By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
It can be problematic to compare the sentence one criminal defendant receives to another.
A judge has a wide variety of mitigating and aggravating factors to consider before passing sentence, such as the defendant’s criminal history, whether they’ve shown contrition and the facts of the crime itself. A prison term that may appear unfair to some may actually be well within the guidelines.
That said, those looking for a near perfect comparison to Hunter Biden’s criminal gun charges need look no further than The United States of America v. Miracle Star Vaughn. The two cases are eerily similar, but their outcomes will likely be lightyears apart, because Hunter Biden only gets the top tier of the DOJ’s two tiers of justice.
Last year, Vaughn pleaded guilty to making false statements during the purchase of firearms. Like Hunter Biden, she concealed her drug addiction on an ATF Form 4473, when asked “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
“During the firearms purchases, Vaughn provided false information regarding her address and her drug use,” a Justice Department press release stated at the time.
The ATF alleged that Vaughn, then 27 and living in North Liberty, Iowa, purchased seven handguns over an 18-month period, and that two of the weapons ended up in the hands of convicted felons. Vaughn, like Hunter Biden, had no criminal history at the time of her firearm purchases.
Vaughn pleaded guilty to making false statements on the 4473. She showed regret and admitted her guilt during the elocution, and her plea saved the justice system a great deal of time and effort.
On April 26, 2023, a federal judge in Davenport, Iowa sentenced Vaughn to 366 days – 12 months and a wakeup – in a federal prison. Her prison term ended two months ago, and Vaughn must now complete three years of supervised release.
After a federal judge in Wilmington, Delaware famously scuttled Hunter Biden’s sweeping plea agreement, which would have wiped clean an entire slate of alleged crimes and even immunized him from future badness, the First Son went to trial charged with three felonies: two counts of making false statements during a firearm purchase, and one count of possessing a firearm while addicted to drugs. The added security alone placed a huge burden on the Court. Hunter Biden never testified, and it took the jury less than three hours to find him guilty on all counts.
Pundits, politicians and a bevy of news actors all say he will never serve a single day behind the wire.
Takeaways
To be clear, Vaughn pleaded guilty and caught a year and a day. Hunter Biden wasted the court’s time and energy by contesting what everyone knew was an open-and-shut case – his own signature was on the 4473, after all – but he will never experience toilet wine. If his last name wasn’t Biden, Hunter would even have qualified for what used to be called “court tax” – an extra helping of prison time dished out to those who believe their time is more important than the court’s.
According to statute, Hunter faces up to 25 years behind bars, but neither the DOJ nor daddy will let this happen. For the DOJ, the gun charges were just bread and circuses for the masses – something to distract the public from Hunter’s real crimes, which could implicate Joe and Uncle Jimmy. This case was never supposed to end with a prison sentence, anyway. It was resurrected just months before the statute of limitations expired to provide top cover for Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose federal agents have literally rained death and destruction on law-abiding gun owners for far less.
Joe has claimed he will never pardon Hunter, but that is not the question the corporate media should be shouting at him as he lumbers up the kiddie stairs of Air Force One. He needs to be asked point blank whether he will commute Hunter’s sentence, but regardless of his answer, we all know he will. A Biden is not required to obey the law.
Joe Biden has waged a multi-front war on gun owners since the day he took office. He weaponized the ATF into a heavily armed paramilitary force and sicced them on our firearms, accessories and law-abiding gun dealers. Biden has gaslit the public about mass shootings, cannons and F-15s, and he created a taxpayer-funded office inside the White House tasked with infringing upon our Second Amendment rights. He has done all of this while citing a zero-tolerance policy, which his lackeys in the ATF follow blindly. So far, only one person has been excluded from Joe’s zero-tolerance policy, and that would be Neilia Biden’s second son – a 54-year-old self-admitted cocaine addict named Robert Hunter Biden.
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