Biden defends son Hunter ahead of possible federal charges

Post Reply New Topic

President Joe Biden defended his son Hunter as federal prosecutors are said to be nearing a decision on whether to charge the president’s son with tax and firearms violations after a four-year criminal investigation.

“First of all, my son has done nothing wrong,” Biden said in an interview with Stephanie Ruhle, host of “The 11th Hour on MSNBC.” "I trust him. I have faith in him.”

Asked how charges against his son could impact his presidency, Biden said he stands by Hunter.

It impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him,” the president said.

Federal prosecutors are weighing whether to charge Hunter Biden with two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes, and the gun charge, also a potential felony. Hunter Biden has said he has since reconciled delinquent tax filings.

The White House has dismissed allegations by an IRS special agent seeking whistleblower protections in the handling of the case. Aides insist that Biden has not been involved and that the president stands by his promise not to politicize the Justice Department.

The White House is bracing for political fallout from a looming decision by federal prosecutors over whether to charge Joe Biden’s son Hunter with tax crimes and lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun.

In a signal that the investigation is nearing completion, Hunter’s lawyers last month held a meeting with David Weiss, the top federal prosecutor in Delaware, at the justice department in Washington, the Washington Post said. A separate report by CNN noted that Hunter’s longtime lawyer Chris Clark was among those entering the department headquarters.

Republicans would be sure to seize on a high-profile criminal case against Hunter, 53, in an effort to inflict political damage on the US president, who last week announced his bid for re-election in 2024.

Attacks on Hunter and his alleged laptop in the 2020 campaign fizzled but the 53-year-old is taking an increasingly public role at his father’s side, appearing at a state dinner honouring the French president, Emmanuel Macron; at the Kennedy Center Honors; and on a recent trip to the Republic of Ireland.

Hunter’s taxes and foreign business dealings have been under investigation by a federal grand jury in Delaware since at least 2018. His membership on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have raised questions by Republicans about whether he traded on his father’s public service.

As the FBI sought to interview him in 2020, Hunter was forced to publicly acknowledge that he was under scrutiny, stating: “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”

Then media reports last October claimed that federal agents believed they had enough evidence to criminally charge Hunter on two matters: failing to report all his income to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and making a false statement in relation to buying a gun in 2018.

According to the Washington Post, Hunter filled out a federal form in which he allegedly answered “no” to the question of whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance”. Yet the president’s son has acknowledged his long struggle with drug addiction and, in his 2021 memoir Beautiful Things, recalled spells in 2018 when he smoked crack “every 15 minutes”.

If prosecutors agree that evidence is likely to lead to a conviction at trial, it would represent a political gift to Republicans whose efforts to paint the Biden family as corrupt have failed to gain much traction beyond rightwing media.

Hunter’s new career as a painter previously raised ethical questions and now his legal and financial woes continue to pile up, posing political risks for his father’s re-election campaign.

Last week, Hunter was ordered to appear in a court in Arkansas in a paternity case involving Lunden Roberts, a woman with whom he had a child, now four years old. Citing a “substantial material change” in his income, Hunter’s lawyers have been seeking to lower child support payments from what they say are currently $20,000 a month.

On Friday, the Axios website reported growing disagreement between the White House and Hunter’s own team over how to handle the onslaught. Without consulting his father’s aides, the site said, Hunter hired the lawyer Abbe Lowell to take a more aggressive stance, while his team is planning to create a legal defence fund to help pay mounting bills that have reportedly put him millions of dollars in the red.

legal defence fund could trigger further ethical problems for the White House. Anthony Coley, a former spokesman for the justice department, told Axios: “For this fund to work, it must be extraordinarily transparent and even restrictive by prohibiting foreign citizens and registered lobbyists from contributing. Without these type of guardrails, the fund will be a legitimate headache for the White House.”

Biden has said he has never spoken to his son about foreign business. There are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president.

Whether charges against Hunter would carry much sway with voters remains doubtful, especially if his father faces a rematch against Trump, who recently became the first former president to be indicted and has more legal headaches to come.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, commented: “If there’s traction on the things that arguably could have affected policy during his dad’s vice-presidency, that could be troublesome. But if it’s simply troubled guy doing troubled guy things, it’s bad for Hunter and it will be touted a bit in the conservative press but I don’t think it’ll have a significant bearing on the president’s re-election.”

Hunter also can’t keep his pants on.
https://amp.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... ild-while/

As far as the election goes I agree with the last paragraph unless Joe is implicated it won’t matter. If he is it will. You can whatabout Trump all you want but we are talking about very different kind of voters.

Oh noes, he had sex like most other adults. Biggest mistake was being too intoxicated to use some form of birth control. At least he managed to get laid even as a crackhead. Good for him!

I guess joey doesn’t acknowledge Navy simply to avoid as much controversy over it as possible. Probably advised to do so by his advisors.

