Hunter Biden President Joe Biden
© GettyHunter Biden and his father, President Joe Biden
If equal standards were applied, Joe Biden would be impeached both in the press and in Congress for treasonous collusion with foreign governments.

Democrats pursued the most recent Republican president with impeachment three times over allegations he had partnered with a foreign government to influence U.S. government policies. If equal standards were applied to the Biden family, Joe Biden would be impeached both in the press and in Congress for treasonous collusion with foreign governments.

Democrats claimed Donald Trump committed treason because his son had met with a Democrat-planted Russian lobbyist. In exchange for Russian assistance with election-influencing social media memes, the allegations went, Trump's campaign promised a more Russia-friendly U.S. foreign policy.

Joe Biden's family's use of his high-level U.S. government positions to rake in millions from product-free "business deals" has been documented since before the Obama administration, perhaps most extensively by journalist Peter Schweizer. Last week, Republicans in Congress added more evidence to the accruing pile indicating the Biden family has been selling influence with the American government to foreign bidders for decades.

House Republicans called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate evidence at least nine Biden family members functioned as cutouts for some $10 million in foreign payments to "the big guy." The nest of foreign payments to Biden family members under nearly two dozen shell companies looks like a mafia ledger.

Corporate outlets largely ignored the new evidence that would have led to another impeachment push if Trump were president. The same day Republicans called on the Department of Justice to investigate the Bidens' millions in payments, DOJ arrested their Republican colleague over trumped-up tax charges concerning an allegedly errant couple hundred bucks. Democrats play for keeps, while Republicans for some reason still can't figure out what year it is.

It's been eight years since Democrats openly used their political power to upend every norm in the playbook. They filed impeachment charges on the first day of Trump's presidency. They spent years contesting presidential elections. They are sweeping elections with low-quality absentee ballots. Their cronies are turning domestic disagreement into domestic terrorism, targeting Christian pro-life moms as "extremists" who warrant surveillance and curtailment of online speech.

If Republicans can't figure out what era we're in and how to stop the left's destruction of self-government, our country is toast. Republican voters figured this out good and hard when the Russiagate hoax was unraveled. Why can't their representatives? It's long past time for Republicans to start using Democrats' standards against Democrats until they agree to play fair.

When Democrats were pushing for impeaching Trump, the source of the fabricated dossier โ€” used as a pretext both for the Obama administration spying on the Republican presidential nominee's campaign and later for impeaching Trump โ€” told Congress that Don Trump Jr. merely talking to a Russian lawyer indicated treason.

Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson testified: "[T]he issue with the Trump Tower meeting, as I understand it, is that the Trump people were eager to accept intelligence from a foreign government about their political rivals and that is, you know, I would say, a form of interference. If you're getting help from a foreign government and your help is intelligence, then the foreign government's interfering."

Again, apply this to the Biden family's "business deals," and Joe Biden should have been impeached as a traitor the day he took office. According to Schweizer, many of the Chinese officials who paid Biden family members were connected with high-level Chinese government intelligence.

"[T]he Biden family received some $31 million from Chinese businessmen with very close ties to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence during and after Joe Biden's tenure as vice president," Schweizer documented in his 2022 book, Red-Handed.

Is the same true about Ukrainian payments to Hunter Biden? A 2020 U.S. Senate committee report said those "illustrate serious counterintelligence and extortion concerns relating to Hunter Biden and his family."

Although the suggestion will surely prompt howls from the uniparty, it's an entirely fair question whether and how any of these payments have affected Biden's foreign policy that includes proxy war with a nuclear power. What do Ukrainian officials know about the Biden family's years of financial dealings in their famously corrupt country that the U.S. president might not want American voters to know? Isn't it "election interference" to withhold that information from the public?

The Biden administration has committed an amazing amount of American funds and materiel to Ukraine's war with Russia. That extensive backing may be damaging U.S. readiness for other looming conflicts, such as with China over Taiwan.

Americans need to know what the Biden family did and may still be doing for Ukrainian officials in exchange for Hunter Biden's well-documented Ukranian sinecure. How many of those American war billions for Ukraine that we can't trace are going to oligarchs who made payments to Biden family members?

The Biden administration is also ignoring South American drug cartels' highly profitable war on the U.S. border. That war is boosted by the same Chinese government whose officials also reportedly bought Biden family influence. Funny how foreign payouts seem to manifest everywhere the United States is bleeding out.

It's farcical for Republicans to demand that the Biden-corrupted Department of Justice investigate the president of the party on whose behalf they've been repeatedly ignoring congressional oversight, protecting corrupt politicians, raiding opposition party leaders' homes, leaving opposition court justices' homes surrounded, and endlessly leaking lies to media outlets. It's the height of political wankery to complain for TV about rogue federal agencies Republicans ridiculously keep pretending have any legitimacy and agreeing to fund.

It's long past time for elected Republicans to take their opponents seriously and โ€” metaphorically, feds โ€” return political fire with loaded guns. All I'm asking is for Republicans to apply to the Bidens the same alleged standards Democrats cynically brandished against Trump.

It's not that complicated. Here are a few ideas in the right direction that could be refined by congressional lawyers: Tell Democrats no votes for any federal judicial nominees until the U.S. Department of "Justice" enforces federal law against the agitators menacing the homes of U.S. Supreme Court justices. Defunding every department, grant, and personnel member involved in suppressing Americans' speech as "misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation" is now a non-negotiable precondition for voting on any federal spending bill.

The Biden administration will enforce federal law and deport border-crossers immediately, or Republican governors will send their National Guards to do it. Agencies that don't respond in the legally required timeframe to congressional inquiries and subpoenas will lose a tenth of their funding for every infraction. The FBI will be broken up into its useful departments, such as child trafficking and drug cartel dismantling, and those departments headquartered in red states like Utah, Florida, and Texas.

Red-state police will be instructed to refuse to cooperate with the FBI on any cases that aren't of an obvious criminal nature, such as child sex crimes and kidnapping. Republicans will vote nothing else for the war in Ukraine until the Biden family's business dealings there are fully investigated and published.

Refuse to work with these people or their corrupted institutions in any way until they start manifestly obeying the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws. No one is above the law, right? Including the Bidens.
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her just-published ebook is 101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation. Her bestselling ebook is Classic Books for Young Children. Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. Her many books include The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids, from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.