WASHINGTON (AP) – United States (US) President Joe Biden had just six words to offer after his 53-year-old son Hunter pleaded guilty to federal tax offences in a deal that is also likely to spare him time behind bars on a weapons charge.
“I’m very proud of my son,” he said.
That pride has been accompanied by pain, and for the president’s family, both have been on public display. Republicans have worked to use Hunter Biden’s actions – and his acknowledged struggle with addiction – as an anchor to try to drag down his father.
As a parent, Joe Biden has tried to keep his son close; they speak almost every day. Hunter was at his father’s side on a recent trip to Ireland, on the lawn of the White House with other family members for the Easter egg roll and in the bleachers with his mom and dad as his daughter graduated from college last month.
But out of public view, a five-year criminal investigation was coming to a conclusion, with a plea deal announced on Tuesday that resolves the probe into the taxes and foreign business dealings of the president’s second son. The agreement with the Justice Department means Hunter Biden will plead guilty to a misdemeanor tax offence, and he’ll avoid a more serious felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user, as long as he adheres to conditions agreed to in court.
As a president, Joe Biden has made of point of keeping his distance from the federal investigation into his son’s dealings.
The most fatherly of things he could do – advice a son going through a hard time – isn’t exactly available for a man whose administration commands the office that was investigating his son and his political rival simultaneously.
“President Biden has always impressed me as someone who puts his family first,” said Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a close friend of the family. “In this case involving Hunter Biden, he has drawn a clear line. He has not been involved in or interfered in the Department of Justice in their five-year-long investigation, which is now coming to a close. I can only imagine the relief they may feel in being able to move forward.”
But Republicans are hardly satisfied with the outcome, particularly as the Justice Department indicted former President Donald Trump in an unrelated case where he is accused of mishandling classified documents. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, compared the outcome of Hunter Biden’s case to the Trump documents case now heading toward federal court and said, “If you are the president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal.”
Though Hunter Biden is a private citizen, he factors heavily into notable political moments over the past five years: surfacing as a central character in the first impeachment case against Trump, who tried to get Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy to announce an investigation into the younger Biden related to his position on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
Hunter Biden had joined the board in 2014, around the time his father, then Barack Obama’s vice president, was helping conduct US foreign policy with Ukraine. Trump and his allies have long argued, without evidence, that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine influenced the Obama administration’s policies toward the East European nation.
Hunter Biden’s descent into drugs and alcohol following the 2015 death of his brother Beau Biden from cancer led to some troubling decisions and interventions that Republicans have seized on as proof of his shady tactics, but he also doesn’t always help himself.
