Joe Biden’s Hunter Biden Problem Is Only Going to Grow

The time for the White House and president Joe Biden’s re-election campaign to start worrying is now.

Hunter Biden was indicted late Thursday on nine tax charges in California, including three felonies and six misdemeanors.

The sweeping 56-page indictment accuses the president’s son of spending millions of dollars on an “extravagant lifestyle” rather than paying taxes, painting a picture of a life that revolved around drugs, strippers, luxury hotels and exotic cars. At one point, the special counsel estimates, Hunter Biden owed at least $1.4 million in unpaid taxes between 2016 and 2019 – a period during which he has admitted being addicted to drugs.

The back taxes have since been paid, but, if convicted, the president’s son could receive a maximum of 17 years in prison. The special counsel investigation is still ongoing.

“Based on the facts and the law, if Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought,” defense attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement that sounded not entirely unlike the daily lamentations from former President Donald Trump, who’s facing 91 criminal charges across four indictments.

And that’s precisely the problem – now more than ever – for the White House.

To be clear, President Biden is running for reelection – not his son. But with the 2024 presidential election less than a year away, with all signs pointing to a rematch between Biden and Trump, and with a devoted group of congressional Republicans and GOP strategists committed to connecting the current president to his son’s legal troubles and overseas business transactions, the new indictment is a boon for those trying to make the argument – legitimate or not – that Joe Biden has just as much baggage as Donald Trump.

Indeed, polling from October, which was performed by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, showed that 35% of U.S. adults believe that President Biden has done something illegal. An additional 33% say that he’s behaved unethically, but not illegally, to just 30% who say that he did nothing wrong.

And while only 8% of Democrats said they think the president is guilty of crimes pertaining to his son, 38% of independents and two-thirds of Republicans agree.

Those percentages stand to climb, especially as congressional Republicans seek articles of impeachment.

The House Oversight Committee, the Judiciary Committee and the Ways and Means Committee have been working in concert since Republicans took control of the House last year to investigate Hunter Biden’s overseas business activities, as well as those of other family members, in an effort to build a narrative that bolsters their impeachment inquiry – specifically, by investigating whether the president profited off of any of his family’s foreign business dealings.

This week, Rep. James Comer announced what he characterized as major revelations of monthly payments from Hunter Biden to his father. That they ended up being benign payments for a car loan – and not tied to improper business dealings – is beside the point. As is the fact that the ongoing investigation has thus far failed to turn up evidence to further their impeachment efforts.

The point is to keep Hunter Biden’s name in the headlines and sew a narrative of doubt long enough so that voters no longer care about the particulars. Comer already called for Justice Department special counsel David Weiss – who was appointed to the post of U.S. attorney for Delaware by former President Donald Trump and empowered in his investigation by Biden-appointed Attorney General Merrick Garland – to probe the president in relation to Hunter Biden’s indictment.

“Unless U.S. Attorney Weiss investigates everyone involved in the Bidens’ fraud schemes and influence peddling, it will be clear President Biden’s DOJ is protecting Hunter Biden and the big guy,” Comer said in a statement.

Notably, the new charges are in addition to federal firearms charges in Delaware, where Hunter Biden stands accused of buying a gun in 2018 while being a habitual drug user. He was set to plead guilty over the summer to tax misdemeanors after coming to an agreement with the special counsel under which he would have had to serve two years probation in exchange for avoiding prosecution on a gun charge and any jail time.

But the plea deal unexpectedly imploded, putting the case on track for a trial that collides with his father’s reelection campaign.

The White House declined to comment on the new indictment. Biden – though focusing all of his public-facing activity on governing – has gone to great lengths to vocally support Hunter, who was in a traumatic car accident when he was a child that killed his mother and sister and left him and his brother critically injured. Until recently, Hunter Biden was playing by a widely agreed upon strategy of laying low and allowing lawyers to work diligently through the legal process.

Since the fall, however, the president’s son has seemed more eager to fight charges and punch back against criticism – for example, suing the IRS for being treated differently than other Americans, accusing a former Trump aide in a lawsuit of publishing emails and images of him, and asking state and federal agencies to investigate Trump allies for accessing and spreading his personal data.

The newly aggressive style, combined with the new indictment and continued efforts by House Republicans to nail the president to his son’s transgressions could spell trouble for Biden heading into an election in which the majority of voters don’t seem very energized by either candidate.

Of course, Trump has his own baggage and his own set of trials, including one poised to begin March 4 in D.C., where he stands accused of attempting to subvert the 2020 presidential election and incite an insurrection at the Capitol.