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Among Joe Biden\u2019s advisers and Democratic Party operatives, there\u2019s disagreement on its potential political repercussions, according to eight people close to the president and his son. Most were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.<\/p>\n
Some White House staff are \u201cirritated that he\u2019s being more aggressive, because he is not clearing the tactics and the strategy,\u201d said one former 2020 campaign aide.<\/p>\n
Some aides worry, too, that Hunter Biden\u2019s courtroom counterpunching only brightens the spotlight on his legal entanglements, foreign business activities, and personal struggle with drug addiction. For these aides, too much engagement with opponents, including Rudy Giuliani and the conservative media, risks legitimizing their most extreme attacks on the president\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
But many allies of the president \u2014 especially those who cut their teeth during the Trump presidency \u2014 see it differently. One called the cautious approach \u201coutdated 1990s rationale\u201d and said that, in the 21st century, it\u2019s reckless to leave allegations unrebutted. For this camp, there was something to learn from Trump\u2019s scandal playbook: It pays to talk loud, move fast and punch hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe American public likes to see people fight back,\u201d said Jamal Simmons, a former communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris. \u201cPeople who fight for themselves tend to get the benefit of the doubt from the public. And I actually think that probably does help the president in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden keeps his father aware of his legal moves, according to a person close to his legal team, and the team sends word to top White House staff before making major moves. The moves themselves are entirely up to Hunter Biden and his lawyers \u2014 and that\u2019s as it should be, aides emphasize, because the president has vowed to stay out of his son\u2019s legal affairs.<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden, his lawyers and the White House declined to comment. But among the small cadre of advisers close to the president\u2019s son, the newly aggressive approach was long overdue.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow does he possibly keep his head down?\u201d a person close to his legal team said. \u201cThey have lifted his head above everyone else\u2019s, and they\u2019ve been trying to lop it off for four years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden\u2019s legal fights run on three tracks: criminal, congressional and civil.<\/p>\n
In criminal court, special counsel David Weiss charged him in September with illegally owning a gun as a user of illegal drugs, and Weiss is also considering charges for failure to pay federal income taxes.<\/p>\n
In Congress, House Republicans are running a sprawling investigation of his foreign business deals, including his stint on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.<\/p>\n
And in the civil arena, he is either a plaintiff or defendant in at least five ongoing lawsuits, ranging from a case against Giuliani to a case against his father\u2019s own IRS.<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t always this way. In 2018, in the middle of Trump\u2019s presidency and before Hunter Biden became the political lightning rod he is today, federal law enforcement officials quietly opened an investigation into his tax affairs. The probe was not publicly known at the time. Lawyers and advisers around the president\u2019s son privately urged him to cooperate when they learned he was under scrutiny.<\/p>\n
So the president\u2019s son stayed largely silent in the media. He kept a mostly low profile, engaged with the Justice Department, and signed two agreements pausing the statute of limitations on charges federal prosecutors were weighing. Those agreements helped keep Hunter Biden in legal limbo for years, but they also gave his lawyers more time to try to talk prosecutors out of charging him.<\/p>\n
In October 2020, the New York Post published an article reporting that Hunter Biden left a laptop at a Delaware computer shop. Giuliani had reportedly provided the newspaper with emails from the laptop about Hunter Biden\u2019s business activities.<\/p>\n
Just weeks before the 2020 election, the article claimed that the emails showed corruption by Joe Biden. To date, no evidence has emerged showing that Joe Biden made policy decisions as vice president to help his son\u2019s business interests. A Politifact analysis concluded that \u201c[n]othing from the laptop has revealed illegal or unethical behavior by Joe Biden as vice president with regard to his son\u2019s tenure as a director for Burisma, a Ukraine-based natural gas company.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the years after the laptop\u2019s release, Hunter Biden held back from taking any legal action against the people who shared and published his purported emails \u2014 staying cautious instead of expanding his legal battleground.<\/p>\n
Despite this strategy of hunkering down, the clouds looming over Hunter Biden didn\u2019t blow over. Instead, they darkened.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department investigation broadened to include not just financial issues but also Hunter Biden\u2019s purchase of a handgun in 2018, a time when he has said he was frequently using crack cocaine.<\/p>\n
And when Republicans took control of the House in 2022, they zeroed in on Hunter Biden\u2019s financial dealings, accusing him of a cornucopia of crimes \u2014 and accusing the Justice Department of going easy on him. House Republicans have also put Hunter Biden at the center of their impeachment inquiry, arguing that the president may have corruptly benefited from his son\u2019s business activities. So far, they have failed to produce evidence of wrongdoing by the president.<\/p>\n
