For years, many conservatives who object to criminal investigations into Donald Trump have asked a pointed question: What about Hunter Biden?

Now we know the answer. Biden, the oldest living child of the president, has been charged with and pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges. He also faces a felony gun charge, but it will be dismissed if he completes two years of probation while remaining drug-free. He is also never allowed to own a firearm.

[Sarah Chayes: Hunter Biden’s perfectly legal, socially acceptable corruption]

In any other circumstance, this would be a pedestrian criminal matter: He committed crimes, he pleaded guilty, and he’s facing punishment. Politics are what make it notable. For the president, the plea is likely a source of personal suffering—he has long expressed his deep love for his son, through private and legal travails—and political pain, since no elected official benefits from a family member’s conviction.

But the result also undercuts a long-running right-wing talking point. MAGA conservatives have insisted that the fact that Donald Trump faced investigations, and now federal charges, while Hunter Biden did not proved that the Department of Justice was politically biased against the former president. The supposed refusal to go after Hunter Biden has been a key theme of House Republicans’ subcommittee on the “weaponization” of the department. In fact, though, the Justice Department had been investigating him for months. Attorney General Merrick Garland promised Congress he would not be involved, and that decisions would be made by the Trump-appointed top federal prosecutor in Delaware.

[David A. Graham: The House should call Hunter Biden to testify]

The plea will not sway the hardest-core Trump fans. Some will quietly move on to another talking point, but others will paint this agreement as too soft, because it involves no prison time and sidesteps the most explosive (and most speculative) claims about Hunter Biden. Having convinced themselves that Hunter is a criminal mastermind rather than the garden-variety ne’er-do-well nepo baby he seems to be, they will never be satisfied. House Oversight Chair James Comer, for example, issued a statement calling the plea a “sweetheart deal” and “a slap on the wrist” that “reveals a two-tier system of justice.” (Block that metaphor!) Trump, on his social-media site, wrote: “Wow! The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket.’ Our system is BROKEN!”

But for most people, the plea ought to bolster faith in the justice system. That’s not because of any one-for-one equivalence or exchange, but because it shows that no one is above the law. Whether you are the son of the president or yourself a former president, prosecutors can and will investigate you. And notably, the sitting president neither shut down the investigation nor preempted it with a pardon.

The types of federal crimes with which Hunter Biden and Donald Trump are charged are very different. Biden pleaded guilty to cheating on $1 million of taxes, and he is alleged to have owned a gun while using illegal drugs. (The Trump Organization did plead guilty to tax evasion in New York court in January.) Trump was charged last week with absconding with information sensitive to national security and obstructing the federal government from recovering it.

[Ana Marie Cox: I wanted to find humility in Hunter Biden’s book]

But the legal troubles the two men share three big things in common. First, both men face charges that they might have otherwise avoided if not for their public profiles (for Trump this is true of the New York charges; the federal charges would likely have been brought against anyone, though not anyone could have committed those crimes in the first place). Second, the most salacious allegations against both remain unproven and uncharged. And third, much of the most deplorable behavior from both men is legal.

It does not excuse Biden’s crimes to say that he would probably not have ended up in federal prosecutors’ sights if not for his famous father. Similarly, Trump and his business ended up under investigation in New York for financial maneuvers that he seems to have used for decades but that didn’t attract attention until he entered politics. In this sense, Hunter Biden is less a symbol of elite impunity than an example of how the price paid for the privilege of being a member of the elite can sometimes be heightened scrutiny.

If you believe that Hunter Biden was engaged in massive influence peddling that changed the course of federal policy, leading the U.S. to force out Ukrainian officials to benefit the gas company Burisma, then this plea will indeed seem like a letdown. The problem is that evidence for that claim doesn’t add up, and what exists has been circulated by unreliable actors such as Rudy Giuliani. Federal investigators reportedly looked into Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine and China. (If new persuasive evidence emerges, Biden and anyone else involved should face consequences.) Similarly, the most salacious claims about Trump’s documents, like suggestions that he sold them to adversaries, appear to be entirely made-up. Nevertheless, large factions on each side are convinced that both men are getting off easy.

[David A. Graham: It’s all about the investigation]

The most appalling thing that Hunter Biden did was not skip taxes or possess a gun. It was that he used his father’s name as a way to make millions of dollars in business, including service on Burisma’s board, for work that he does not appear to have been qualified to do. Rather than actually influence-peddling, he persuaded foreign businesses to treat him seriously even though Americans, including his father, apparently didn’t. That is both nauseating and entirely legal, as Sarah Chayes wrote in The Atlantic in 2019.

In another world, where Hunter Biden was not his adversary’s son, Trump might respect the hustle. Just today, The New York Times reported on the fraught ethics of a recent Trump real-estate agreement in Oman, a crucial American ally. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, has richly benefited from ties to Saudi Arabia, with whose government he worked as a top White House adviser. None of this appears to have broken any laws, though. The real scandal, as is often the case, is what’s legal.