The Hunter Biden verdict shows once again that our criminal justice system works

Less than two weeks after Donald Trump became the first ex-president convicted of crimes, Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, was convicted Tuesday in a very different type of case. The two trials, their significance and their symbolism will inevitably be debated in an electoral context as successive presidents face off for a rematch in November. As a result, much of the public will understandably view this as a horrible political moment for the republic.

But the good news that emerges from these unrelated cases is the same: the justice system worked as it should. Importantly, both verdicts were the result of fair and carefully considered jury trials – which ultimately defied all the cries from the sidelines about the partisan “militarization” of prosecutions and courts.

Both the senior Trump and the junior Biden have the right to appeal and should vigorously pursue this option. Neither outcome is assured until higher courts weigh in and study what led to both verdicts as the process unfolds.

Both defendants were given the opportunity to make their case and present their evidence transparently in open court. For Biden, that meant trying to challenge the allegation that he lied on a mandatory gun purchase form by saying he was not illegally using drugs or addicted to them. Essentially, Biden’s lawyers argued that he did not consider himself an “addict” when he purchased the gun, later recovered from a trash can. They said he was trying to clean himself up at the time. That didn’t convince the Delaware jury, which deliberated for a total of three hours over two days.

In New York, Trump’s jurors rejected his team’s efforts to convince them that prosecution witnesses lied in their testimony about “hush money” paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels. In this case, jury deliberations lasted a total of nine hours.

The fact that these politically charged cases were, by all accounts, honestly and properly handled is reassuring – especially for the state of our courts in general, but also for the credibility of other prosecutions against the same famous defendants . Hunter Biden faces a September trial in California on nine federal charges of failure to pay $1.4 million in taxes, brought by the same special counsel, David Weiss. U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi previously rejected Hunter Biden’s proposals to drop the charges.

For Trump, the two upcoming trials involve attempts in Washington and Georgia to retroactively rig his 2020 election defeat. In Florida, he is accused of hoarding classified documents and hiding sensitive files from the federal government .

Today, there is new reason to hope that all other future prosecutions will proceed fairly and without favor. Let the nonpartisan wheels of justice move forward.