So with Hunter’s recent tax indictment, his subpoena to appear before the House, his painful presser while avoiding said subpoena, and his likely criminal referral for Contempt of Congress… it’s been a busy few days for the First Junkie. But there are a few important points worth adding to all the reporting he’s inspired thus far.

• Hunter’s refusal to respond to the subpoena creates something of a constitutional crisis — and one that has become increasingly common in recent years. In short: Who enforces a Congressional subpoena? By statute, it goes to DOJ — but what happens when DOJ itself won’t enforce (which could happen here)? Some speculate that Congress would turn to the House Sergeant-at-Arms.

  Technically, the House Sergeant-at-Arms is a member of the Capitol Police — and therefore, a federal law enforcement officer. But the mechanism hasn’t been used in modern times (Congress codified all this in 1857).

  So: Will we see Sergeant William McFarland putting Hunter Biden in cuffs at some point?

  

  (House Sergeant-at-Arms William McFarland)

  Stranger things have happened. I just can’t think of any.

  We don’t expect this to occur, despite how interesting it would be. Chances are, Hunter will ultimately appear, in some form — and then take the Fifth.

• As we’ve written in this space before, the President will ultimately pardon Hunter when he has to — Hunter won’t go to jail, there’s too much risk he’ll flip. And at-present, the charges Hunter faces are of the sort that won’t cause the outcry that certain other charges might. The gun charge was really a “lying-on-a-federal-form” charge. And when it comes to taxes… well, no one likes paying them. So if Hunter pays another tax fine, much of the electorate will hastily move past this.

  The point: Weiss is still, for all the sturm and drang, going easy on Hunter. Not until we see evidence of a true FARA investigation (that is, unregistered foreign agent) or of potential bribery charges (like the FCPA) will this writer believe the prosecution “continues to investigate.”

  And the eternally smug Jake Tapper — who never made a case in his life — can laugh about that all he wants. But were Hunter’s last name “Tapper,” he’d be doing federal time already. Likely sitting next to Patrick Ho.

• Are we not supposed to notice a basic fact: Hunter, who is now facing a gun charge as well as three counts related to major tax evasion, was just a few months ago offered a sweetheart no-jail deal covering all of this?

  Weiss’s team had all the same information then — recall that this case has been going on since 2018.

  Now that we see the contours of the tax case (thanks to the lurid indictment), and the fact that Hunter is de facto guilty of the gun charge: What possible rationale could Weiss have for having offered that deal?

• This is Stephen Hovanic — a reportedly “high-ranking” Pentagon official, arrested on a “pandering” charge (that is, soliciting a prostitute). This was widely reported as a “human trafficking” case.

  

  Fair enough. But if that’s the case: Where is the “human trafficking” investigation of Hunter? Are all the progressives who’ve been holding to the “nothing to see here” line (that would be you, Dan Goldman) okay with Hunter’s spending nearly $900k on prostitutes?

  And here’s a guy who could order up an eight-ball of coke in the middle of the night in any major city he flopped in. He reportedly spent well-over $1,000-per-day on drugs, for years (and that’s what we know about). Well over a million bucks on various illegal drugs.

  Have those narco leads been cut to DEA? LAPD? NYPD narcotics?