President Joe Biden is locked in a toss-up reelection bid against former President Donald Trump, and Hunter Biden‘s two criminal trials could very well “cast a cloud” over the president’s ability to campaign and connect with voters ahead of the 2024 general election.
The president’s son will face his first trial, involving felony gun charges in Delaware, on June 3. A trial surrounding separate tax fraud charges in California was originally slated to begin at the end of June but will begin in September after being delayed earlier this month.
Each case represents the first criminal indictments against a child of a sitting president, but Biden allies tell the Washington Examiner that both the White House and Biden campaign likely will not respond directly to the proceedings.
“President Biden is immensely proud of his son, and he’ll likely be following his trials just like any concerned parent would be doing,” one strategist claimed. “But don’t expect the campaign to be running cover for Hunter. They want this to make as little noise as possible.”
Joe Biden and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre have largely avoided commenting on Hunter Biden’s legal proceedings beyond reiterating that the president and first lady love and support their son.
“For the president and first lady, this is really about being there for their son as parents and showing him love and support,” a White House official said in a statement.
NBC reported on Friday that Biden allies would be following Hunter Biden’s two trials to see if Joe Biden is invoked directly and subsequently decide if responses will be necessary on a case-by-case basis.
Multiple Democratic strategists familiar with Joe Biden’s campaign strategy acknowledged to the Washington Examiner that Hunter Biden’s trials would receive heavy media coverage but suggested that Trump’s own criminal trials could undercut attacks levied against Joe Biden by Republicans about his son’s charges.
However, some Democratic strategists worry that while Trump’s trials appear to be strengthening his grip on Republicans, Hunter Biden’s trials will be harder for Joe Biden to shake.
“The April fundraising numbers show that extreme MAGA Republicans don’t care that their nominee will be the first man to run for the White House facing multiple felony indictments,” one such strategist explained. “Meanwhile, President Biden needs to shore up legs of the Democratic Party who have soured on him over the war in Gaza and simultaneously connect with independents.”
“It certainly casts a cloud over the campaign,” a second strategist stated. “President Biden wants to draw as many contrasts between himself and Trump as possible, and Hunter’s presence in court alone won’t make that job any easier.”
As president, Biden has placed a premium on spending time with his family, but even those private interactions could create negative media buzz amid Hunter Biden’s trials.
For example, Joe Biden visited Hallie Biden, the widow of his late son Beau Biden, on Sunday evening. Hallie Biden was also briefly involved with Hunter Biden following Beau Biden’s passing in 2015, and the White House was forced to state retroactively that the two did not discuss Hunter Biden’s June trial during the meeting.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement on Monday that the president visited his daughter-in-law ahead of the ninth anniversary of Beau Biden’s death on May 30.
Furthermore, Lunden Roberts, the mother of Hunter Biden’s youngest daughter, plans to publish a “tell-all memoir” regarding her “tumultuous relationship” with the president’s son on Aug. 20, during the Democratic National Convention.
“Lunden is finally ready to step into the light and tell her story,” a preview of Roberts’s memoir reads. “In her brave and honest memoir, she recounts the chaos, the broken trust, and ultimately the incredible love she found mothering and protecting the long-unacknowledged grandchild of the sitting President of the United States.”
The Biden team sought to amplify Trump’s New York hush money trial on Tuesday by hosting a press conference outside the courthouse just prior to the start of closing arguments in that case.
At the event, Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler, actor Robert De Niro, and former Capitol Police officers Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, both of whom were on duty during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, all castigated Trump as a severe threat to democracy.
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“If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted,” De Niro claimed. “And elections — forget about it, that’s all. That’s done. If he gets in, I can tell you right now — he will never leave. He will never leave.”
“At the end of the day, this election is about Donald Trump and his vision for the office of the president of the United States — not as a public servant who answers to the elected — to the people who elected him, but as an authoritarian, who answers to, and serves only, himself,” Fanone added.
