President Biden issued a heartfelt statement after his sole surviving son was convicted in federal court in Delaware.
“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 Tuesday minutes after Hunter Biden was found guilty by a federal jury on criminal gun charges.
The younger Biden was convicted on three counts tied to his October 2018 purchase and possession of a revolver while using illegal drugs. Federal prosecutors accused the president’s son of lying on a federal background check form when he claimed he was not using or addicted to illegal drugs.
While the case appears to be a personal and emotional distraction for the president, the big question moving forward is whether his son’s guilty verdicts will make any kind of political impact on Biden’s 2024 election rematch with former President Trump and whether it will influence persuadable voters.
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President Biden and former President Trump (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson and Evan Vucci)
“Today’s conviction of Hunter Biden on all counts is unlikely to have much impact on the presidential campaign,” veteran New Hampshire-based political scientist and New England College president Wayne Lesperance told Fox News.
Lesperance said that “while they share the same last name, Hunter is not Joe and voters will not hold the father accountable for the crimes of the son.”
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Longtime Republican strategist and communicator Ryan Williams agreed, saying, “It’s a deep personal blow to the president, but I don’t think it will have that much of an impact on the election. People aren’t going to vote for or against Joe Biden based on his son’s actions.”
The president, who has said he wouldn’t pardon his son if Hunter was convicted, emphasized in his post-verdict statement that “I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.”
President Biden and his son Hunter Biden (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Biden’s language stands in direct contrast with Trump, who repeatedly slammed his own recent trial as “rigged” and a “sham.”
Trump was found guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to payments during the 2016 election that he made to Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about his alleged affair with the adult film actress.
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Prosecutors in the case – which was the first trial of a former or current president in the nation’s history – argued that this amounted to illegally seeking to influence the 2016 election.
Trump repeatedly claimed, without providing concrete evidence, that the trial was a “political Witch Hunt” orchestrated by the president and the Justice Department.
Former President Trump appears in Manhattan Criminal Court, May 30, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, Pool)
But Williams, a veteran of a handful of Republican presidential campaigns, said Hunter Biden’s convictions “undercut the argument that Trump makes that the Department of Justice is politically motivated against him and Republicans. Joe Biden’s Justice Department has convicted President Trump. It’s also convicted his own son.”
Lesperance agreed, saying the “verdict blunts GOP claims about a partisan judiciary targeting Republicans. It is difficult to imagine how Republicans can claim bias as they did following the Trump verdict when today’s conviction involved the son of the sitting Democratic president.”
Hunter Biden will likely be sentenced in the trial – which witnessed graphic testimony of his years-long struggle with drug addiction – just days before the November presidential election.
And he faces a second trial in California in September over his failure to pay taxes for several years.
First lady Jill Biden, Hunter Biden and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden leave the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building on June 11, 2024, in Wilmington. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The guilty verdicts could provide Trump and his allies with more ammunition as they aim to conflate the former president’s convictions with those of Hunter Biden.
The Trump campaign, reacting to the verdict, argued in a statement that “this trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine.”
Ryan said Tuesday’s verdicts “muddy the waters to some degree now that there are convictions on both sides.”
But seasoned Democratic operative Joe Caiazzo called the comparison “a false equivalent” because “Hunter Biden is not on the ballot.”
“The Trump campaign is going to try to use this as a political football, which is disturbing, disgusting and dishonest. Millions of Americans deal with substance issues on a daily basis,” Caiazzo, a veteran of several Democratic presidential campaigns, said.
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