Hunter Biden’s Surprisingly Good Hardball
Hunter Biden’s Surprisingly Good Hardball
For all his flaws and failings, the first son has battled GOP lies effectively.
THE PATH TO THE PRIZE, for House Republicans, was through Hunter Biden. Their goal—before they even regained the majority in 2022—has been to impeach President Joe Biden, and they assured us his lowlife, criminal son had the goods.
For years Republicans have promised their voters that Hunter, the nude guy with the crack pipe in the pictures they keep seeing, had made millions getting his father to help out his foreign clients, including foreign governments, with policy favors. They insisted the president was getting a cut. The “Biden crime family” was even involved in “prostitution rings.”
Month after month, they have failed to locate evidence supporting any of this. Yet Republicans cannot abandon their goal of impeaching the president—Donald Trump won’t let them. So the role of Hunter as punching bag has grown even more central over time.
Their apparent strategy has been to arrange an interview behind closed doors with a sheepish and ashamed Hunter, and then leak out cherry-picked portions that seemed damaging. This would go over well on Fox News, help Republicans raise a lot of cash, and deflect from the fact that they have neither high crime nor misdemeanor and may never have even hold a vote on the House floor.
Hunter’s response? Come at me, bro.
In December Hunter demanded a public hearing, which Republicans refused. He defied a subpoena and busted into the Oversight Committee on January 10, asking why they would not depose him in public. His Trumpian spectacle embarrassed Republicans, causing Rep. Nancy Mace to become unhinged. She yelled at him for the “epitome of white privilege,” and declared he should be arrested and go to jail that day.
Last week Republicans finally deposed Hunter and embarrassed themselves again. After more than six hours of testimony on Wednesday, Republicans still have no bombshell bribery scandal. The Oversight Committee chairman, Rep. James Comer, left early after not asking Hunter a single question. Rep. Andy Biggs warned before the transcript was released that it would make Hunter look good because “they did a great job prepping.”
Terms negotiated for his deposition protected Hunter from GOP efforts to manipulate the testimony, according to the Daily Beast. There would be no video they could use clips from out of context, and the transcript of raw, uncut Hunter had to be released in full.
Hunter opened his testimony stating:
For more than a year, your committees have hunted me in your partisan political pursuit of my dad. You have trafficked in innuendo, distortion, and sensationalism, all the while ignoring the clear and convincing evidence staring you in the face: You do not have evidence to support the baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies about my father because there isn’t any.
And after detailing how each GOP witness had been discredited, Hunter said: “Rather than follow the facts as they’ve been laid out before you in bank records, financial statements, correspondence, and other witness testimony, you continue your frantic search to prove the lies you and those you rely upon keep peddling. Yes, they are lies.”
Joe Biden had never acted to benefit Hunter’s businesses or been otherwise involved in them, Hunter insisted, and had never received money from them. And, Hunter said, he had never asked his father to do anything on his behalf related to his business dealings.
FROM THE PRESS COVERAGE of his testimony, it’s clear that Hunter’s life is still messy, and he continues to deny the reality that his income has banked on his dad’s name his whole career.
The Trumps are obviously far worse nepo babies than Hunter—they worked in the White House while earning outside money, getting trademarks from the Chinese government, and hustling from the inside with the Saudi government to secure a $2 billion deal from them once outside of government.
But Hunter’s crimes have put him in great legal peril: He has been federally indicted on multiple tax and firearm charges that, if he is convicted, could send him to prison for up to 17 years.
Even sober, Hunter has continued to make bad decisions that are often political liabilities for his father. His art career, like his foreign business, is fuel for the GOP, full of uncomfortable facts like this—Elizabeth Naftali, a Democratic donor whom Biden appointed to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad in 2022, bought two of Hunter’s paintings in 2021 for a total of about $100,000.
As a matter of optics, Hunter Biden should not have shown up at a state dinner last year attended by Attorney General Merrick Garland at a time when the Department of Justice was investigating him, just days after the announcement of a plea deal. (The deal later collapsed.)
Hunter asked his parents not to acknowledge a daughter he had out of wedlock—their seventh grandchild—for an entire four years. He had originally denied paternity, said he couldn’t recall impregnating the girl’s mother and, after a child-support case, still asked that the child not be allowed to have the last name Biden. One has to be heartless not to pity Hunter—a man broken by tragedy and trauma—but addiction doesn’t excuse this unconscionable conduct.
HUNTER ISN’T LOOKING FOR REDEMPTION through his battle with the House Oversight Committee. He is fighting falsehoods. And he is defending his father, who can’t defend himself.
Joe Biden can’t blast out tweets and bellow at the microphones about witch hunts like Trump; it’s just not who he is. He barely ever speaks of the impeachment effort, unless he is asked by reporters. And the father who has lost two of his four children has worried all along that the congressional investigation could send Hunter into a relapse—which could potentially kill him.
In light of this, Hunter gave Republicans what they deserve. He told them Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant indicted for lying about the Bidens, “has made you dupes in carrying out a Russian disinformation campaign waged against my father.”
And he declared: “Unlike Jared Kushner, I’ve never received money from a foreign government.”
Hunter also approached Mace during a break in the deposition and, according to Mace, shook her hand as he told her he was not “the evil man” she makes him out to be. Mace told Fox News that Hunter’s effort to defend his dignity with her fell flat, naturally.
“I guess he thinks he’s a smooth talker,” Mace said. “He was way overconfident today.”
Overconfidence is not Hunter Biden’s problem. He is not combative and defensive, the way Trump is in the face of clear guilt. Hunter Biden’s defiance is righteous; he is furious he is being used to take down his own father. And he is exasperated that the truth—and his father’s honor—could be swallowed up by a Big Lie party where reality is discarded for political advantage, and evidence is no longer required.