Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri.

What an afternoon! The conviction of the former president, and a presidential candidate, on 34 felony counts, is surely historic, but what impact will it have on the real verdict—election day? Call me a cynic, but it feels likely this moment will have faded from memory six months from now, and won’t be much of a factor for voters who somehow still haven’t made up their minds between Trump and Biden. After all, so much about Trump is already baked into his candidacy—the drama, the porn stars, the insurrection, the 54 remaining charges… So I wouldn’t look too closely at the flash polls.

In the meantime, the Republicans are in luck. Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial starts next week, and in today’s issue, I recount the wild story of when I broke the news about Hallie Biden dumping her paramour’s gun in a trash can across the street from a school, a seemingly minor crime (lying on a firearm transaction form) that turned into something much more significant.

Programming note: If you need a break from Trump trial coverage, here are two rollicking conversations on my podcast Somebody’s Gotta Win: the first episode is with my former producer and Politico national correspondent Meridith McGraw, and the second is with the reformed Trump O.G. Anthony Scaramucci.

But first, Abby Livingston inspects the teetering Menendez dynasty…

• The Menendez cavalry: The flashing red light for the younger Menendez is that Bhalla had outraised him as of mid-May. Bhalla also had backing from a super PAC called “America’s Promise,” a group that dropped a bomb of a TV ad that not-so-subtly suggested the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Moreover, Bhalla retained two well-regarded Democratic consulting firms, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for polling and Mission Control for direct mail.

  Menendez, however, has responded with a strong campaign of his own, and cavalries in Washington and New Jersey are riding behind him. His consultant team includes Message and Media, one of the Garden State’s top Democratic consulting firms. He also has financial support from much of the New Jersey Democratic delegation, including Cory Booker, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Josh Gottheimer, Donald Norcross, Frank Pallone, Bill Pascrell, and oh yeah, $10,000 from his father’s leadership PAC.

  But no group is putting more muscle behind Rep. Menendez than the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The C.H.C.’s political arm has deployed about $500,000 to support Menendez. Meanwhile, numerous CHC members donated to Menendez, including Nanette Barragán, Tony Cárdenas, Robert Garcia, Ben Ray Luján, Alex Padilla, Linda Sánchez, Lori Trahan, Norma Torres, Ritchie Torres, and Juan Vargas.

  The Democrats’ Big Three—Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, and Pete Aguilar—also donated to Menendez, along with more than a dozen other colleagues: Brendan Boyle, Val Hoyle, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Ted Lieu, Rick Larsen, Morgan McGarvey, Jared Moskowitz, Joe Neguse, Wiley Nickel, Jimmy Panetta, Scott Peters, Jamie Raskin, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Eric Swalwell.

The form clearly demonstrated that Hunter had lied on his firearm application. After all, the well-known former substance abuser had claimed that he had never been an “unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance.” It’s a felony to lie on the form, but prosecutions are very rare. And as I drove down the interstate, I considered only that the wild story might become a Secret Service scandal. (The agency, which has said they did not provide protection to the Bidens in 2018, denied any involvement in the alleged incident.)

But during my reporting trip to Wilmington, that Mid-Atlantic stepchild of Baltimore and Philadelphia, it seemed that everyone had a Hunter story. Few saw him as a sympathetic addict or a loveable screw-up, perhaps because he seemed to fail upwards and enjoyed the political privilege and protection conferred by his father. There was a feeling, even among law enforcement officers I interviewed, that Delaware had become a safe space for his binges. “There’s a fair amount of resentment beneath the surface there, among some quarters in that state, it’s something that people are not going to be vocal about anytime soon in public,” said Ben Schreckinger, my reporting partner on the story, who also authored the book The Bidens. “Biden is very powerful there. It’s a culture of ‘You don’t rock the boat.’ Delaware feels like a small town.”

