'Don't fall for it': Hunter Biden indictment raises serious concerns — especially about what is missing so far

 Hunter Biden was indicted on three felony gun charges on Thursday. The development, a far cry from the prior sweetheart plea deal, drew scrutiny and raised more questions than answers.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, for instance, called the indictment a "fig leaf" and urged Americans not to "fall for it."

"Don't fall for it," Ramaswamy said. "This is a fig leaf designed to deflect attention away from the real problem: the Biden family is selling out U.S. foreign policy for their own family’s private financial gain. That's really what’s wrong, and we must hold politicians in both major political parties when they use our foreign policy to enrich their family members."

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy raised similar concerns.

Speaking on Fox News, McCarthy called the gun charges the only criminal charges "that this prosecutor could've brought against Hunter in which Hunter's father is not implicated."

"Everything else, the most important conduct in the case, all involves the sale of Joe Biden's political influence," he explained. "That is still out there, hasn't been brought, and ... it's been slow-walked so that even if he started to bring tax cases now, [Weiss] made sure that the three years in which Joe Biden was vice president in the Obama administration, those years are no longer open to be prosecuted. Charges arising out of that have now been time-barred."

Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley agreed that what special counsel David Weiss is not pursuing — at least from the public's perspective — is more important than what he has charged thus far.

"It's conspicuous ... as to what was not charged. They were giving out [Foreign Agents Registration Act] charges against Trump officials with great speed and alacrity. You know, they hit Paul Manafort with charges based on the same facts," Turley said on Fox News.

He explained:

What the media is ignoring is these uncharged crimes do have one common possible motive: When you don’t declare yourself a foreign agent, when you don’t declare income, when you create these questionable international transfers, all of them can effectively succeed in hiding that trail.

If you declare income, you got to say where the income came from. If you declare yourself a foreign agent, you have to explain what you’re doing for foreign governments. And if you create this labyrinth of accounts through different shell companies and through different banks, it makes it harder for people to see those transfers. All of that fits a unified theory of an influence peddling scheme that did involve potential criminal acts so I think it’s rather obvious that the one outlier, the gun charge, is the only thing that has been charged.

Attorney Mike Davis, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, also urged Americans, "Don’t be fooled."

"Weiss, handpicked by both Democrat home-state senators in Delaware, let the statute of limitations expire on serious tax charges, buried evidence deemed credible by the Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney of the Bidens' alleged foreign bribery schemes, and attempted to give Hunter a sweetheart deal with secret, broad immunity that protected President Biden," Davis said.

"[W]here are Hunter's charges related to foreign corruption, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, tax evasion, wire fraud, and other criminal charges that could implicate President Biden?" Davis asked.

The indictment came two days after House Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over allegations of corruption. Republicans allege that Biden, as vice president, was engaged in a "criminal bribery scheme" that involved "an exchange of money for policy decisions."

Biden denies any wrongdoing, and the White House is working with the media to ramp up scrutiny of the allegations themselves — not scrutiny of those with power, the Bidens.