News that the Department of Justice is contemplating indicting President Biden’s son Hunter means that yet another set of legal proceedings could jolt American politics. 

That possibility snapped into focus as the Washington Post reported that federal investigators have gathered “sufficient evidence” to charge the president’s son with “tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase.”

Agents began scrutinizing the younger Mr. Biden in 2018, specifically his connection to the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Hunter Biden told the New Yorker that his father commented, “I hope you know what you are doing” in respect of the company. Hunter responded “I do.”

That entanglement with Burisma ultimately led to the first impeachment trial against President Trump on charges that he and Rudolph Giuliani pressured President Zelensky to investigate Burisma, even conditioning aid on him taking such a step. 

Mr. Biden’s position on Burisma’s board apparently also prompted federal investigators to pore over Mr. Biden’s finances and the accuracy of his reported income. They are also looking into whether he lied on paperwork relating to the purchase of a gun in 2018 — while Democrats were beating the drums for tighter gun control. 

A separate potential vulnerability for Mr. Biden is a misplaced laptop. In the closing days of the 2020 campaign, President Trump trumpeted the existence of the device, which had come to his attention when it was abandoned at a repair shop in Delaware. It subsequently made its way to Mr. Giuliani. 

Many at the time cast doubt on the authenticity of the laptop and its contents, which were, in a major scoop, first reported by the New York Post. More than 50 one time senior intelligence officials signed a letter opining that the cache had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

That evaluation has since been proven incorrect. Two security experts hired by the Washington Post attested to the authenticity of the communications from Mr. Biden, and a range of reporting has verified its contents, which depict acts of drug use and prostitution. The laptop also stored financial information. It is not clear whether it figures into this probe.

In 2020, Mr. Biden acknowledged that he was under investigation for his “tax affairs.” On Thursday, in response to the news that the Justice Department thinks it has enough for an indictment, his lawyer, Chris Clark, thundered that it is a “federal felony for a federal agent to leak information about a Grand Jury investigation such as this one.”

The decision whether to charge Mr. Biden will ultimately be made by the United States attorney in Delaware, David Weiss. Mr. Weiss was appointed by President Trump in 2017. 

Notwithstanding the quality or quantity of the evidence gathered, it will be Mr. Weiss’s call to make, at least according to Attorney General Garland, who in a Senate hearing insisted that Mr. Weiss “is in charge of that investigation. There will not be interference of any political or improper kind.”