The “crime” for which Hunter has just been convicted is a victimless one: he lied on a federal form, the kind of misdemeanour that ought to result in a fine, not a felony record. Gun ownership is a constitutional right in the United States, and there’s no other right, such as free speech or due process, from which an individual is disqualified because they are a drug user. Yet, under the worst-case scenario, he could receive a longer prison sentence than many rapists do. The “correct” legal outcome does not always constitute justice.

There’s also the question of selective prosecution. As Reason’s Jacob Sollum has explained, millions of Americans violate the same law Biden violated, and almost none are ever prosecuted. While most people have the good sense not to incriminate themselves in their own memoirs, it’s hard to deny that the charge would ever have been brought but for Hunter’s surname. Politicians, and by extension their families, aren’t above the law. But they’re also not supposed to be treated worse by our legal system than any other person would be.

Crossing the political aisle, one thinks of the conviction of former president Donald Trump last month on highly dubious “felonies”, extrapolated from a misdemeanour booking offence by an openly partisan Democratic prosecutor. The Hunter Biden conviction does not cancel out Trump’s. Neither bodes well for America.

There’s a reason that Lady Justice is depicted, in statue form, wearing a blindfold. Yet that traditional principle of neutrality under the law is now actively being eroded. That, surely, is far more concerning than the “crimes” of which Biden and Trump have been convicted.