After more than half a century in politics, no issue may be more personally painful or more politically problematic for President Biden than his troubled son, Hunter. He is, according to various accounts, an open wound in the heart and the most sensitive point in his campaign armour.
For one thing, Hunter Biden’s agreement Tuesday to plead guilty to two lesser tax crimes capped a five-year investigation without allegations of wrongdoing by the president or, presumably, jail time for the his little son But on the other hand, it put Hunter once again in the crosshairs of Mr. Biden’s adversaries, who immediately complained that the rebellious son got off too easy.
The saga of the 53-year-old presidential scion who has struggled with an addiction to crack cocaine has become a fixation on the political right, which sees him, or at least held him up, as a walking specimen and talking about the pay. -the Washington swamp gambling culture that benefited from proximity to power. The phrase “Hunter Biden’s laptop” has taken on a totemic meaning for the president’s opponents, even if they can’t describe what was actually found on the computer that turned up at a repair shop in 2020.
The timing of the younger Mr. Biden’s plea deal, coming nearly two weeks after former President Donald J. Trump was indicted on 37 counts of endangering national security and obstruction of justice, invariably drew comparisons between two very different cases. Allies of the president pointed to the plea deal as evidence that Mr. Biden was playing it safe by letting a prosecutor appointed for the first time by Mr. Trump was deciding how to handle his son’s misconduct, while the former president and his supporters characterized it as evidence of selective justice. .
“Biden’s corrupt DOJ just cleared hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket,'” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “Slap on the wrist” became the catchphrase of Republicans like Reps. James R. Comer of Kentucky and Elise Stefanik of New York.
David Brock, a Democratic operative, said the outcome of the prosecution refuted the many allegations leveled against the president and his son since the Trump administration. “Hunter will not be charged with any of the baseless and outlandish issues that Republicans and the right-wing media have been peddling him with for years,” Brock said.
It’s a debate that Mr. Biden would not get involved in any time soon, and he remained largely silent in the hours after news of the plea deal broke, authorizing a White House spokesman to say only that he and the first lady “love and support their son.” him as he continues to rebuild his life.”
Asked by reporters traveling with him in California if he had spoken to Hunter on Tuesday, the president said simply: “I’m very proud of my son.”
Mr. Biden understands that the plea deal will not be the end of the matter as House Republicans aggressively conduct their own investigations and release more sensational allegations that, even without confirmation, have become a staple of conservative media.
But after months of waiting in frustration for the case to be resolved, Mr. Biden was relieved that the plea deal was reached, hoping it would lift a huge burden off his son’s shoulders without causing a relapse of his addiction problems, according to people close to him. To him. Mr. Biden has remained publicly silent, not out of fear of political backlash, the people said, but out of concern about inflicting more torment on his son.
“I don’t know any parent who wants to see their child’s or their family’s personal or legal struggle so publicly for the whole world to see,” said Michael LaRosa, a former spokesman for Jill Biden. “In the three years I worked for them on the campaign trail and in the White House, they were never immune to personal attacks on their family. Every defamation, attack, conspiracy and lie about their son hurts and never gets old “.
Troubled and troubled family members have been a perennial headache for many White House presidents. In modern times, the harsh focus of media scrutiny has been on Donald Nixon’s financial dealings with Howard Hughes, Billy Carter’s work as a Libyan operative, Neil Bush’s service on the board of a failed savings and loan, Roger Clinton’s drug convictions, and of course the various financial and security clearance issues involving Mr. Clinton’s children and son-in-law. trump
For the most part, presidents have tried to stay out of their family’s troubles, although Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother just before leaving office. How much these issues hurt presidents politically is up for debate, but at home they were generally a source of distress, whether irritation with a loved one for causing trouble or guilt for putting a target on the backs of members of the family, or both of us.
Hunter Biden has somehow become a more extreme example of the phenomenon in an era where any restrictions on a president’s family that might have existed in the past have long since faded. His work in Ukraine helped lead to the first impeachment of Mr. Trump, his laptop led to allegations that Twitter covered up on his behalf, his foreign financial ties have led to extensive congressional investigations, and his turbulent personal life has produced plenty of tabloid fodder.
Many Americans have become convinced that the president’s son has been up to something shady beyond the tax and gun charges at issue on Tuesday. A Harris Poll conducted last month by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies found that 63 percent of Americans think Hunter Biden was involved in “illegal influence peddling” and 53 percent said his father was involved in some way while he was vice president.
Even some of the president’s Democratic allies have said privately that there were legitimate questions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China that appeared to trade under his name. While they emphasized that there was no evidence that his father abused his power as a result, they regretted that Mr. Biden had not done more to curb his son’s lucrative activities.
Still, none of them filed charges in Tuesday’s settlement, and the fact that it was brokered by David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney who was first appointed by Trump’s attorney general to investigate and that Mr. allowed to remain in the case. Biden’s Justice Department provided a helpful rebuttal to accusations of favoritism. Weiss told Congress that he was granted “the utmost authority on this matter.”
Democratic strategists doubted the issue would resonate with swing voters regardless. “Republicans have been up and banging the Hunter Biden drum constantly, and while it certainly upsets their base, there’s not a lot of evidence that the average voter is affected by this issue,” Cornell said. Belcher, a Democratic pollster who worked by President Barack Obama.
For the president, however, it’s much more personal. His relationship with his son was forged in the 1972 car crash that killed Mr. Biden’s first wife and daughter and hospitalized Hunter and his older brother, Beau.
While Beau grew up to become a successful politician who his father imagined could become president one day, Hunter struggled with alcohol, drugs and personal problems. After Beau died of brain cancer in 2015, a distraught hunter suffered repeated bouts of crack cocaine that eventually destroyed his marriage.
As he wrote in “Beautiful Things,” his 2021 memoir, he went on drug binges for weeks, smoking crack every 15 minutes and behaving erratically and even recklessly, including inviting his street dealer to live with him and have an extramarital affair with Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden. He described a life of “buying crack in the middle of the night behind a gas station in Nashville, Tennessee, or craving the little bottles of liquor from your hotel minibar while sitting in a palace in Amman with the King of Jordan” .
At one point when he disappeared for nearly a month, he opened his door to find his father, then vice president, followed by Secret Service agents. “You need help,” his father said. As Hunter Biden wrote, “He wouldn’t go away until I agreed to do something.” On another occasion, Mr. Elder Biden participated in a family intervention, ambushing Hunter to push him into treatment. When Hunter stormed out, his father chased him down the driveway, held him, and cried.
Hunter Biden has since remarried, paid off the tax debt that led to Tuesday’s charges and said he has turned his life around. Family friends said she had shown strength.
“Hunter has had the character to recover from his addiction and partisan political attacks to sign this deal and start the rest of his life,” said former Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Delaware and an adviser to Biden since long ago
Still, Hunter Biden faces a civil trial in Arkansas next month in a dispute over child support payments to a woman who in 2018 gave birth to a daughter she denied was hers until the DNA proved paternity, a case Republicans made sure to highlight Tuesday.
The younger Mr. Biden appears only occasionally at public White House events, knowing that whenever he does he will become a problem. He attended a state dinner at the White House in December and traveled with his father to Ireland in April.
But regardless of whether he’s there in person, Hunter Biden will continue to be a presence in his father’s presidency, welcome or not, especially as next year’s election approaches.
