Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we dissect the DOJ and media treatment of the Hunter Biden investigation, call foul on the ongoing media smear campaign against the conservative justices, and cover more media misses.

'Everything about This Case is Wrong': Hunter Biden's 'Sweetheart' Plea Deal

Last week, a House committee released testimony from two IRS whistleblowers who claim the DOJ, FBI and IRS interfered with the Hunter Biden tax probe. Now, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the House will open impeachment inquiries into Attorney General Merrick Garland if those allegations turn out to be true.

"The allegations point to a steady campaign of: unequal treatment of enforcing tax law; Department of Justice interference in the form of delays, divulgences, and denials, into the investigation of tax crimes that may have been committed by the President's son; and finally, retaliation against IRS employees who blew the whistle on the misconduct," the committee said Thursday.

The whistleblower testimony underscores the unusual nature of the investigation and the charges against the president's son.

The DOJ announced last week that Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors related to his failure to pay his taxes in 2017 and 2018. He will also enter a diversion agreement that will allow him to avoid jail time for possessing a handgun while intoxicated in 2018.

The gun charge centered on the younger Biden's acknowledgment in his recent autobiography that he was using crack nearly every 15 minutes around the time he purchased a handgun in 2018, despite claiming on a federal background check that he was not using illicit drugs.

The two IRS agents told the committee they pushed for felony charges against Hunter Biden in the tax probe and that Delaware U.S. attorney David Weiss wanted to bring charges against Hunter in the District of Columbia and Southern California last year but was denied by DOJ officials both times.

Brett Tolman, executive director of Right on Crime and former U.S. attorney for the District of Utah, told National Review that the misdemeanor charges against Hunter Biden are "not consistent with any historical practice."

The DOJ, he explained, is run by attorney-general memos. The Holder memo says federal prosecutors "should ordinarily" charge the most serious readily provable offense though decisions "must always be made in the context of 'an individualized assessment of the extent to which particular charges fit the specific circumstances of the case, are consistent with the purpose of the Federal criminal code and maximize the impact of Federal resources on crime.'" And, "in all cases, the charges should fairly represent the defendant's criminal conduct, and due consideration should be given to the defendant's substantial assistance in an investigation or prosecution."

The culture of the DOJ is about "charging as many felonies as you can and getting as long a sentence as you can," Tolman said. "And everybody else that’s been crushed by the Department of Justice or the criminal-justice system in this country has experienced that."

"When I was U.S. attorney, I think I authorized maybe one or two diversions and they're oftentimes cases where you don't have victims. They're also not part of any sort of top priority [at] DOJ," he said.

But by contrast, gun possession cases have been a "top priority of DOJ for a very long time" under Project Safe Neighborhoods.

During his time as assistant U.S. attorney, the average sentence for gun possession cases was five years. He recalled sending one person to prison for 3.5 years just for possessing ammo without a gun.

"There's just hundreds of thousands of these that are people serving long, lengthy prison sentences for a simple possession case," he said.

He noted that the allegations stemming from Hunter Biden's laptop should have made the case "one of the biggest, highest priority cases" the DOJ would ever see.

"But everything about this case is wrong. Everything about it in terms of the scope of the investigation, the length of time it took to investigate this. If you’re going to take that length of time, there is no way the only charges that you’re coming up with are two tax misdemeanors, a felony possession of firearm diversion and no jail time," he said.

Many in conservative media have drawn comparisons between the DOJ's treatment of Hunter Biden and its treatment of rapper Kodak Black.

Black was sentenced to more than three years in prison in 2021 after pleading guilty to illegally owning a gun while a drug user after denying drug use when applying for a gun permit. Black's sentence was later commuted by then-president Donald Trump in 2021.

Bradford Cohen, an attorney for Black, appeared on Fox News last week and said his client received “46 months for the exact same thing that Hunter Biden is not even pleading to."

“He’s actually getting a diversion program, which you almost never see diversion programs in federal court. I mean, it is less than 1 percent of people that plea that actually get a diversion program," he said.

Deja Taylor, the mother of the six-year-old boy who allegedly shot his teacher in the face in Newport News, Va., has been charged with the same crime as the younger Biden. State prosecutors charged Taylor with neglect and failing to properly secure a handgun and then the DOJ stepped in and charged Taylor with making a false statement about her marijuana usage on a federal form to buy a firearm.

