Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York said Republicans will view the federal charges against Hunter Biden as a "slap on the wrist," fueling the cry that there is a "two-tiered" system of justice.
The younger Biden struck a plea deal with the Justice Department on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun while he was a drug user, according to DOJ court filings released Tuesday.
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York said Republicans have zeroed in on the time that it took the DOJ to complete their investigation of Biden.
"The question Republicans asked about the Justice Department investigation was, 'Wait a minute, five years for this? This has taken five years of investigation and we've ended up with a couple of misdemeanor counts about filing your tax returns late — which millions of Americans do?' Without any sort of foreign, strange dealings?" York said.
"So I think Republicans are going to say, 'What in the world took five years to investigate here?'" York added.
York compared Biden's plea deal and investigation to that of former President Donald Trump, who pleaded not guilty to 37 charges related to the retention of classified documents and has a court date scheduled for Aug. 14, and Hillary Clinton's email correspondence scandal.
"I think [Republicans are] going to throw the Hunter Biden case into the mix, too, saying, 'Well, the government took forever, the Justice Department took forever to resolve the Hunter Biden case and now they want to hang Trump tomorrow!' So I do think you are going to hear a lot of criticism from Republicans about this deal," York said.
York added that this may not be the end of the legal road for Biden, as the GOP is likely to raise additional questions relating to their congressional investigations into an alleged "criminal bribery scheme" between the Biden family and foreign actors and companies.
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He said the DOJ investigation was the "big one" to Biden and his legal team. The congressional investigations within the House, York said, is a "political fight."
"I think what you're going to see with Comer and others is this continued focus on documentary evidence on suspicious activity reports, on bank records, on all sorts of things that they believe will ultimately prove there was a Biden family enterprise of foreign money and they believe that President Joe Biden knew about it and benefited from it," York said.