WASHINGTON — Three days after Joe Biden proclaimed that “no one is above the law,” his only surviving son faces a criminal trial on federal gun charges that could potentially land him in prison.
Biden was talking about Donald Trump, the former and possibly future president who was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Now Biden must practice the noble principle he espoused in his White House remarks on Friday, awaiting a verdict in Hunter Biden’s case like any other anxious parent and trusting that the judicial system will be fair.
The younger Biden’s trial begins Monday in Wilmington, Delaware, with the guilty verdict in Trump’s case still reverberating throughout the presidential race.
One question surrounding Trump’s conviction is what this all means for voters. Will they turn away from Trump as he awaits sentencing, or will they join him in the belief that he was unfairly prosecuted?
In Hunter Biden’s judgment, the electorate is not so much the problem. Voters are unlikely to blame Biden even if his son is convicted, polls show. More than half gave Biden the credit for being a good father, supporting his son through countless legal difficulties, a Reuters-Ipsos January research showed.
A bigger question is whether Hunter Biden’s fate will distract or distress a sitting president in the midst of a difficult re-election bid. In this sense, the son’s trial is also the father’s, testing Joe Biden’s focus and mental discipline during a crucial period of his presidency.
Shortly after the trial begins, Biden will leave for his first foreign trip of the year. He will give a speech in France on Thursday, marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings that led to Allied victory in the Second World War.
Later in the week, he will meet privately with French President Emmanuel Macron, where they are expected to discuss an oppressive war between Russia and Ukraine that has cost US taxpayers $175 billion.
Biden will return to Europe in the middle of the month for a summit in Italy with the US’s closest democratic allies and, at the end of June, he will participate in his first debate with Trump.
“He always put family at the center of his life,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a friend of the president, said in an interview. “He will be able to do both. He has demonstrated for decades the ability to meet difficult and urgent family needs and to perform in his role.”
The Bidens are a family approaching tragedy. Hunter Biden and his brother Beau were seriously injured in a 1972 car crash that killed their mother and little sister, just weeks after Joe Biden won his first Senate bid.
Beau Biden died of brain cancer at age 46 in 2015, leaving what Hunter Biden described in his 2021 memoir as a “difficult hole to fill.” He used the book to describe a crack addiction that could have killed him.
“It’s probably going to be very personal and very painful,” an adviser to the president said of Hunter Biden’s trial.
In the period leading up to the trial, the two were practically inseparable. Privately, some Biden allies have questioned whether it would be wise for Biden to give his son a public platform that would make the entire family a target for GOP attacks. However, Biden became more firmly involved in Hunter before the trial.
Young Biden was invited to a state dinner at the White House on May 23 for the visiting president of Kenya.
He joined his father and other family members on Thursday as they visited Beau’s grave in Wilmington on the ninth anniversary of his death. The next day, Hunter Biden joined his father on Air Force One as they flew to Washington.
On Saturday, as the president rode his bike during his stay at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, his son pedaled behind him, according to a report from the White House press pool.
Michael LaRosa, former spokesman for first lady Jill Biden, said that “the Bidens are remarkably normal parents and when their children are hurting, they are hurting too.”
“Biden communicates daily and directly with his children and I wouldn’t expect that to change during the trial,” LaRosa added. “This is a father and son who have had an especially close relationship throughout their lives, and based on how often they talk and trust each other, I hope the president is always informed about developments no matter where he is. he is physically in the world.”
The Biden and Trump campaigns are taking very different approaches to the trial. Trump’s team is drawing an equivalence between the former president’s situation and that of Hunter Biden. In an appearance on Fox News on Thursday after the verdict, Trump spokesman Jason Miller was asked what Trump would say if Biden started calling his rival a “convicted criminal.”
“Where’s Hunter?” Miller responded.
Biden’s allies say they are not worried about that line of attack. “Where’s Hunter?” was a Trump mantra during the 2020 campaign. However, Trump lost.
“It didn’t stop. So it doesn’t seem likely to me that a trial of Hunter Biden in a crowded media environment will happen,” said Dmitri Mehlhorn, a Democratic strategist and fundraiser.
As the trial unfolds, the Biden campaign plans to remain silent. There will be no rapid response statements coming from the Wilmington headquarters about developments inside the federal courthouse, people familiar with the matter said.
One of Biden’s goals is to show that he is not abusing presidential powers by interfering in independent law enforcement investigations. He said little about Trump’s case until the verdict was given. Although he told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle last year that his son “did nothing wrong,” he wants to avoid any impression that he is trying to influence the outcome one way or another, Biden advisers said. .
A hands-off approach could also help undermine Trump’s claim that Biden used the judicial system as a weapon to influence the election.
“Maybe this [Hunter Biden’s trial] is aimed at all Trump disciples who believe the federal government is out to get Donald Trump,” said Alan Kessler, a Philadelphia-based attorney and longtime Democratic fundraiser. “It actually levels the playing field and shows that there isn’t a grand conspiracy on the part of the government to just go after Donald Trump.”
Hunter Biden was indicted in September on three charges involving possession of a weapon while using narcotics. He pleaded not guilty. The trial can present moments of drama and personal anguish. Prosecutors were authorized to investigate Hunter Biden’s past drug use. They are expected to call his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle as witnesses, as well as Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie Olivere Biden.
One hope among Biden advisers is that voters will show sympathy for Hunter Biden’s struggle with addiction, a national scourge. In 2022, the most recent year for which data was available, nearly 49 million people in the U.S. over the age of 12 had a “substance use disorder” involving alcohol or drugs, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Many voters have struggled with drug or alcohol addiction and should be able to empathize with what the Bidens endured, said a Democratic fundraiser who is close to the Biden campaign.
“Twenty-five years ago, this might have been scandalous. But things have changed,” this person said, speaking on condition of anonymity to speak freely. Voters are more accepting of “imperfect families” and do not tend to “despise them and think that they [Joe Biden] must be a bad father.
A verdict in the case does not end the Hunter Biden saga. In September, he will go to trial in California in a separate case involving tax charges. He pleaded not guilty.
Biden aides are concerned about the timing of the tax trial. This will happen just two months before the election and could extend into the early voting period in some states.
Although Trump has been indicted in three other cases, he is not expected to face further trials before the election. That could create a useless split screen, in the opinion of Biden’s advisers: Trump will be campaigning, while the president’s son will be sitting in court defending himself against accusations of not paying taxes.
But a December focus group with undecided voters in North Carolina suggests people can be forgiving. When the moderator asked one woman if she was concerned about Hunter’s tax accusation, she responded, “No.”
“Why not?” the moderator asked in the focus group led by Engaging/Sago as part of your Swing Voter Project.
“He’s not the president,” she said. “I’m not voting for him.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
