Donald Trump, Hunter Biden and the Rule of Law

At the center of the legal problems engulfing Donald Trump and Hunter Biden is the refrain that no one is above the law. But in our polarized times, that truism is dismissed as a political fig leaf. The left says the right thinks Mr. Trump is above the law. The right regards the Hunter plea deal as a mockery of the law.

Despite the standoff, there is a presumption that the rule of law still matters. And that this idea is a bedrock of civilized order shared beyond the United States. But the global rule of law as it has existed since World War II may be under challenge.

One of the biggest stories this year was the so-called mutiny by the Wagner paramilitary group fighting for Russia in Ukraine. The Wagner mercenaries adhere to no standards of modern warfare. They are stone-cold killers. Yet it’s generally believed that no framework exists to prosecute stateless mercenaries for the atrocities they commit.

Though a significant event in the Ukraine war, the mutiny left the impression that Wagner is a collection of guns for hire. It is more than that.

This newspaper recently published a detailed examination of the empire that Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has assembled. The Wagner Group is in fact a military, financial and business organization that operates worldwide outside the established rule of law. It is off the grid.

According to the Journal’s reporting, Mr. Prigozhin operates some 70 linked companies that conduct nominally legitimate business in real estate, government contracting, oil, mining and natural-resource development. Mr. Prigozhin’s shell companies share financing for these commercial operations.

An umbrella group called M-Finance mines gold, diamonds and timber in the Central African Republic. Wagner runs a joint venture with a government-owned mining company in Madagascar, an operation, the Journal reported, “with a projected potential profit of billions of dollars in the next decade.” They have mining operations in Sudan and Mali. A company called Evro Polic protects and derives revenue from Bashar al-Assad’s oil and gas fields in Syria.

At the center of it all is Mr. Prigozhin, a thug and one of the most fascinating figures of our time. He has taken the Putin era’s pseudo-democracy based on oligarchic corruption to its logical endpoint, creating a multinational pseudo-corporation in business with willing sovereign governments.

Mr. Prigozhin, a limitless cynic, is sending a message: Grow up. The world is returning to survival of the fittest, and all your rules be damned. I am simply a rational entrepreneur, creating a parallel system without the burden of accountability.

From his perspective, the future lies with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Syria’s Mr. Assad, Iran’s mullahs and myriad opportunists from Mexico to Saudi Arabia.

There is a lot of talk in the U.S. of the public losing faith in governing institutions. I think Mr. Prigozhin’s bet—and Messrs. Putin’s and Xi’s—is that the American public will increasingly see their system as Mr. Prigozhin sees his own: rigged and corrupt.

There is also a lot of talk—accurate talk—that to counter its adversaries, the U.S. will need military and economic might. But the West’s democracies may falter unless beneath all that state power sits a rule of law that their publics see as credible.

So let us return to the U.S., where two important rule-of-law events are occurring—the indictments of Mr. Trump obtained by special counsel Jack Smith and the revived prosecution of Hunter Biden.

Mr. Trump’s original appeal was his willingness to run roughshod over the opposition. But we see now that the Trump political model includes running roughshod over whoever or whatever stands in his way—asking his vice president to set aside the Constitution for the counting of electors or telling the Georgia secretary of state to find more votes. If, as some analysts argue, these and the rest of Mr. Trump’s postelection statements and actions are protected speech, he should be exonerated through the judicial appeals process. Millions of voters can issue their own judgment.

However overwhelming the Trump Jan. 6 indictment, the recent Hunter developments are as important for the integrity of the law. You can call Hunter, Burisma, China and the “big guy” pedestrian influence-peddling, but in the context of a former president’s legal problems, the Hunter plea bargain has become more than that. It is a public test of legal equity for the government that put these Trump indictments in motion.

Out of the halls of the Internal Revenue Service emerged two employees who said the Hunter plea deal was flawed and gave reasons why. Last week, Judge Maryellen Noreika

I don’t think Mr. Trump, Hunter or Joe Biden has to go to jail to ensure respect for the law. But it matters, considering where the world is going, for the U.S. to remain a credible example of the rule of law at work. That will make it more likely that the rule-free Prigozhins of the world are wrong about us, and won’t win.

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