Predictions 2023: Trump gets indicted, Hunter Biden doesn’t

I think in 2023 Republicans will fail to impeach a single Biden administration official. Hunter Biden will at most get a slap on the wrist from the Justice Department, and candidate Donald Trump will be indicted.

In October, presumed Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy telegraphed this, saying that impeachment was an unpopular political remedy, and that he wasn’t sure anyone in the administration had engaged in impeachable conduct.

So if the presumed leader of House Republicans was saying impeachment as a general matter wasn’t on the table on the merits or the politics, it seems like an open and shut case.

McCarthy said that however before the midterm elections – when it was assumed there would be a larger House majority. 

With a smaller one, conservatives have more power and are threatening his bid for speaker itself. The pressure to bring to political justice – to punish – a DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for effectively enabling an invasion of our borders, or an Attorney General Merrick Garland for systematically weaponizing our Justice Department against political opponents – therefore will be great.

I still think the Republican establishment will resist. Conservatives will have to make the case to the public that impeachment is critical – to punish the Biden administration for its assault on law and order, and to deter future malfeasance. Democrats wield impeachment for infinitely less. 

Republicans, unlike the Dems who set about to topple Trump from before he was ever inaugurated, have a massive body of evidence from which to work. 

But I don’t think the establishment shares the courage of conservative convictions on these matters. Perhaps Americans won’t have the stomach for it no matter how strong the conservative case. 

It wouldn’t shock me to see the establishment let conservatives push impeachments while doing nothing to support them so they are hoisted on their own petard, set up for failure.

As for the other parts of my prediction, that Merrick Garland’s Justice Department refused even to set up a special counsel to handle the Hunter Biden investigation – to create the appearance of propriety – on top of leaks showing Hunter might at worst face a slap on the wrist for tax issues or the like – an absolute joke given the apparent corruption, and other likely criminality shown in his influence-peddling and personal misconduct, all with a nexus to the president – I believe signals what’s coming as Republicans make a case the Justice Department won’t. 

I think Hunter Biden is an insurance policy for the Deep State and Dems that should Joe go off the rails, it could be dropped on him as a bombshell to get him to step aside. So all that said, at worst Hunter gets a slap on the wrist, and perhaps just before the final bomb drops, to create the false appearance that America still has some semblance of an equal justice system.

The final bomb dropping is Trump’s indictment. After the Mar-a-Lago raid, I put that at 100%, though as I said then, the timing is unclear. The appointment of a special counsel to keep pursuing him indicates an intensification of that effort 

The left demands they lock him up.

Merrick Garland has shown himself to be nothing if not responsive to the left’s demands while claiming again and again he follows the facts and the law and is totally apolitical and independent. Remember, when there were demands for charges of insurrection with respect to January 6, he ultimately charged people a year after the Capitol breach for “seditious conspiracy.”

There’s an advantage to Democrats for hanging indictment over Trump and the GOP’s head going into 2024 because it creates uncertainty. But I think it’s reasonable to assume DOJ might indict prior to the 2024 primary season so that again it can claim some semblance of being non-political – it’s only interfering in the race before the first primary votes are cast, you see. And if Hunter is indicted, all the better for that disingenuous case.

Trump’s indictment will raise calls for him to drop out, which some think the Dems don’t want. I’m not sure. Trump and his base will likely dig in its heels to an even greater extent post-indictment. The Republican Party will be heavily divided – politicians and power brokers all-in on purging Trump, rank-and-file Republicans divided.

I think the demand may prove too great for DOJ to do the thing that might ultimately create even more chaos – to the Democrats’ benefit – in leaving the prosecution lingering over the 2024 election season.

If a fraction of what I’ve described happens, it will reinforce the double standard in justice that we have seen, show the GOP establishment doesn’t know what time it is and raises no credible deterrent to Democrats’ efforts to destroy their political opponents, and all of it will create even more chaos and acrimony going into 2024.

So with that, happy new year, and I hope I’m wrong!