Oh I thought you were asking what I meant. "The new Presidency will absolutely spin and use this event." and then "Yes the system is broken but the optics here look REALLY bad."

The reasoning doesn't even matter anymore, bc it's already done. I was talking about the fall-out. Centrists who aren't paying attention won't care about reasons anyway.

But if you want to get into it, it sounds like it would be a cost-to-benefit trade-off, e.g. if 16 months in minimum security prison, maybe able to just do a house arrest situation (didn't they do that for Roger Stone?), then that's one thing. As people are saying here elsewhere in the comments, "hunter filled out a form wrong" - which sounds like the penalty for that would be super low? But perhaps I'm missing something.

And some people consider principles to be quite important. Arguably it was the lack of enticement to vote Democrat that led to Trump winning the Presidency even?

Though anyway, I'm not trying to "both sides" this - I consider the matter already settled and done, and again was talking purely about the fall-out i.e. what happens next?