WASHINGTON — Three days after Joe Biden said “no one is above the law,” his only surviving son is facing a federal gun charge that could potentially land him in prison.
Biden was speaking Donald Trumpwho was once and possibly a future president He was judged on 34 articles falsifying business records.
Now, Biden must apply the high-minded principle he espouses The White House made a statement On Friday, like any other concerned parent, Hunter awaits the verdict in Biden’s case and hopes the justice system will be fair.
The younger Biden’s trial opens Monday in Wilmington, Delaware, as the guilty verdict in Trump’s case still reverberates through the presidential race.
The question about Trump’s conviction is what it means for voters. Will they distance themselves from Trump while they await his verdict, or will they stand behind him in the belief that he was unfairly tried?
The voter isn’t much of an issue in Hunter Biden’s trial. The poll shows voters can’t blame Biden even if his son is convicted. More than half believed Biden was a good father, supporting his son through numerous legal challenges. Reuters-Ipsos January survey showed.
A bigger question is whether Hunter Biden’s fate will distract or unsettle the sitting president during a tough re-election bid. The trial of the son, in this sense, is also the trial of the father, testing Joe Biden’s focus and mental discipline during the prime of his presidency.
Shortly after the trial begins, Biden will leave for his first foreign trip of the year. He will speak in France on Thursday to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings that led to Allied victory in World War II.
Later in the week, he is expected to meet privately with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss the war between Russia and Ukraine, which has cost US taxpayers $175 billion.
Biden will return to Europe in the middle of the month for a summit with America’s closest democratic allies in Italy and take part in his first debate with Trump in late June.
“He always put his 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. “She has demonstrated her ability to fulfill her role and meet both difficult and pressing family needs for decades.”
The Bidens are a family plagued by tragedy. Hunter Biden and his brother Beau were seriously injured in a car accident in 1972 that killed their mother and baby sister, just weeks after Joe Biden won his first bid for the Senate.
Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46, leaving what Hunter Biden described in his 2021 memoir as “a void that’s hard to fill.” He used the book to describe the cocaine addiction that could have killed him.
“It’s going to be very personal and very painful,” presidential adviser Hunter Biden said of Biden’s trial.
On the eve of the trial, the two were virtually inseparable. Privately, some Biden allies have questioned whether it was wise for Biden to give his son a public platform that targets the entire family for GOP attacks. Still, Biden wrapped his arms around Hunter tighter before the trial.
Biden Jr. was a guest at the White House on May 23 at a state dinner for the visiting Kenyan president.
Thursday, along with his father and other family members, they visited Beau’s grave in Wilmington on the ninth anniversary of his death. The next day, Hunter Biden was joined by his father on Air Force One as they flew to Washington.
According to a report from the White House press pool, the president was riding his bike while at his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware home on Saturday, with his son riding behind him.
“The Bidens are pretty normal parents, and when their kids suffer, they suffer,” said Michael LaRosa, a former spokesman for First Lady Jill Biden.
“Biden communicates daily and directly with his children, and I would not expect that to change during the trial,” LaRosa said. “This is a father and son who have had a particularly close relationship all their lives, and based on how often they talk and trust each other, I expect that the president will always be watching wherever he is. is physically in the world.”
The Biden and Trump campaigns are taking very different approaches to the lawsuit. Trump’s team draws parallels between the former president’s predicament and Hunter Biden’s. Speaking on Fox News Thursday after the decision, Trump spokesman Jason Miller was asked what Trump would say if Biden started calling his opponent a “convicted felon.”
“Where’s Hunter?” Miller replied.
Biden’s allies say they are not worried about this line of attack. “Where’s Hunter?” It was Trump’s mantra during the 2020 campaign. But Trump lost.
“He didn’t lie. Therefore, it does not surprise me that Hunter Biden’s trial will pass in a crowded media environment,” said Democratic strategist and fundraiser Dmitry Mehlhorn.
The Biden campaign plans to remain silent while the trial continues. People familiar with the matter said the Wilmington headquarters would not immediately comment on the events at the federal courthouse.
One of Biden’s goals is to show that he is not abusing his presidential powers by meddling in independent law enforcement investigations. He said little about Trump’s case until the sentencing. Although last year MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhla reported that her son’s “he didn’t do anything wrong“,” he wants to avoid the impression that he is trying to influence the outcome one way or another, Biden advisers said.
A hands-on approach could also help undermine Trump’s claim that Biden weaponized the justice system to influence the election.
“Maybe this [Hunter Biden’s trial] It appeals to 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. “If anything, it evens the playing field and shows that the government isn’t some big conspiracy to go after Donald Trump.”
Hunter Biden was charged in September with three counts of possession of a weapon while on drugs. He pleaded not guilty. There may be moments of personal drama and anguish at court. Prosecutors were allowed to investigate Hunter Biden’s past drug use. They are expected to call as a witness his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, as well as Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie Olivere Biden.
One hope among Biden advisers is that voters sympathize with Hunter Biden’s fight against drug addiction, a nationwide scourge. In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, approximately 49 million people in the United States over the age of 12 “substance use disorder” related to alcohol or drugs, according to the US 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 are going through, said a Democratic fundraiser close to the Biden campaign.
“Twenty-five years ago, this would have been scandalous. But everything has changed,” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, under the condition of speaking freely. Voters are more accepting of “imperfect families” and “don’t tend to look down on them and think about [Joe Biden] must be a bad father.”
The verdict in the case does not end the saga of Hunter Biden. He will be tried in September in a separate case in California including tax payments. He pleaded not guilty.
Biden aides are worried about the timing of the tax trial. This will happen with just two months before the election, and in some states it could go into the early voting period.
Although Trump has been indicted in three other cases, he is not expected to face any other trials before the election. That could create an unhelpful split screen, as Biden’s advisers see it: Trump would campaign while the president’s son sat in a courtroom defending himself against accusations of tax evasion.
But a focus group conducted with swing voters in North Carolina in December suggests people can be more forgiving. When a moderator asked a woman if she was worried about Hunter’s tax-related indictment, she said, “No.”
“Why not?” asked in the focus group conducted by the moderator Busy/Sago as part of it Swing Picker Project.
“He’s not the president,” he said. “I don’t vote for him”