White House braces for Hunter Biden headlines as father ramps up reelection bid
Naomi Lim
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President Joe Biden‘s White House and campaign are bracing for a barrage of Hunter Biden headlines amid a Justice Department investigation, congressional Republican inquiries, and an Arkansas paternity court case.
The developments coincide with another round of poor polling for Joe Biden as he starts fundraising and stumping for his 2024 reelection bid.
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Hunter Biden’s legal and congressional oversight entanglements could pose “a significant problem” for Joe Biden with independent voters next year, according to Republican strategist John Feehery.
“Coupled with the revelations that the intelligence community engineered a letter calling the laptop a Russian hoax, a Hunter indictment could show how completely corrupt the Biden family really is,” Feehery told the Washington Examiner.
Onetime Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins, a George W. Bush appointee, joked Joe Biden would “secretly welcome any final resolution to Hunter’s criminal liability if the accusations only involve taxes and guns and not bribery or treason.”
“Pleading to ‘[an] illegal tax deduction of $30,000 and for lying about his substance abuse … when he purchased a weapon’ sounds like a win for them if that’s the case and that is the end of it,” the Arkansas chairman of former President Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign and a member of his White House transition team said. “They may throw a party.”
But former Democratic Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler disagreed, contending Hunter Biden being prosecuted would not have consequences for Joe Biden’s reelection “one iota.”
“Most voters would discard it into the bucket of ‘political prosecutions’ since the investigation into Hunter Biden began five years ago into matters concerning important national security implications and then ended up with a tax charge and filling out a government form,” he said. “There is no allegation that President Biden had any role in this, which would distinguish this matter from the allegations against former President Trump.”
Nevertheless, the Republican National Committee has criticized Joe Biden for his interview with MSNBC after Hunter Biden’s lawyers met with the Justice Department last month following reports Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump holdover, is nearing a decision on whether to prosecute the younger Biden for two misdemeanor charges for failure to file taxes, one count of felony tax evasion for overreporting expenses, and a false statement charge regarding a firearm purchase. Simultaneously, congressional leaders spoke this week with the legal representatives of an IRS supervisory special agent seeking whistleblower status who is alleging the Justice Department is mishandling the case and that there has been political interference in the matter.
“Besides repeating a debunked lie about the debt, laughing at the idea of negotiating, defending Biden-family influence peddling, and obfuscating on the border crisis, Biden’s argument basically boiled down to, his approval numbers are low because ‘everything is negative,’ and he ‘know[s] more than the vast majority of people,'” RNC spokesman Tommy Pigott wrote.
Joe Biden reiterated to MSNBC that the Justice Department prosecuting his son will not have repercussions for him after taking the younger Biden on his trip last month to Ireland and Northern Ireland as his lawyers become more combative and debate the possibility of a legal defense fund. Attorney Abbe Lowell, for example, was present last week during Hunter Biden’s Arkansas child support case.
“First of all, my son has done nothing wrong,” Joe Biden said. “I trust him. I have faith in him. It impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him.”
The White House has been prodded with questions about Hunter Biden since the transition when he and the president first confirmed the younger Biden was under investigation for his tax affairs.
“An IRS special agent wants whistleblower protection to talk about the investigation on Hunter Biden’s taxes,” one reporter asked last month. “What is the White House’s message to employees who wonder if there should be political considerations when things affect the president’s family?”
“The president has always been clear — during the campaign, during his presidency — that the Department of Justice should have independence, they should not be politicized, and they should be able to do their job independently,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre replied. “I’ll leave it to Department of Justice to make their decision to do to — to move forward with this particular case. We’re just not going to comment from here.”
Meanwhile, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and his judiciary panel counterpart, Jim Jordan (R-OH), have escalated their investigations into Joe Biden and his family. The FBI has until Wednesday to respond to a congressional subpoena from Comer for an unclassified, unverified 2020 document in which a prospective whistleblower “describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.” The chairman will hold a press conference on the same day to provide an update on his broader Biden family inquiry. Jordan will then oversee a transcribed sit down with former CIA Director James Clapper over a 2020 letter that contended the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a repair shop bore “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” on Thursday.
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White House Counsel’s Office spokesman Ian Sams has denied Joe Biden has done anything wrong, citing the president’s disclosure of 25 years of tax returns.
“For going on five years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically-motivated attacks against the president and his family without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests,” he said. “That’s because they prefer floating anonymous innuendo, amplified by the megaphone of their allies in right-wing media, to get attention and try to distract and deflect from their own unpopular ideas and lack of solutions to the issues the American people actually care about.”