Biden, as president and patriarch, confronts his son’s trial
Facing a situation unlike any president before him, Biden - who at 81 is the patriarch of a large and growing family - will have to navigate the trial as president, candidate and father.
As jury selection launches Monday for United States v. Robert Hunter Biden, it marks another novel moment in a period that has seen no shortage of them: the first time the child of a president faces a felony trial.
Coming just four days after jurors in New York convicted former president Donald Trump for falsifying records to hide a hush money payment, Hunter Biden’s trial for allegedly lying on a gun-purchase form further entrenches the courtroom as a central player in an unorthodox and chaotic presidential election.
President Biden has lost two other children, and the legal ordeal facing his surviving son will be an emotional experience as well, longtime associates say, testing his ability to maintain a professional and political distance. Facing a situation unlike any president before him, Biden – who at 81 is the patriarch of a large and growing family – will have to navigate the trial as president, candidate and father.
The cases against Trump and Hunter Biden are markedly different, not least because one defendant is seeking the presidency and the other is a private citizen. But both could affect the 2024 election as Republicans seek to tie Biden to his son’s legal troubles, and the president’s handling of them will be scrutinized closely by voters considering his performance as president and as patriarch.
“We live in a time when Americans largely consider the courtroom to be politics by other means,” said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “This is the main argument Donald Trump is making, evidently with success, to diminish the impact of his multiple felony convictions. So ironically, this same argument helps inoculate President Biden from damage if his son’s trial goes badly.”
In one sign of how the two cases could affect each other, Biden on Friday chided Trump for complaining repeatedly that his case was rigged, saying, “It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, and it’s irresponsible to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.” Such a comment could make it harder for Biden to criticize his son’s trial if he is unhappy with the outcome.
Just as the defendants in the two cases are very different, so are the charges.
In Trump’s case, prosecutors said he used illegal means to prevent public exposure of an affair that could have damaged his political prospects. Hunter, in turn, is charged with falsely declaring that he was not using illegal drugs when he filled out a form to buy a gun in 2018 – even though he was in the throes of a deep drug addiction, as recounted in his memoir.
The quick succession of two historic cases just five months before the election promises to shape the contours of what is expected to be a close presidential race in unpredictable ways. Hunter Biden faces another criminal trial in September, on tax evasion charges, while Trump faces three more, though they could come after the election.
Biden has largely taken a hands-off approach to the courthouse machinations, seeking to show that he is not interfering with the administration of justice. And his campaign has tried to present a clear distinction between Trump’s struggles with the law and Biden’s work to deliver for the American people.
But those efforts could be complicated if Hunter Biden’s trial resurfaces a troubled chapter in the family’s history. Prosecutors have said they are prepared to call Hunter’s former wife Kathleen Buhle, as well as Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter’s brother Beau with whom Hunter became romantically involved.
Any tales of drugs and romance that emerge could distract the public from the tawdry facts that came out in Trump’s trial, blurring the contrast the president is seeking, said Julian Zelizer, who teaches political history at Princeton University.
“In terms of the broader impact, it’s relevant less for the son being in legal trouble – given that there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by his father – but for how much it distracts from Trump’s legal problems and tarnishes Biden’s image,” Zelizer said. “Should the trial have the effect of dampening the contrast between integrity and wrongdoing, then the impact of the case will be extremely significant.”
Republicans in Congress for months aggressively pursued Hunter Biden, focusing mostly on his foreign business dealings and trying to tie them to his father, efforts that have largely stalled. GOP leaders continue to charge that the Biden family is ethically troubled, however, and the specter of the president’s son facing two criminal trials could play into those efforts.
Trump and his allies complain of a “two-tiered” justice system, saying without evidence that the president has used his power to go after his enemies and shield his son, who they say should be facing tougher charges.
“Just so you understand, this is all done by Biden and his people,” Trump said Friday. “This is done by Washington.” Trump’s guilty verdict came in a case brought by state prosecutors in New York, not Biden’s Justice Department.
Biden blasted such comments on Friday, saying the jury system is a foundation of American democracy and should not be depicted as fundamentally corrupt. “The justice system should be respected, and we should never allow anyone to tear it down,” he said.
Biden’s remarks come as his son’s lawyers have argued that the prosecutors charging Hunter were influenced by political pressure from Republicans. If Biden were not president, they have said, prosecutors would not be pursuing the charges so aggressively, noting that the two sides were near a plea deal last year but it collapsed after Republicans attacked it. (The deal fell apart under questioning from the judge, when prosecutors and defense lawyers could not agree on whether it blocked the Justice Department from filing more charges against Hunter Biden in the future.)
Against that backdrop, White House officials have said they do not plan to respond in real time to developments in Hunter Biden’s case, seeing the matter as a personal one that does not directly involve the president. Rather, the White House will seek to showcase Biden’s statesmanship on the global stage as he takes presidential trips to France and Italy.
There will not be a White House war room operation to address the case, for example, or to respond to attacks from Republicans. After the House GOP spent months on an impeachment inquiry focusing on Hunter Biden and the family finances, White House officials said they do not expect the trial to reveal anything new.
Lawyers for Hunter Biden did not respond to requests for comment.
Yet the trial could exact an emotional toll on a president who speaks to his children and grandchildren almost daily, his associates say. Before running for president, he agonized over the decision in part due to the effect a campaign could have on his family, who had endured years of turbulence marked by Hunter Biden’s struggles with addiction in the wake of Beau’s 2015 death, according to those close to the Bidens.
And Biden is clearly in a unique position as the head of an administration prosecuting his own son. While the president has pledged to allow the legal process to play out, he theoretically could bring it to a sudden end through a pardon, although White House officials say Biden is not considering such a move.
Asked twice last year if there was any possibility that the president would pardon his son, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave an emphatic “No.”
The president is expected to spend Monday in Wilmington, Del., where he has a home and where the trial will unfold. On Tuesday evening, Biden travels to France for a five-day trip that will include a speech marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Next week, Biden will head to Italy for a summit of the Group of Seven nations.
Hunter Biden’s case is expected to take about two weeks, so it could overlap with both presidential trips, putting Biden several time zones away from his son’s ordeal.
The president has kept his son particularly close in recent days, bringing him to a state dinner at the White House and to Delaware, where the Biden family gathered to mark the ninth anniversary of the death of Beau Biden. Father and son were spotted cycling together on Saturday in Rehoboth Beach.
“The president and the first lady, they love their son,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters last week. “They are proud of how their son has been able to get back on his feet and continue his progress, and they will continue to support him.”
Few analysts are willing to predict the political impact of Hunter Biden’s legal problems – or Trump’s – on the 2024 election.
Polling suggests that Trump’s guilty verdict could have a marginal impact on voters who are wary of electing a felon. With Hunter Biden’s legal troubles a step removed from his father, it’s not clear that his trial, or a potential conviction, would sway many voters, according to strategists.
While it is unprecedented for a child of a president to face a federal trial, there is a long history of presidential family members who have found themselves in legal trouble, including presidential brothers Billy Carter, Roger Clinton and Neil Bush.
And after decades when high-profile prosecutors have targeted everything from President Bill Clinton’s Whitewater scandal to the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia, the public has become accustomed to sensitive investigations affecting the presidency, Riley, the presidential historian, said.
“In the post-Watergate era, independent counsel investigations or their like became a staple of American politics, and in every case the go-to defense for those being investigated was ‘This is just partisan politics,’” Riley said. “Having heard this over time from both Republican and Democratic presidents, Americans evidently find it not just plausible, but familiar.”
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