A s you might have heard, Hunter Biden was convicted on gun charges, and it proves how fair and neutral the Biden Justice Department is.

Andrew Weissman of Mueller-investigation fame went so far as to say that the conviction shows that Joe Biden is the “living embodiment of justice.” (Fact check: living — mostly true; embodiment of justice — false).

There was a raft of pieces saying that the GOP “conspiracy theory” that the Justice Department is biased against Trump and for Biden was demolished — DESTROYED, as the internet used to say — by the verdict.

All of the above pieces failed to mention, though, the sweetheart plea agreement that was designed to bury the gun and tax charges.

The trial that supposedly demonstrates how the Justice Department handled the Hunter matter with the highest integrity wasn’t DOJ’s first, second, or third option. It occurred only after the plea agreement collapsed upon its first contact with a skeptical judge, at which point it would have been too embarrassing for DOJ to continue to afford Hunter every consideration.

Saying the system worked without taking into account the plea agreement is a little like saying justice was done in the O. J. Simpson case because the disgraced football star went to jail — without mentioning what transpired in his murder trial.

A correct verdict in an open-and-shut case doesn’t justify everything that came before, and that was intended to keep getting to this place, as Andy McCarthy has compellingly explained.

Even the impossible-to-defend plea agreement wasn’t DOJ’s initial preference; it, too, was forced on David Weiss — the U.S. attorney whom the Biden DOJ falsely deemed a special prosecutor — by the bombshell testimony of IRS whistleblowers.

The entire time that Weiss was inactive — a period of years — the clock on the statute of limitations kept ticking closer to covering all of Hunter’s offenses.

So, the new definition of the system working is to take the privileged son of a prominent politician — nay, the president of the United States — and avoid charging him for as long as possible; when that becomes unsustainable, to give him a hugely favorable plea agreement; and when that, in turn, becomes unsustainable, to finally indict and try him and accept hosannahs for letting the chips fall where they may.

To paraphrase Churchill, the DOJ did the right thing after exhausting all other options.

This was Eliot Ness if the Untouchables were indeed touchable, and attempted to give Al Capone every break until they felt they couldn’t anymore.

Greg Sargent of the New Republic wrote of the Hunter Biden verdict, “Nothing is more devastating to the MAGA worldview than the idea that the justice system is actually functioning fairly.”

Whether it’s as devastating as he posits or not, the proposition wasn’t tested by the DOJ’s indefensible handling of this case.