‘Deliberately low-key’: How Biden’s team plans to approach his son’s criminal trial
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and his top advisers will be closely following developments from his son Hunter Biden’s criminal trial on felony gun charges in Delaware when it begins in early June, but for different reasons.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and his top advisers will be closely following developments from his son Hunter Biden’s criminal trial on felony gun charges in Delaware when it begins in early June, but for different reasons.
Biden, who will be traveling overseas during a portion of the trial, will be monitoring it foremost as a concerned parent, not as an incumbent seeking re-election during a critical stretch of the campaign, according to three people familiar with the president’s thinking. His advisers will be watching, in part, for any instances where the president is referenced during the proceedings, and they plan to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to react in real time, according to two people familiar with the plans.
The likelihood of the president being invoked seems high, given that Hunter Biden’s text messages, including some exchanges with his father, are expected to be used during the trial. The case is also expected to thrust into public view some of the president and his family’s deeply personal dynamics, with prosecutors planning to call Hunter Biden’s ex-wife and his late brother Beau’s widow to testify. And some of Hunter Biden’s lowest moments while he was in the throes of drug addiction, which have for years been fodder for Republican critics of his father, are expected to be graphically cataloged.
“The unknown certainly brings stress,” one Biden adviser said.
In a hearing on Friday in Delaware ahead of the June 3 trial, Hunter Biden’s attorneys will argue for some evidence to be excluded in the case.
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