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This month has been a messy one for the Biden family. Last week, Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was indicted on three charges of gun-related crimes, including lying about drug use while purchasing a firearm and illegally possessing a weapon (he reportedly plans to plead not guilty). On Monday, he sued the Internal Revenue Service, accusing the agency of violating his privacy by disclosing details about his taxes. And earlier today, Attorney General Merrick Garland defended himself against House Republicans, who have accused him of trying to protect the Bidens in the investigation into Hunter Biden’s ties to Ukraine. I spoke with David A. Graham, who covers politics for The Atlantic, about how Donald Trump and House Republicans are seeking to use Hunter’s troubles against his father.

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Personally Painful

Lora Kelley: What about Hunter Biden makes him such a potent target for people who seek to undermine or embarrass Joe Biden?

David A. Graham: We know a lot about his personal peccadilloes, and he has clearly been involved in some shady things. It seems likely that he violated gun laws, and it seems likely he violated tax laws, since he was ready to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses. His business work, as Sarah Chayes has described in The Atlantic, may or may not be illegal, but it seems clearly unethical.

All of those things make Hunter Biden a good target, and they are a way to tie him to his father and spread a miasma of wrongdoing around the Biden family. That’s helpful from a partisan standpoint if you’re trying to hurt Biden, and it’s also helpful for Donald Trump. Trump himself is under indictment. We saw years of Trump’s misconduct, and there are also questions about his own family’s ethics and business. This allows Trump to say, Well, look, the other side has this too. Trump has tried repeatedly over the years to weaponize Hunter’s problems against Joe Biden, and that’s what led to his first impeachment.

Lora: Do Hunter’s business dealings have anything to do with his dad?

David: So far, the evidence that has turned up suggests: No. The closest thing that anyone seems to have tying the president to Hunter’s business is that they regularly spoke on the phone while Hunter was speaking with business partners. It’s not clear that the president knew what was going on, and there’s no evidence that he profited from this.

Lora: What did you make of the announcement earlier this week that Hunter Biden is suing the IRS for privacy violations?

David: His lawyers are clearly taking a more aggressive approach than they have in the past. They tried to work with prosecutors to make this go away quietly. It didn’t work; his plea deal last month collapsed under questioning from a judge.

Now we’re seeing him switch legal teams. His team is going after House Republicans; they’re going after the IRS. They’re trying to take the offensive, and that might be legally effective. But when Hunter does things like file lawsuits, it just puts him more in the spotlight. I don’t know that it’s good for his father or for the Democratic Party.

Lora: How has Hunter been affected by both sides of the nepotism coin?

David: He’s become prominent and wealthy through his family, but it also means that he’s going to attract greater scrutiny. He went to work for a bank in Delaware that had strong political ties to his father. He was a lobbyist in Washington. And, most notably, he had this high-paying gig with Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, even though he had no expertise in Ukraine, and no expertise in natural gas. He’s benefited from his ties to his father, and he’s made a lot of money. That’s not illegal. People have been doing that for as long as there has been politics. But it’s unsavory.

On the flip side, in these legal proceedings, you have legal experts looking at the charges against Hunter and saying: These are just not crimes that are typically charged in this way. They say it looks like Hunter is getting closer scrutiny than a normal person might.

Lora: How, if at all, do you think that Hunter’s legal troubles will affect Joe Biden’s reputation and reelection campaign?

David: He’s certainly a distraction. It’s hard to say how much of a liability he is. We have to see where these investigations go. So far, House Republican efforts to turn up something that ties this to wrongdoing by Joe Biden have come up short in embarrassing ways. They keep contradicting themselves, and have lost a potential witness. I don’t know how closely they’ll manage to tie this to Biden or to create an impression that he is linked to corruption. But if you’re running for president, you don’t want your son to be facing criminal charges.

Lora: Is there any way this situation could help Joe Biden politically, or help him seem like a sympathetic figure?

David: This is clearly personally painful to Joe Biden, who loves his son dearly, which is one reason why he has not cut him loose. Biden’s personal story—the car crash that killed his first wife and daughter and injured Hunter and his other son, Beau, and later Beau’s death—is already a part of what people see about him. There are people who admire the fact that he is sticking by his troubled son. There are people who will say: Every family has a kid who struggles. Especially with addiction, there’s a lot of sympathy there.

That’s less the case when you get into business corruption. And that’s why the stakes are higher for the impeachment and for the business allegations. But there’s also no real evidence of corruption so far. It’s murky.

Today’s News

Attorney General Merrick Garland testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee and rejected Republican claims regarding political bias in the Justice Department. Azerbaijan has agreed to a cease-fire with Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh. President Biden unveiled the American Climate Corps, a jobs-training program.

Dispatches

Up for Debate: Conor Friedersdorf rounds up 15 reader responses about how their trust in American institutions has changed.

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