During that drive, I tried to piece together the reporting lines and potential implications. Never in my wildest imagination, of course, could I have fathomed that this sordid drama would lead to a courtroom soap opera, set to commence next week, just days after Donald Trump’s own unprecedented criminal trial ended with the ex-president being found guilty on all 34 counts.

In fact, the cadence of Hunter’s legal headaches could present an extraordinary resetting of the political calendar. Not long ago, Democrats relieved themselves with the fantasy that Trump would be sitting in courtrooms in the crucial months before November, facing up to charges in his three other cases, none of which is likely to go to trial until after the election—if ever, depending on the outcome. Hunter, meanwhile, will be back in the spotlight for another criminal trial, currently penciled in for September in Los Angeles, regarding his failure to pay $1.4 million in taxes. (He has pleaded not guilty.)

Depending on one’s political proclivity, Hunter Biden is generally viewed as either a serial grifter or a guy being pinched for a small offense. Either way, this will be a scene—and perhaps filled with racy micro-drama beyond pink penis balloons flying over a Manhattan courthouse. I’ve been told by producers at the networks that they will be sending correspondents to cover the trial, but it won’t be wall-to-wall obsessive. (Perhaps anticipating a full-court press from Fox News, Hunter sued the network last month for defamation over its fictional six-part miniseries, The Trial of Hunter Biden, which was subsequently removed from the Fox Nation streaming service.)

Republicans expect the media circus to create a lift for their candidate. In June 2023, an outside pro-Trump PAC conducted a survey to collect data on whether potential voters perceived Biden or Trump as more corrupt. At the time, 60 percent of respondents knew more about Trump’s indictments and upcoming trials, compared to 30 percent who were familiar with the “Biden crime family” narrative, as the Republicans have dubbed it. Tellingly, perhaps, the survey also found that respondents ranked “trust and integrity in office” as more important than “getting the job done and delivering.”

Republicans saw an opening. “We realized if we could increase the awareness of corruption in Hunter and Biden, Trump would pick up more voters,” an official from the PAC told me. “With the Hunter-Joe Biden House investigations, that awareness increased, and that benefited Trump,” the official continued. “As people stop focusing on who is more honest, and think of them as both corrupt, they move from prioritizing ‘honesty and integrity’ to ‘who gets the job done.’” The Hunter trials are expected to fuel that narrative, this person explained, although he said that his organization doesn’t have official plans to capitalize on them.

Biden’s other political rivals also see Hunter as a political cudgel. This August, Tony Lyons, co-founder of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s super PAC, is publishing Out of the Shadows: My Life Inside the Wild World of Hunter Biden, a tell-all memoir by Lunden Roberts, who made headlines last summer when Joe Biden publicly acknowledged that Roberts’ young daughter was, indeed, Hunter’s daughter. (Hunter denied paternity until DNA proved otherwise.)

Democrats have been preparing for an onslaught since the (eventually abandoned) impeachment inquiry in the house. Last September, David Brock launched the Facts First PAC to aid Hunter with opposition research, communications support, and legal fees. But there’s long been friction between outside organizations and allies wanting to aggressively fight back against Republicans on Hunter’s behalf, and the White House, which is less convinced that Biden’s political fate is tied to Hunter’s. While some of Hunter’s allies have been pushing for a war room working in concert with the White House and a legal defense fund so that Biden donors can contribute toward Hunter’s $10 million-plus in legal bills, they have faced resistance from some of Biden’s advisors who think it’s not appropriate.

Meanwhile, Hollywood entertainment lawyer and longtime Hunter ally Kevin Morris, who has loaned Hunter upwards of $6 million, is reportedly tapped out, according to Politico. “The only people in the White House who care about Hunter are the president and the first lady,” said former Republican congressman David Jolly, who pitched a legal defense fund. “I believe senior staff consider him to be expendable.”

Tonight, as Trump’s conviction is being splashed across screens around the world, it’s impossible to predict what November, much less tomorrow or next week or next month, will bring. It was a very bad day for Donald Trump. So far, Hunter Biden has been a footnote. Monday, of course, is a whole nother news cycle.