Taylor’s attorney, James Ellenson, said his client, who pled guilty, faces up to two years in prison. Ellenson suggested Biden is getting a pass, saying, "My client is not the president's son," but noted that he believes the U.S. attorney "went after Deja in this case because of what happened with the gun and the gun was used in the unfortunate shooting of the teacher."

Former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe suggested the judge in the Biden case shouldn't accept the plea.

"As you know, judges are required to look at all of the defendant’s conduct. And in this case, you start with some of that conduct being on videotape and showing felony possession of a firearm while using a controlled substance, that’s a felony that carries a maximum penalty of ten years,” Ratcliffe said on Fox News.

Despite the evidence of the younger Biden's wrongdoing and his "sweetheart deal," the media has adopted the narrative that Hunter Biden was a troubled addict and President Biden is a hero for loving his son.

MSNBC analyst Claire McCaskill said on the network that conservative should "back off" of the Biden family.

The former Democratic senator questioned why Republicans have been critical of the younger Biden's plea deal.

“I don't know what America they live in and I don't know how they sleep at night. Alcoholism and addiction are probably the most pervasive diseases in America. I don't know of one family that hasn't been touched by the pain of these diseases. And it's particularly painful when you have someone you love unconditionally that is suffering from these diseases,” she said, adding that the president has "shown a wonderful role model to the country about unconditional love."

“What do these jerks in the House want Joe Biden to do? For now, refuse to speak to him, so he doesn't love him publicly? Do they not understand this disease and how it works?” she asked.

“And by the way, everybody needs to back off Joe Biden about this. He loves his son. Back off! It is okay for him to love his son and there's nothing wrong with it,” McCaskill said. “They have no evidence of any kind of wrongdoing by Joe Biden. And it infuriates me that they're using this heartbreak against Joe Biden in this way. It's just not right.”

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof also suggested the president offers "a fine model of the love and support that people with addictions need."

Kristof wrote in an essay about "the real lesson from the Hunter Biden saga" that the president "acted honorably" but acknowledged that Biden was "flatly wrong" to claim earlier this year that his son has "done nothing wrong."

The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg offered a similarly defensive take, urging people to "shut up" about Hunter Biden's recovered laptop.

“The other thing for me is, listen, if you get investigated, if they're doing an investigation, I'm all for it. Investigate everything, everybody, everything. But if you took five years and this is what you came up with, I'm going to assume you didn't find very much more about, that was chargeable,” she said, adding, “That damn laptop.”

“I’m sick of hearing about that laptop. This laptop, I hope it just crumbles to death, I hate it so much,” she added, though she went on to suggest Republicans will not stop going after President Biden when so far there's been "nothing there."

Reporters who have dared to question the White House about anything Hunter-related have been roundly dismissed by Biden officials in a series of testy exchanges.

CNN correspondent Jeremy Diamond asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the president's decision to invite Hunter Biden to a state dinner with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. Jean-Pierre responded: "”I’m just not going to get into family discussion, personal family discussion. As you know, Hunter’s his son. I’m just not going to get into that.”

“If Hunter Biden wasn’t the president’s son, would he have invited someone who had just reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors?” Diamond asked.

“Well, a couple of things,” Jean-Pierre replied. “Again, that’s his son. He’s a family member. It is not uncommon for family members to attend events at the White House. You could look at past presidents. I’m sure you have. So that is not uncommon. As it relates to anything related to Hunter, I’m just not going to respond to it from here.”

Other reporters questioned the White House about a WhatsApp message that Hunter Biden purportedly sent in July 2017 that appears to connect President Biden with his son's overseas business dealings. According to one of the IRS whistleblowers, Hunter Biden sent a message to his Chinese associate Henry Zhao, a CCP official, in which the younger Biden wrote that he was "sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled."

"Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight," Hunter Biden allegedly wrote in a text to Zhao, whose Harvest Fund Management invested in Hunter Biden's BHR Partners. "And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father."

New York Post correspondent Steven Nelson asked Jean-Pierre if the president was "involved in that shakedown attempt."

“Steven, Steven, I just answered the question,” she said. “It’s not up to you how I answer the question. I just answered the question by telling you my colleagues at the White House Counsel have dealt with this, and I would refer you to them.”

