Senate Republicans uniformly said Tuesday that the guilty verdict in the Hunter Biden gun case shows the justice system worked and they brushed away questions that the conviction shows that GOP claims of selective prosecution are politically motivated.
Here’s what some senators told CNN:
Sen. John Thune: “Hunter Biden’s not running for any political office. Donald Trump’s running for president. There are all kinds of different dynamics in two totally different cases,” he said. “The clear thing in the (Trump) New York case, I mean, there’s no argument. … This is politically motivated. The prosecutor ran, he got up there, got the job on the predicate of trying to prosecute the former president.”
Sen. Rick Scott: “First, in this case, this is existing law that people have been prosecuted before and they’ve been connected before, and they’ve been sentenced before,” he said. “In the case of (Donald) Trump, they’ve made up something brand new that nobody’s been prosecuted before. And it was complete political persecution.”
“No one’s ever been persecuted the way Trump was persecuted in New York. No one. No one in this country,” he said.
Sen. Josh Hawley: “Let’s remember that DOJ initially wanted to do a plea bargain (with Hunter Biden), had a plea bargain with him, as sort of a sweetheart deal and did not want to prosecute this case. I mean, so I think it exposes the fact that DOJ was ready to sweep this under the rug,” the Missouri lawmaker said. “And as it turns out, it was a slam dunk case, which, by the way, is nothing to celebrate. I mean, it’s like it’s not, it’s not a good thing that he’s guilty.”
With contributions from CNN’s Sam Fossum, Manu Raju and Kristin Wilson