Have you guys been keeping up on this?
The White House is bracing for political fallout from a looming decision by federal prosecutors over whether to charge Joe Biden’s son Hunter with tax crimes and lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun.
Hunter’s taxes and foreign business dealings have been under investigation by a federal grand jury in Delaware since at least 2018. His membership on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have raised questions by Republicans about whether he traded on his father’s public service.
Then media reports last October claimed that federal agents believed they had enough evidence to criminally charge Hunter on two matters: failing to report all his income to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and making a false statement in relation to buying a gun in 2018.
According to the Washington Post, Hunter filled out a federal form in which he allegedly answered “no” to the question of whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance”. Yet the president’s son has acknowledged his long struggle with drug addiction and, in his 2021 memoir Beautiful Things, recalled spells in 2018 when he smoked crack “every 15 minutes”.
Hunter’s new career as a painter previously raised ethical questions and now his legal and financial woes continue to pile up, posing political risks for his father’s re-election campaign.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... nter-biden
And there's lots more. The old man did something he probably shouldn't have done, although Trump and other Presidents have done it countless times, and that is comment on a case that is currently pending by saying: “First of all, my son has done nothing wrong,” President Joe Biden said in an interview with Stephanie Ruhle, host of “The 11th Hour on MSNBC.” “I trust him. I have faith in him.” The president continued: “It impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him.”
Now if that ain't a lot of baloney. He trusts his son? He's proud of him? Hunter clearly lied on his application to buy a gun, which is a felony, when he answered "no" to the question about his personal use of illegal drugs yet Joe doesn't think his son did anything wrong?
The whistleblower’s attorney Mark Lytle wrote that his client believed a high-ranking Justice Department official, later identified as Garland, was responsible for slow-walking the investigation.
“The protected disclosures: (1) contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee (AG Garland), (2) involve failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case, and (3) detail examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected,” the letter said.
And then there's this:
CBS News said Monday that it confirmed the authenticity of data from Hunter Biden’s former laptop — more than two years after The Post first revealed its contents — as the first son’s lawyer complained he didn’t “consent” to the release.
Most news outlets ignored the laptop’s contents until recently. CBS’s report follows belated verification of the laptop in March by the Washington Post and New York Times.
Anyhow, there's a whole load of chit in this brewing scandal, and some of it could lead back to the old man, especially if he was aware of his son's activities and didn't do anything to stop him. In any event, it's almost certainly going to stretch into next year's election cycle, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the R's will pounce on it like a chicken on a June bug.