Below is an expanded version of my column in the New York Post on the rather bizarre filing of Hunter Biden this week in the Delaware gun charge case. Hunter draws comparisons with the children of undocumented migrants, dead Tsars, and Japanese internment camp victims. It then gets really weird…

Here is the column:

Hunter Biden is comparable to children in Japanese internment camps, to undocumented immigrants, to the murdered descendants of the Tsar.

At least that’s what he argues in a new court filing in his federal gun case, which presents Hunter as one of the most tragic figures since the fall of Troy. Literally.

Hunter v. Hunter

The brief starts by asking the court to ignore Hunter’s own admissions as to his use of drugs during the period of his gun ownership. As discussed in earlier columns, Hunter faces a serious problem in proving a prior defense by his counsel Abbe Lowell.

Last October, Lowell argued that Hunter had not lied on ATF Form 4473 when he indicated he was not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, narcotics: “At the time that he purchased this gun, I don’t think there’s evidence that that’s when he was suffering.”

The problem is that Hunter discussed his roaring addiction in his book, Beautiful Things: A Memoir, which he has used to excuse years of alleged influence peddling and an array of possible crimes from drug use to sex trafficking to tax offenses. The narrative was pushed by his counsel and picked up by the media which showered him with praise for his courage.

Now, however, counsel wants the Court to forget the admissions such as Hunter admitted that he was “drinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating” as was “smoking crack around the clock.” He describes his addiction as running up to the announcement of his father for presidential election.

The book is not his only problem. Recently, the government has revealed that, when it recovered the gun after its was discarded near a school, the gun pouch was coated in cocaine.

Lowell expressed outrage that the government would cite his client’s own words or cite the fact that his gun pouch looked like it came from the desk of Tony Montana.

Calling the use of his client’s words “despicable,” Lowell suggests that the prosecutors “should visit an Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous meeting.” If that was not bizarre enough, he then describes Hunter’s other towering burden: being the son of one of the most powerful people on Earth.

Hunter Through History

While Hunter repeatedly used that connection for appointments and influence peddling, it is also apparently his curse. Indeed, he suggests that it is a protected “immutable characteristic,” a term used often in cases protecting minorities from racial discrimination. Somehow his prosecution for a gun violation would raise constitutional concerns since “the First Amendment … protects the freedom of association among family members—particularly as the parent-child relationship is an immutable characteristic.”

He shares how he carries the same burden as other accursed children.

In a brief that borders on delusional, Biden’s lawyers say the son of the president who burned through millions from influence peddling is comparable to all those unfortunate and destitute souls.

While the media has endlessly covered how Donald Trump’s arguments are over-the-top in issues such as immunity, there appears to be comparably little interest in the president’s son’s self-aggrandizing demand for dismissal of his criminal charges.

One of the filing’s main arguments is that Hunter Biden is being selectively prosecuted because of his father.

Hunter profited massively from the Biden name, but now, his lawyer Abbe Lowell argues, he’s suffering from the “burden” of parentage.

To back up this argument, Lowell cites Plyler v. Doe, a case involving the providing of free education to the children of illegal immigrants, to say that the Constitution, “prevents the government from inflicting harm on children for the conduct of their parents.”

That’s right, Joe Biden is like an undocumented migrant father who carried his kid over the border for a better life.

One can only imagine the press response to any comparison of the Trump children to migrant children.

Hunter also cites cases involving children born out of wedlock in need of court protection. The argument is particularly ironic since Hunter Biden fought to prevent his daughter Navy Joan from using his last name.

Perhaps the most insulting analogy is to the treatment of children in Japanese internment camps.

Hunter quotes the dissent in the infamous Korematsu v. United States in describing how the government in that case was attempting “to make an otherwise innocent act a crime merely because this prisoner is the son of parents as to whom he had no choice, and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign.”

It is not exactly the image that comes to mind in photos of Hunter in high-priced hotels surrounded by prostitutes and a Smörgåsbord of narcotics.

It then gets even weirder. Hunter tells the court that it is precisely “great privilege” that makes children like him “the target of animus for that very reason . . . History is replete with children of political figures being abducted and assassinated literally (e.g., murder of Romanov children by Russian revolutionaries) or figuratively (e.g., Odysseus murdering the son of Crown Prince Hector when sacking Troy).”

There seems to be no victim in history who was not a precursor to Hunter.

At one point, they suggest that prosecuting Hunter for a gun charge is similar to Joe McCarthy forcing a senator to retire by threatening to reveal that his son was homosexual.

Of course, that analogy omits that Hunter wrote a book about his conduct and that this is a gun charge of the type that his own father pushed for strict enforcement.

Nevertheless, this twisted historical reference allowed counsel to remind the court that Roy Cohn worked for Joe McCarthy and later for Donald Trump. Of course, Robert Kennedy also worked for Joe McCarthy, but the Cohn connection was somehow relevant to Hunter lying on a gun form.

Moreover, it is hard to see the selective prosecution in a case that resulted from a sweetheart deal collapsing in open court after a prosecutor admitted that he had never seen such a generous deal.

As his father once said, “no one f–ks with a Biden.” Whistleblowers have testified that Hunter avoided prosecution for years precisely because he was a Biden. Indeed, the evidence shows Biden reminding everyone of his father in shaking down clients.

In one call he literally describes his father sitting next to him to drive home the threat, declaring “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled…I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight…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.”

Still, the motion is worth reading for its unrivaled chutzpah.

Hunter even cites Article III, Section 3 in claiming that he is being punished for his father’s position. He suggests that the Framers would have been appalled after they sought to prohibit “the common law ‘Corruption of Blood’ penalty that would destroy inheritance rights of children based on their parent’s crimes.”

Of course, the only corruption of the blood evident in the broader scandal is the corruption of influence peddling by the Biden family for years. For the moment, it is the crimes of the son, not the father, that demands answers in Delaware.

Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

Here is the filing: Hunter Biden Reply Brief

N.B.: I removed a line on the Trojan War that erroneously said that the motion referenced the killing of Hector, not his son.