Late last year, Hunter Biden retained Abbe Lowell, an elite and combative defense lawyer whose clients have included Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, former Democratic Sen. John Edwards and even Trump\u2019s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Lowell successfully defended Menendez against corruption charges in 2017, and is now representing him in a new corruption case. He fended off campaign finance charges against Edwards, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2004. And he helped Kushner navigate special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s Russia probe.<\/p>\n
After Lowell came on board Hunter Biden\u2019s team, the legal strategy for the president\u2019s son began to change.<\/p>\n
In February, his team threatened to sue Fox News Channel over what they described as Tucker Carlson\u2019s false suggestion that Hunter and Joe Biden were involved in a money laundering scheme. After John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of the Delaware computer shop, sued Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden sued him right back in March. (Mac Isaac has also sued POLITICO and others for defamation and civil conspiracy; the case remains pending.)<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, in private talks with the federal prosecutors running the criminal probe, Hunter Biden\u2019s lawyers were using aggressive negotiating tactics, even threatening at one point to put Joe Biden on the witness stand if prosecutors charged Hunter Biden with the gun crime.<\/p>\n
This summer, it seemed like the approach was starting to pay off. On June 20, Biden\u2019s lawyers and federal prosecutors unveiled a plea deal that could have resolved his criminal problems without any prison time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHunter feels happy to move on with his life,\u201d one of his lawyers told MSNBC that day.<\/p>\n
But after a tumultuous hearing on July 26 during which a federal judge raised questions about the agreement, the plea deal collapsed.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the investigation itself was becoming a political story, with IRS whistleblowers telling Congress that Weiss \u2014 the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware who had been leading the probe since its inception \u2014 had been hampered in various ways. Weiss, for his part, has insisted that he never faced interference.<\/p>\n
On Aug. 8, less than two months after it had seemed poised to end, the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden escalated. Attorney General Merrick Garland made Weiss a special counsel, formally giving him more independence and empowering him to bring charges against Hunter Biden anywhere in the country.<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, Weiss obtained an indictment in Delaware over Hunter Biden\u2019s 2018 gun purchase. The president\u2019s son faces felony charges for owning a gun while using illegal drugs and for lying on a federal gun-purchase form. He might stand trial next year during the heat of his father\u2019s reelection campaign.<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden and his team viewed the move as a sign Weiss had turned draconian. They have long argued that it\u2019s the first time anyone has been charged in Delaware with owning a gun as a drug user without any other aggravating circumstances \u2014 such as using the gun to commit a crime.<\/p>\n
Many House Republicans have accused Weiss of going easy on the president\u2019s son by not charging him with crimes related to lobbying and campaign finance. But Hunter Biden\u2019s team had a different view: In their eyes, the only explanation for bringing the gun charge at all was unrelenting political pressure from Republicans.<\/p>\n
For Team Hunter, the special counsel announcement meant quiet patience was untenable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not playing for a tie,\u201d said a friend of Hunter Biden. \u201cWe\u2019re playing for setting the record straight, and accountability for those who have harmed him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden\u2019s previous defense lawyer, Chris Clark, who led negotiations with the Justice Department, is no longer on his legal team. He withdrew from the case in August, citing concern that he may be a witness in potential litigation over the failed plea deal. Lowell is now at the helm. He, Hunter Biden and attorney Kevin Morris \u2014 who helped the president\u2019s son pay his outstanding tax debt, and who advocated for Lowell\u2019s hiring \u2014 operate autonomously, independent of pressure or management from national Democratic operatives.<\/p>\n
Morris has long advocated a bare-knuckle approach and works closely with Lowell. According to Hunter Biden\u2019s friend, Morris has told associates, \u201cWe want to go on offense because we know we can win. That\u2019s the whole point.\u201d<\/p>\n
And now that\u2019s happening. Hunter Biden is going to court.<\/p>\n
In September, the president\u2019s son sued Giuliani and Giuliani\u2019s former lawyer Robert Costello for allegedly hacking into his data and distributing it. He\u2019s brought similar allegations against former Trump White House aide Garrett Ziegler, who has distributed contents from the laptop. The lawsuits accuse Giuliani, Costello and Ziegler of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and a California data privacy law. Ziegler told POLITICO the lawsuit is \u201cfrivolous\u201d and that he will respond to it next month.<\/p>\n
Also in September, Hunter Biden sued the IRS for allegedly failing to keep his tax information from becoming public, citing the fact that IRS agents who investigated him testified to Congress in detail about his financial dealings. Lawyers for those agents have consistently defended their disclosures as lawful.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Hunter Biden sued Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, for defamation after Byrne suggested that Biden had solicited a bribe from Iran.<\/p>\n
