,” said Fox News anchor John Roberts, during a June 6 episode of America Reports. “Thomas has amended last year’s financial disclosure form to include the trips that were back in 2019. The vacations to Bali and California were not originally included in his 2019 disclosure form. By the way, last year, Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justice, got four tickets from Beyoncé for a concert worth $3,700.”

The analysis from Mediaite further notes that Fox News carried its lopsided framing to its website, publishing articles that vaguely report on Thomas’s amended disclosures while providing itemized detailing of gifts received by Jackson. Fox describes the cost of the Beyoncé tickets as “eye-popping” and includes mention of a floral arrangement gifted by Oprah Winfrey to celebrate Jackson becoming the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Fix the Court responded to Fox’s focus on Jackson’s meager gifts while underplaying Thomas’s extravagant boon, posting on X (formerly Twitter), “$4,000 in gifts is the same as $4 million in gifts, right?”

“Here, a decision was made at Fox News at least five times—three on-air television reports plus the two articles on the network’s website cited above—to leave out the seven-figure total of the gifts to Thomas, leave out the broader controversy about Thomas’ gifts from Crow, repeatedly mention the four-figure cost of the concert tickets given to Jackson, and emphasize the celebrity aspect of the story,” Mediaite’s Sarah Rumpf notes.

Supreme Court financial disclosures are intended to prevent conflicts of interest, an issue that has come up frequently with Thomas. Fox’s fixation on Jackson’s Beyoncé tickets moves away from the purpose of financial disclosures toward making a scandal of the fact that Beyoncé did an extremely cool thing, and that tickets to one of her legendary concerts apparently cost just $925 apiece.