President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden says he believes his father’s political opponents are trying to “kill” him to inflict enough emotional pain on his father to destroy his presidency.
The president’s son joined a podcast hosted by musician Richard Melville Hall—who goes by moniker “Moby”—and discussed his struggles with drug addiction, and being in the public spotlight as the president’s son. The podcast episode comes as the younger Biden faces multiple federal criminal charges and was published on Friday, just hours after special counsel Robert Weiss filed new criminal charges for tax evasion.
Throughout the podcast, the president’s son said he believes the criticisms he’s faced are meant to distract his father from the tasks of the presidency and make President Biden “think that he could lose his son that he just had regained from an almost death through addiction.”
Republicans have scrutinized numerous lucrative business deals Hunter Biden had been involved in while his father was vice president during the Obama administration, and have questioned what actual business acumen the president’s son had for these deals at a time when he was a habitual user of narcotics. In recent months, Republicans have focused an ongoing impeachment inquiry into whether or not President Biden has abused his power throughout his political career by allowing his family members to leverage his political connections to advance their business dealings in exchange for a cut of their profits.
Pushing back on those growing suspicions, the president’s son argued the real objective of his critics is to somehow bring about his death to destabilize the Biden administration.
“I recognize that none of this is about me. They are trying to, in their most illegitimate way, but rational way, they’re trying to destroy a presidency,” Hunter Biden said. “And so it’s not about me. And in their most base way, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle.”
Mr. Biden went on to cast his critics as “just sad, very, very sick people” with unresolved traumas in their own lives who have “decided that they are going to turn into an evil that they decide that they’re going to inflict on the rest of the world.”
Agreeing with Mr. Biden’s self-analysis of his controversies, Mr. Hall likened the actions of the president’s son’s critics to the bumper sticker slogan “hurt people hurt people.”
Charges Mount for Hunter Biden Amid Impeachment Inquiry
Mr. Biden was indicted in Delaware federal court in September on a trio of charges alleging he lied about his habitual narcotics use on a federal firearm purchase form, and subsequently possessing a firearm while addicted to illicit substances. If convicted, his most serious charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release.
On Thursday, he was charged in California federal court with two felony tax evasion charges, a felony charge for filing a false tax return, and six additional misdemeanor offenses for failure to pay taxes between 2016 and 2019. Instead of paying his taxes, the criminal indictment alleges Mr. Biden “spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes.”
If convicted of the new tax charges, Mr. Biden would face up to 17 years in prison. In all, prosecutors believe Mr. Biden chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes.
While he is facing mounting criminal charges, Republicans have elevated whistleblower testimony claiming officials overseeing criminal probes of Mr. Biden had actually hindered investigations and steered the process away from matters that implicated his father.
“They dragged their feet on this case for years. And it has taken a long time and a lot of public information, including whistleblowers coming forward, saying that they hadn’t actually properly investigated, or were kept from investigating it because of Hunter’s relationship to his father, who is now the president,” former Georgia Republican Congressman Doug Collins told NTD News on Friday.
This week, House Republicans also introduced a resolution formalizing their ongoing impeachment inquiry of President Biden and could vote on it by next week. The resolution’s author, Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), alleged the Biden family “sold influence around the world using Joe Biden’s name as the product” and said the White House and other witnesses have at times refused to cooperate with investigative efforts and subpoenas thus far.
The White House rebuffed the Republican impeachment resolution as a “baseless impeachment stunt,” and argued Republicans have shown no proof of misconduct by the president.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, similarly denounced the impeachment effort.
“Voting to launch an impeachment inquiry will not change the fact that, following many months of endless investigation by House Republicans this Congress and by Senate Republicans in 2020, the evidence plainly shows no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, much less an impeachable offense,” he said in a Dec. 7 statement.
