At the White House spin machine, someone decided to change the storyline.
With jury selection beginning Monday in Wilmington, Delaware, in the trial of President Joe Biden's notorious son, Hunter Biden, the president issued a statement -- making a pretense of avoiding influencing the process.
But considering Biden's own past statements on the subject, no American should fall for it.
In the statement released Monday, Biden was all about feel-good fatherly love for an occasionally wayward offspring, mixed with a high-sounding sentence about not commenting on "pending federal cases."
POTUS statement as his son's trial gets underway. pic.twitter.com/bWcdj7ldQ1
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) June 3, 2024
But that was a far, far cry from Biden's statement back when it actually mattered -- when federal investigators were being forced to take some kind of action on Hunter Biden's violations of the law, whether in dodging taxes or lying on a federal form while buying a gun.
"My son has done nothing wrong," Biden told MSNBC's reliably liberal Stephanie Ruhle in a May 5, 2023, interview, as NBC reported at the time.
The message then was not so much to Ruhle or even MSNBC's viewers as it was to the federal agents -- a not-so-subtle warning from the head of the executive branch for the Justice Department to stay away from his family.
As The Wall Street Journal editorial board noted at the time, it was a "public signal in an interview that Attorney General Merrick Garland will hear."
And oh, how Merrick Garland's Justice Department tried to obey it.
They even came up with a sweetheart plea deal that would have allowed Hunter Biden to avoid prosecution on the firearms charges he's facing in exchange for his pleading guilty to misdemeanor tax charges, The New York Times reported in July 2023.
The deal also would have granted Hunter Biden "broad immunity for past crimes," the New York Post reported at the time.
Fortunately for the cause of justice, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika blew the plea deal apart during a lengthy hearing July 26.
And now Hunter Biden is going to trial. As CNN reported, he faces two charges of lying on federal forms in 2018, in which he swore he was not addicted to drugs in order to buy a gun, and one count of illegally possessing the gun he purchased.
“I am the President, but I am also a Dad. Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today," Biden said in the statement. "Hunter’s resilience in the face of adversity and the strength he has brought to his recovery are inspiring to us. A lot of families have loved ones who have overcome addiction and know what we mean.
"As the President, I don’t and won’t comment on pending federal cases [italics added], but as a Dad, I have boundless love for my son, confidence in him, and respect for his strength.
"Our family has been through a lot together, and Jill and I are going to continue to be there for Hunter and our family with our love and support.”
Note the subtle difference -- but a direct contradiction to what Biden told Ruhle last year.
Now, Biden is claiming he can't comment on a federal case, but he had no problem doing it before -- issuing a blanket (and laughably deceptive) statement that his son had done "nothing wrong." (It's worth noting that Biden didn't repeat that claim Monday. He probably realizes it would only antagonize potential jurors.)
It's true that Hunter Biden was not under indictment when Biden spoke to Ruhle, but he was under a federal investigation that was widely known. And the president was making his feelings known to his underlings as obviously as if he had written a memo from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
Now that that effort to abuse the powers of his office has failed to end his son's legal liabilities, Biden is turning to the heartstrings defense.
Is there a doubt in the world that any American jury, in any state, would not be aware of the words the president has said about a case? If there is, there's no doubt at all that a jury in Wilmington, Delaware, would know about them.
Delaware is the state Biden represented in the Senate for 35 years, the state he returns home to frequently.
Now, he's playing the heartbroken father card, the struggling addict card -- just about anything to distract voters from the fact that the criminal charges his son is facing are just a minuscule part of Hunter's years of crime -- when he earned millions of dollars for doing nothing more than peddling the Biden name.
The evidence that Hunter Biden was using drugs at the time of the gun purchase is available not only from witnesses who knew him intimately, such as his deceased brother's widow, who was Hunter's lover in 2018, but from Hunter Biden's autobiography, which is chockablock with drug use in his life, including around the time in question.
In October 2022, the U.K.'s Daily Mail carried a report about a recording of Joe Biden himself pleading with Hunter Biden to get help with his drug addiction, three days after the Hunter Biden purchased the gun. The recording, naturally, was reportedly found on Hunter Biden's infamous laptop.
Can the president's transparent bid for sympathy overcome the mountain of evidence that Hunter Biden is guilty of lying on a federal form to purchase a gun -- a crime other defendants have gone to prison for?
That remains to be seen. But there's no doubt the White House spin machine is already working on it.
