For US President Biden, the subject of his son Hunter is both personally and politically painful

WASHINGTON – After more than a half-century in politics, no subject may be more personally painful nor politically problematic for President Joe Biden than his troubled son, Hunter.

Hunter Biden is by all accounts a gaping wound in the President’s heart and the most sensitive soft spot in his campaign armour.

On the one hand, Hunter Biden’s agreement on Tuesday to

plead guilty to two misdemeanour tax crimes

capped a five-year investigation without allegations of wrongdoing by the President or, presumably, prison time for his youngest son.

But on the other hand, it put Hunter Biden once again in the crosshairs of the president’s adversaries who instantly complained that the wayward son got off too easy.

The saga of the 53-year-old presidential progeny who has struggled with a crack cocaine addiction has become a fixation of the political right, which sees him, or at least has cast him, as a walking, talking exemplar of the pay-to-play culture of the Washington swamp who profited off his name.

The phrase “Hunter Biden’s laptop” has taken on totemic meaning for opponents of the President even if they cannot describe

what was actually found on the computer that turned up at a repair shop in 2020.

The timing of the younger Biden’s plea agreement, coming just a week after

the indictment of former president Donald Trump on 37 felony counts

of jeopardising national security and obstructing justice, invariably generated comparisons between two vastly different cases.

The President’s allies pointed to the plea deal as evidence that Mr Biden was playing it straight by letting a prosecutor first appointed by Trump decide how to handle his son’s misconduct, while the former president and his backers characterised it as proof of selective justice.

“The corrupt Biden DOJ (Department of Justice) just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket,’” Trump wrote on his social media platform.

“Slap on the wrist” became the official phrase echoed by Republicans like representatives James Comer of Kentucky and Elise Stefanik of New York.

Mr David Brock, a Democratic operative, said the outcome of the prosecution refuted the many allegations hurled at the President and his son since the Trump administration.

“Hunter will not be charged with any of the unfounded and outlandish issues Republicans and right-wing media have used to smear him with for years,” Mr Brock said.

It is a debate Mr Biden would just as soon not engage in, and he stayed quiet in the hours after news of his son’s plea agreement broke, authorising a White House spokesman to say only that he and the first lady “love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life”.

The President understands that the deal with prosecutors will not be the end of the matter as House Republicans aggressively conduct their own inquiries and publicise more sensational accusations that, even without confirmation, have become a staple of conservative media.

Hunter Biden has become in some ways a more extreme example of the phenomenon in an era when whatever restraint about a president’s family that might have existed in the past has long since vanished.

His work in Ukraine helped lead to Trump’s first impeachment, his laptop led to allegations that Twitter covered up on his behalf, and his business dealings have prompted sprawling congressional inquiries.

Republicans have convinced many Americans that the President’s son has been up to something shady.

A Harris Poll conducted in May for Harvard’s Centre for American Political Studies found that 63 per cent of Americans think Hunter Biden was involved in “influence peddling”, and 53 per cent said his father was somehow involved while he was vice-president.

Even Democratic allies of the President have privately said there were legitimate questions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China that seemed to trade on his name even as they emphasised there was no concrete evidence that his father abused his power in office as a result.

None of those produced charges in Tuesday’s deal, which was brokered by Mr David Weiss, the US lawyer first appointed by Trump’s attorney-general to investigate and kept on the case by Mr Biden’s Justice Department.

But questions about the younger Biden’s conduct will persist.

For the President, though, it is much more personal.

Mr Biden’s relationship with his son was forged in the 1972 car accident that killed his first wife and infant daughter while injuring Hunter and his older brother Beau.

While Mr Beau Biden grew up to become a successful politician who his father imagined might become president himself one day, Hunter struggled with alcohol, drugs and personal issues.

After Mr Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015, a distraught Hunter spiralled into repeated bouts with crack cocaine that ultimately destroyed his marriage.

As Hunter Biden wrote in Beautiful Things, his 2021 memoir, he would descend into weeks-long drug binges, smoking crack as often as every 15 minutes and engaging in erratic and even reckless behaviour, including inviting his street dealer to live with him and conducting an extramarital affair with Beau’s widow Hallie Biden.

He described a life of “buying crack in the middle of the night behind a gas station in Nashville, Tennessee, or craving the tiny liquor bottles in your hotel minibar while sitting in a palace in Amman with the king of Jordan”.

At one point, when he disappeared for nearly a month, he opened his door to find his father, then the vice-president, trailed by Secret Service agents.

“You need help,” his father said.

As Hunter Biden wrote, “He wouldn’t leave until I agreed to do something.”

On another occasion, the President participated in a family intervention, ambushing Hunter Biden to push him into treatment.

When Hunter Biden stormed out in anger, his father chased him down the driveway and grabbed him and cried.

Hunter Biden has remarried, paid the tax debt that led to Tuesday’s charges, and said he has turned his life around.

He only occasionally shows up at the White House, knowing that whenever he does, it will become an issue.

He approached Mr Kevin McCarthy, soon to be the Republican House speaker, at a state dinner at the White House in December and complimented his mother.

He travelled with his father to Ireland in April.

But regardless of whether he is there in person, Hunter Biden will continue to be a presence in his father’s presidency, welcome or not, especially as 2024’s election draws closer. NYTIMES