Republicans push conspiracy theories after Hunter Biden verdict:

Republicans responded to Hunter Biden's conviction on Tuesday of lying about his drug use to buy a gun by doubling down on conspiracy theories that many senior party figures have been using to try and damage his president father.

Despite the fact that Joe Biden's son could now face a hefty jail sentence, Donald Trump's election campaign and its surrogates repeated unfounded attack lines that the conviction was part of a conspiracy to deflect attention from more serious crimes and represented the use of the Department of Justice (DoJ) as a political weapon.

Republicans have long sought to use Hunter Biden's woes and business dealings as a political weapon against Biden, ignoring the fact that Trump himself is also now a convicted felon whose own business empire has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars for fraudulent practises.

That tactic continued in the wake of Hunter's guilty verdict.

"This trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine," the Trump campaign said in a statement.

Matt Gaetz, the far-right congressman from Florida, was distinctly dismissive, posting on X: "The Hunter Biden gun conviction is kinda dumb tbh."

That was echoed by Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA, who derided the conviction as a distraction from worse crimes he claimed have been committed by the president's family.