And on Nov. 15, Hunter Biden\u2019s lawyers launched perhaps their most ambitious legal salvo yet: They attempted to subpoena Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr and other top officials in the Trump Justice Department. The gun charges against Hunter Biden may represent a \u201cvindictive or selective prosecution\u201d that violate his constitutional rights, Lowell wrote in a court document seeking a judge\u2019s approval for the subpoenas. The subpoenas, Lowell argued, may help shed light on the \u201csustained, almost-nonstop public pressure campaign, led by Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden is also taking an aggressive tack in response to the House Republicans\u2019 ongoing probe. In a letter Tuesday to House Oversight Chair James Comer, Lowell countered House Republicans\u2019 subpoena for Hunter Biden to testify behind closed doors next month. Instead, he proposed a public hearing on Dec. 13 \u2014 or another date next month they can agree to \u2014 arguing it would \u201cprevent selective leaks, manipulated transcripts, doctored exhibits, or one-sided press statements.\u201d<\/p>\n
The person close to Hunter Biden\u2019s legal team described the new legal strategy as \u201caggressive defense.\u201d<\/p>\n
How that strategy interacts with his father\u2019s own aggressive defense \u2014 his campaign to hold onto the White House \u2014 is complex, fraught, and in many ways an open question.<\/p>\n
Some of the president\u2019s allies argue the politics surrounding Hunter Biden are already baked in. As long as the president himself is not found to have done something wrong, anything that happens in his son\u2019s cases is unlikely to cause any more political harm to the president, these aides argue.<\/p>\n
Other White House aides and outside Democratic operatives are concerned about Hunter Biden\u2019s strategy. His team rolled out the lawsuits independent from the president\u2019s political operation.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s in part because Hunter Biden himself is not close with many of the staff surrounding his father. He has told friends they are largely strangers, and that he can\u2019t expect strangers to defend him when he won\u2019t defend himself.<\/p>\n
And for years now, he has made major decisions about media strategy without seeking his father\u2019s aides\u2019 blessing. He participated in a lengthy July 2019 New Yorker profile without seeking any guidance from his father\u2019s campaign. Three months later, he sat for a \u201cGood Morning America\u201d interview without bringing along a campaign staffer. Three former 2020 campaign aides said staff were surprised to learn he\u2019d taped the sit-down.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got up like everybody that morning to watch \u2018Good Morning America,\u2019\u201d one of those former campaign aides said.<\/p>\n
And in the first year of his father\u2019s presidency, he released a memoir describing his drug addiction in sometimes stomach-churning detail.<\/p>\n
But the president\u2019s son has told friends that he believes his instincts \u2014 shaped by decades near the political spotlight \u2014 have been vindicated. The New Yorker profile was widely viewed as a positive portrayal, and White House staff routinely cite his memoir when questioned about him.<\/p>\n
The upshot is that Hunter Biden is operating relatively independently to shape his own narrative \u2014 a narrative that mixes politics and law and that is largely outside the control of the president\u2019s advisers and defenders.<\/p>\n
Consistent with the president\u2019s vow to honor the Justice Department\u2019s independence, the White House does not comment on Hunter Biden\u2019s criminal case or his other legal issues. Conservative lawmakers and pundits, however, feel no such strictures. And their voluminous attacks have received limited public rebuttal from the left.<\/p>\n
Instead, two Capitol Hill Democrats have told POLITICO that they view the politics on the issue as fixed, so the prospect of going on offense is all risk and no reward. In general, they are comfortable defending the president, but not his son.<\/p>\n
And some don\u2019t just abstain from the debate. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) called the first son \u201ca disturbed man\u201d who \u201cmay have very well done some improper things.\u201d And Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told ABC News in August that the president\u2019s son \u201cdid a lot of really unlawful and wrong things.\u201d Nadler and Raskin are the top Democrats on committees involved in the Republicans\u2019 impeachment probe.<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden\u2019s team finds this troubling.<\/p>\n
\u201cIntentionally or not, they\u2019re betting on the political expediency of sacrificing Hunter,\u201d said the friend who spoke to POLITICO.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe greater good is served by accountability and vindication, and not by acquiescence to political prosecution and the effort to dehumanize him,\u201d the friend added.<\/p>\n
And some of the president\u2019s allies wish the strategic-silence approach had ended sooner.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at what it\u2019s done to the president\u2019s reputation,\u201d said a former senior White House aide. \u201cA man once known for his integrity is now \u2014 most people believe \u2014 he\u2019s either corrupt, lying, or was involved in his son\u2019s criminal enterprise. All of which would never be the case if they had been responding to these kinds of smears from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicholas Wu, Benjamin Guggenheim and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Among Joe Biden\u2019s advisers and Democratic Party operatives, there\u2019s disagreement on its potential political repercussions, according to eight people close to the president and his son. Most were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic. Some White House staff are \u201cirritated that he\u2019s being more aggressive, because he is not clearing the tactics and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrapoid.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrapoid.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrapoid.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrapoid.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrapoid.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrapoid.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrapoid.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrapoid.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrapoid.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrapoid.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}