John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, also refused to answer a reporter's questions about the message on Friday.

Newsmax's James Rosen asked Kirby if the message undermines Biden's claims that he wasn't involved in his son's business dealings, to which Kirby replied: "No, and I'm not going to comment further on this."

The reporter tried to follow up, but Kirby interrupted to shut down the conversation.

"James, James, let me save you some breath if you're going to ask about this. I am not going to address this issue from this podium," Kirby said. "I'm just not going to do it. All right? I'm not going to do it."

Rosen tried to say he had more questions to ask. Kirby replied, "I know you do, more than I'd like you to have."

Kirby then abandoned the podium.

The whistleblower allegations were given little-to-no airtime on the major networks. ABC's World News Tonight and CBS Evening News did not mention the allegations at all, according to Newsbusters. Both instead focused a significant amount of airtime on the then-missing Titanic submersible.

NBC Nightly News featured a minute-and-a-half long report on the allegations.

Headline Fail of the Week

The news cycle in which media outlets attempt to out new allegations of ethical impropriety among the conservative Supreme Court justices has become seemingly never-ending. Common Dreams reported: "'Shady and Corrupt': Add Barrett Real Estate Deal to List of Supreme Court Ethics Scandals." While CNN was out this week with the headline: "Alito in the hot seat over trips to Alaska and Rome he accepted from groups and individuals who lobby the Supreme Court."

The CNN story centers on Justice Alito's 2008 trip to Alaska with Paul Singer, as reported by ProPublica — the lead purveyor of these ginned-up Court controversies — and Alito's visit to Rome last year to deliver a keynote address at a gala. The trip to Rome was paid for by Notre Dame's Religious Liberty Initiative. CNN notes the group's legal clinic has filed a "series of 'friend-of-the-court' briefs in religious liberty cases before the Supreme Court since its founding in 2020."

"My understanding is that Notre Dame Law School's Religious Liberty Initiative has a number of components, only one of which is a clinic that, like the legal clinics at many other law schools, files amicus briefs in the Supreme Court," Alito said. "I was not invited to speak in Rome by the clinic."

The stories also attempt to stir up a controversy involving Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the Notre Dame initiative, noting that she sold her private residence to a recently hired professor who was taking on a leadership role at the initiative.

Yet readers who make it 19 paragraphs into the CNN report will find that "Neither Barrett's real estate deal nor Alito's appearance in Italy appear to violate any of the court's ethics rules, according to several experts interviewed by CNN."

Media Misses

• The New York Times revised a crass obituary headline for one of the men who died aboard the Titanic submersible last week. The initial headline read, "Hamish Harding, an Explorer Who Knew No Bounds Until He Found One, Dies at 58." It was later amended to read, "Hamish Harding, an Explorer Who Knew No Bounds, Dies at 58."

• The New Republic used the tragedy of the missing submersible as a strange opportunity to look into the OceanGate CEO's past political contributions. The outlet initially tweeted that the "OceanGate CEO Missing in Titanic Sub Had History of Donating to GOP Candidates." A second tweet kept that same headline but altered the post caption to read, "OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was not a Republican mega donor, but his donations over the years leaned heavily toward Republican candidates, @DanielStrauss4 writes."

• Snopes and Occupy Democrats attempted to connect Elon Musk to the submersible's misfortunes. Snopes chose to fact-check the claim that "OceanGate, the company behind the submersible that went missing in June 2023 on a Titanic wreckage exploration, relied on Elon Musk's Starlink satellites to provide communications during the expedition." While the "fact-checker" initially found the claim to be true, it later downgraded the statement to "unproven" before it finally amended its rating to "false." "Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which Elon Musk runs, and OceanGate indeed said it was relying on the company for the expedition, which included the submersible and a mothership — that is, a vessel that stays above water to navigate and communicate with land during the expedition. However, scientists have pointed out the submersible would have had an acoustic link with the surface vessel and could not have relied on satellite internet to communicate with the surface. How, or under what circumstances, the mothership used Starlink technology during the exhibition remained unknown," the final fact-check reads. Nonetheless, Occupy Democrats ran with the claim that Musk has been "thrust into another nightmare PR disaster" over the situation and urged Twitter users to retweet its post to "demand an investigation" and to consider investing in "a 'woke' new Twitter competitor."