Throughout the Trump presidency, the mainstream media constantly suggested that Russia had so-called "kompromat" on the president—embarrassing materials used as a weapon of influence through blackmail. We all remember the daily deluge: "Does Russia have Kompromat on Trump?" CNN asked. "A Russian Word Americans Need To Know: 'Kompromat,'" Greg Myre wrote at NPR, concluding that "Russia may have compromising material on President-elect Donald Trump." The Guardian agreed, writing there was "apparent confirmation that the Kremlin possesses kompromat, or potentially compromising material, on Trump... that happened during Trump's trips to Moscow." Jonathan Chait wrote in New York Magazine that Russia had "secret leverage over Trump," and "a great deal of incriminating information was confirmed," a claim reiterated by the BBC in an article called "Russia and the art of 'kompromat'." The Washington Post was obsessed with the conspiracy theory, publishing numerous articles about it, as did the Daily Beast with a steady stream of articles. Even the New York Times promoted the conspiracy theory that Russia had kompromat on the President, based on a brief meeting attended by one of Trump's sons in Trump Tower. Entire books were written on all the kompromat that the Kremlin supposedly had on President Trump, which were eagerly cited across mainstream media.

And what was this kompromat that Russia had over Trump, per our august media institutions? Putin apparently had sex tapes of Trump with prostitutes peeing on him.

It seems so ridiculous that anyone—let alone our most august media institutions—believed this in hindsight. We now know that the pee tape stemmed from Hillary Clinton's campaign. But the kompromat conspiracy theory was essential for the Democrats' narrative that Russia possessed boundless influence over the president.

All the kompromat talk swiftly ended the moment Joe Biden became president because surely no foreign government could have any dirt on him. This left no one to ask the obvious question: Could Ukrainian officials have kompromat on Joe, given all the allegations of his corruption in Ukraine?

It's a much more reasonable question about Joe Biden than it ever was when posed as a certainty about Trump. After all, Hunter Biden was paid many millions of dollars by the shady Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, despite having no qualifications for the job that anyone could point to beyond being the son of the Vice President at the time—which proved fortunate when his father fired the general prosecutor of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, who had begun an investigation into the Burisma-Hunter gravy train.

And yet, in obvious contrast with their obsession with Russia's kompromat on Trump, the mainstream media has lined up to dismiss the corruption allegations against Biden as a nothingburger. This has been no easy feat, and yet the media has valiantly obliged, arguing repeatedly that Hunter Biden was paid by Burisma for reasons that had nothing to do with the fact that his father was the Vice President at the time overseeing U.S. relations with Ukraine—and that Joe did not have any knowledge of his son's highly lucrative business dealings. And they would have you believe Vice President Biden fired Shokin because Shokin was corrupt.

The latest evidence exposes the media's talking points as pure propaganda. On July 31, 2023, Devon Archer testified to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability about both Joe's relationship to Burisma and why he fired Shokin. Archer was Hunter Biden's close friend who served alongside him on the board of Burisma. Under oath, Archer testified that Burisma paid Hunter millions of dollars solely because his father was Vice President. Burisma would have gone out of business without "the brand" and the brand was Joe, Archer testified. Per Archer, Joe Biden was involved in the racket; he was put on speakerphone in business meetings at least 20 times.

Archer also testified that Shokin was fired by Joe not for being a corrupt prosecutor but for investigating the millions of dollars Burisma was paying Hunter, whom the company owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, said was stupider than his dog. In subsequent interviews, Archer has even more clearly confirmed that Shokin was fired for pursuing Burisma's enormous payoffs to the Biden family.

All of this is well-known to Ukrainian officials. Shokin himself released a video directly rebutting Biden loyalists in the American media, in which he explains in detail why Vice President Biden threatened Ukraine's president with holding back critical American aid if Shokin was not immediately replaced with a dud.

"The depiction of these investigations as dormant has nothing to do with reality of the facts," Shokin said. "Mr. Biden was told that we were going to start questioning his son and others, Archer and others, all involved in the Burisma case. And everyone understood very well that this fight was going to end badly for them... Biden had understood what was looming... We were about to reach the outcome of this case. Having understood all this, Biden used all the unofficial means at his disposal... Biden was acting on behalf of his own interests, for his family... Joe Biden had reason to fear that all this would eventually fall on his son."

For his pains, Biden replaced Shokin with a new prosecutor, who promptly closed the Burisma investigation.

Nothing that has emerged recently has the shock value of a pee tape. But perhaps that's because it's all true. It is also consistent with the materials found on Hunter's notorious laptop, which contains emails from Burisma executives pleading with Biden to use his influence to stop the pressure on them by Ukrainian officials.

Unlike the pee tape and other unsubstantiated charges of Russian kompromat against Trump, the evidence is robust that Joe Biden abused his power as Vice President to massively enrich his family through influence peddling. The Vice President successfully threatened to withhold financial aid if the Ukrainian president did not immediately put to bed an investigation exposing the Biden racket.

Despite the evidence of Biden's corruption in Ukraine, the Zelensky government has not outed Joe for his sordid history in his country. But why would Zelensky need to expose Biden? At tremendous American cost, Biden is leading the largest war since World War II to help Ukraine.

Yet as American public support for it dries up, one cannot help but wonder how much freedom President Biden has to step back from this immense war effort, even if he wanted.