Image source, Getty Images
- author, Anthony Zurcher
- role, North American Correspondent
- Reported by Washington
As jury selection began Monday in Hunter Biden's gun possession trial, his father released a statement that signaled the fine line he is walking in the midst of his reelection campaign.
“I'm a president, but I'm also a father,” Joe Biden said.
His statement also expressed support for his son, who faces up to 25 years in prison for lying about his drug addiction when filling out identification documents to buy a handgun in 2018.
“As President, I do not and will not comment on pending federal litigation,” he continued, “but as a father, I have endless love and confidence for my son and respect for his strength.”
Hunter Biden's struggles with drug addiction are common knowledge at this point — he's spoken about it publicly and written about it in his memoir — and revelations about it will soon become evidence in his trial and be brought to public attention.
Joe Biden has previously spoken publicly about his son's tumultuous personal life, saying he was “proud” of his sole surviving son during the first presidential debate with Donald Trump in 2020.
“My son, like so many people I know back home, had a drug problem,” he said. “He overcame it, he worked through it, he worked through it.”
Four years ago, President Biden responded to Trump's attacks during a debate, but his comments today may be an attempt to defuse a politically charged moment in which his son's troubled past – and that of the entire Biden family – is on full display.
Hunter Biden's ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, is expected to testify about her ex-husband's drug use, and the prosecution's witness list also includes Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter Biden's brother, Beau, who later became romantically involved with Hunter and threw the gun in a trash can in Delaware.
“That's never a good look,” says Kate Andersen Brower, author of several books about U.S. presidents, their families and first ladies. She notes that presidents have had to deal with family feuds before: Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, for example, faced sibling shaming.
But it is completely unprecedented for a president's child to face criminal trial, forcing Biden to walk a tightrope.
He spent this weekend with his son in Delaware and was in Wilmington, where the trial is being held, on Sunday night. The Biden family was well represented during jury selection on Monday.
But the president was back in Washington by then, and while he expressed support for his son, he distanced himself from the incident itself.
Image source, Getty Images
However, First Lady Jill Biden was in attendance, sitting behind Hunter. The two embraced during a morning break in the courtroom proceedings and again after the day's trial concluded. Hunter's current wife, Melissa Cohen Biden (who held Hunter's hand as he left the courtroom), and his half-sister, Ashley Biden, and her husband were also in attendance.
Jill Biden married the president after his first wife, Hunter Biden's mother, was killed in a 1972 car accident that also killed Hunter and Beau, his baby sister Naomi.
The president regularly speaks about his closeness to his family and has made this devotion part of his political identity.
He talks about taking the train from Washington to Delaware every night to say goodnight to his children while he was a U.S. senator. He wrote a book about dealing with grief after Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2016, and spoke about the emotional trauma he experienced after the death of his first wife.
Now, more salacious aspects of the Biden family saga will be made public, including text messages between Hunter Biden and his family, and intimate communications with Beau's widow.
Photographs and other details about Hunter Biden's crack cocaine use will also be made public, some likely gleaned from a laptop whose existence and contents sparked controversy in the final days of the 2020 presidential election.
The Hunter Biden trial comes on the heels of one of the biggest news stories so far of the 2024 presidential election, Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. While the two cases are very different in that one involved charges against a candidate and the other against the candidate's son, comparisons will be inevitable due to the way the two trials played out.
Image source, Getty Images
At the very least, the Biden family drama and Hunter Biden's legal troubles will shift media attention away from Trump, and the legal troubles surrounding his son may make Biden even more reluctant to attack Trump's conviction.
It could also be a major setback for the president as he faces his final campaign as a politician.
“It's going to be very difficult for Biden on a personal level,” Brower said. “He has experience trying to separate his private life from his public life, and this is his only surviving son. It's going to be very taxing.”
There's another way the Hunter Biden legal drama differs from Trump's: The former president's other three criminal cases probably won't move forward before the November election.
But Hunter Biden has also been indicted on federal tax charges and is scheduled to go on trial in September.
The case, which involves allegedly failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes over a four-year period, could be even more politically damaging for the president because it involves financial crimes rather than crimes related to his drug addiction.
“Tax evasion is much harder to excuse,” Bauer said.
If Hunter Biden is convicted in any federal trial, it remains with his father's presidential power to pardon him.
While such a move would have been politically damaging in the past, President Trump has used his pardon power on many controversial figures who worked for him, seemingly without paying much of a price.
While this may be an appealing move for his father, Joe Biden – who maintains his son is innocent – the White House has insisted it is not on the table.
