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When Trump was impeached, the big issue was that he wanted to get dirt on his political opponent. He wanted dirt on Joe Biden's son and how he worked with an oil company and wanted to accuse Biden of nepotism. This was regarded by Democrats as unethical behavior.
This is not about the fallout. But, what was the point of trying to get dirt on Hunter Biden if the Mueller report, for example, didn't change enough minds to mean anything?
Trump arguably won the 2016 election because of James Comey's last-minute, pre-election assertion that he might reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton. That had dramatic fallout in social media, and Clinton never effectively addressed it before the election; in my estimation it cost her enough votes to shift the tide.
Hunter Biden and Burisma is "Hillary's emails" redux; the Trump campaign hopes it will have the same social media reaction and voter drain against Biden that happened against Hillary in 2016. My sense is it won't, for a number of reasons:
But Trump has never had a problem throwing things at the wall to see what sticks; from his perspective it worked before, so it's worth trying again.
Your assumption:
When Trump was impeached, the big issue was that he wanted to get dirt on his political opponent. He wanted dirt on Joe Biden's son and how he worked with an oil company and wanted to accuse Biden of nepotism.
That's really not why Trump got impeached.
First of all, everybody collects dirt on their political rivals - nothing illegal about that. If Trump wanted to hire someone to dig up dirt on Joe, that's not an issue. Alternative if Trump wanted to "serve justice" on Hunter and Joe Biden for corruption, President Trump could have had the US Justice Department investigate and prosecute them on whatever evidence they could find. In such a scenario, the Justice Dept. could have enlisted the State Dept. for cooperation from Ukraine.
Trump got impeached because he tried to engineer a foreign investigation of the Bidens, one devoid of his own fingerprints - and more specifically, for using the powers of the Presidency to coerce Ukraine into the investigation. The Democrats impeached Trump for "abuse of power", saying that coercion of Ukraine by the President in this way primarily benefited Trump, not the United States. Using the powers of your office for personal benefit is a definition of "abuse of power". Impeachment was cited by the founding fathers as a remedy for several specific offenses; abuse of power was one cited by Alexander Hamilton.
Secondly, Trump was impeached for obstruction of Congress. According to one commentator:
The White House refused to provide documents to congressional investigators, and instructed top advisers and government officials to defy subpoenas and refuse to testify. https://twitter.com/colinhanks/status/1223437831302828032
This was a step that not even Richard Nixon tried.
Your question:
what was the point of trying to get dirt on Hunter Biden if the Mueller report, for example, didn't change enough minds to mean anything?
Having a foreign government condemn Joe Biden for corruption could have been portrayed as a politically unbiased indictment of the Bidens, thus being politically more damaging. If the timing of such a disclosure could have been controlled, it could have cast a huge shadow over the 2020 election, and allowed President Trump an easier path to reelection by making his perspective rival unelectable in many voters' eyes.
The primary point of controversy involving Hunter Biden was not about nepotism in the usual sense of the word. Instead, it might be more accurate to describe it as a question of influence peddling, and the appearance of conflict of interest.
