For years, it seemed as though nothing could stick when it came to the impact of Hunter Biden’s escapades on his father’s presidency. The White House could stick to its don’t-even-go-there denials. The press seemed determined not to do its job. The alleged crimes and shady business practices of the president’s son were not to be brought up in polite company.
Slowly, but perceptibly, that is changing. The sheer weight of evidence that has continued stacking up, the plea deal and the serious claims made by the IRS whistleblower this month have combined to push the Hunter Biden story into the foreground. The hand-wafting dismissals by Democrats of anyone who took the Hunter story seriously were always unpersuasive and dishonest. But that is more obvious now. As Charles Lipson notes for The Spectator, the defenses are getting softer, with some falling back on the uninspiring “Trump is worse” line of argument.
Meanwhile, Charles observes, “What Joe’s defenders are increasingly reluctant to say is, ‘He had absolutely nothing to do with the vast sums raked in by his son, brother, daughter-in-law and minor grandchildren. He knew nothing. He had no knowledge of the intricate web of shell companies his family used to move money around and hide its sources and recipients. He doesn’t know any honest business people who have used these covert methods. He did nothing to help his son, Hunter, his brother, James, or other family members. The president is completely ignorant of anything they did and did nothing to help them.’”
The news gets worse for Biden and his son. Today, the New York Times corroborates a key claim of the IRS whistleblower: that the US attorney David C. Weiss was rebuffed by federal prosecutors in Washington, DC and Los Angeles, when he tried to bring a case against Hunter Biden in those jurisdictions. That now-corroborated claim appears to contradict testimony from the attorney general that Weiss had the authority to bring charges against Hunter outside Delaware.
Things are getting messier for the first family. But the president seems determined to stand by his son’s side — to the increasing embarrassment and frustration of his party, aides and spokespeople. Hunter wasn’t just an attendee at last week’s state dinner in honor of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, but was seated at the same table as Merrick Garland — the AG who claims he is an impartial party in his treatment of the president’s son’s case.
Reporting on this eyebrow-raising invitation, the Times’s Peter Baker writes that “some Democrats, including current and former Biden administration officials, privately saw it as an unnecessary poke-the-bear gesture.”
In this context, the defense of the president from Democratic allies is that he is a good father. Of the optics of Hunter out and about in Washington, jetting to Camp David by his dad’s side and generally doing anything but staying out of the public eye, former Obama chief of staff David Axelrod tells Baker: “That may cause [Biden] problems, but it also reinforces a truth about a guy who has suffered great loss in his life and loves his kids.”
True enough. But good parenting often isn’t good politics. Indeed, there’s something tragic about the abstemious, teetotal Joe Biden torching political capital to make sure his fifty-three-year-old wayward son doesn’t feel too bad about things. And far from being a political strength, Biden’s determination to put family first is what may yet prove to be his undoing.
On our radar
BIDEN: PUTIN IS LOSING… IN IRAQ Answering questions from reporters today, Joe Biden said, “It is hard to tell but [Putin] is clearly losing in Iraq.”
MCCARTHY CRITICIZES TRUMP, QUICKLY U-TURNS In an interview with CNBC Tuesday, Kevin McCarthy dared to wonder allowed whether Trump “is the strongest to win the election; I don’t know that answer.” After some blowback from MAGA world, McCarthy blamed the media for trying to “drive a wedge between President Trump and House Republicans.”
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Supreme Court rules against independent state legislature theory
The Supreme Court decided Tuesday that state legislatures do not have untrammeled power to draw congressional districts and must adhere to their own constitutions, which state supreme courts can adjudicate. As such, independent state legislature theory — which the North Carolina state legislature utilized to bring its case before the court — is not a viable legal theory. The decision in Moore v. Harper was 6-3, with Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch taking up the dissent.
The court wrote in its thirty-page decision that, contrary to independent state legislature theory, “The Elections Clause does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections.
“[W]hen a state legislature carries out its federal constitutional power to prescribe rules regulating federal elections,” the court continued, “it acts both as a lawmaking body created and bound by its state constitution, and as the entity assigned particular authority by the Federal Constitution. Both constitutions restrain the state legislature’s exercise of power.”
Since North Carolina’s supreme court ruled against the GOP-controlled legislature’s redistricting map, the court has switched to Republican control and reversed its initial ruling. The Supreme Court’s ruling — as far as North Carolina is concerned — will not have much of an impact, because the redistricting map is no longer in question.
The Wall Street Journalquoted David Thompson, a lawyer for speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives Timothy Moore, as saying the state’s court “already corrected the errors of its ways and that the state legislature is now free to redraw the congressional map without undue judicial interference.”
North Carolina governor Roy Cooper said, alongside more hyperbolic remarks, that, “This is a good decision that curbs some of the power of Republican state legislatures and affirms the importance of checks and balances.”
There are several other Supreme Court decisions expected by the end of the week.
–John Pietro
Suarez: ‘What’s a Uighur?’
Miami mayor Francis X. Suarez should pick Gary “Aleppo” Johnson for his 2024 running mate. After a revealing interview on The Hugh Hewitt Show Tuesday morning, it seems the two are both woefully unaware of foreign policy.
Suarez was taking a hardline against China when Hewitt asked him if he would make the Uighurs a part of his campaign. “What — the what, what’s a Uighur?” Suarez responded, parroting Johnson’s famous “What is Aleppo?” gaffe during the 2016 election.
After Hewitt scolded the presidential hopeful for his ignorance, Suarez promised, “I’ll look at — what’d you call it, a ‘Weeble?’” Cockburn can’t help but think Suarez’s blunder is a bit worse than Johnson. How could he not know who’s been making his shirts and socks? And then to make a joke about his ignorance at the expense of hardworking Uighurs: rude!
Francis Suarez entered the 2024 GOP presidential primary on June 15. He has a long-standing rivalry with his governor, fellow candidate Ron DeSantis, and has worked to keep the other Floridian contender, Donald Trump, at arm’s length throughout his tenure. According to RealClearPolitics, he is yet to register in a poll. The Cuban American is the only Latino in the race, but at this early stage it’s not clear what his lane is — presumably not foreign policy heads…
Suarez isn’t the first Republican candidate to be stumped by Hewitt. In February, Vivek Ramaswamy admitted that he was unfamiliar with the nuclear triad when asked about it on Hewitt’s show. Obviously flustered, Ramaswamy asked if the triad was the “new axis of sort of evil” to which Hewitt responded, “No, I’m talking about the air, the land, and the sea nuclear deterrent that we won the Cold War with.” But hey, if the same question could trip up Trump in 2015, perhaps there’s still distant hope for Ramaswamy and Suarez too.
–Cockburn
From the site
Will Collins: What did the Habsburgs ever do for us?
Chuck DeVore: Russian failure is a lesson for America
Ben Sixsmith: What happened to QAnon?
Poll watch
PRESIDENT BIDEN JOB APPROVAL
Approve 42.6% | Disapprove 53.1% | Net Approval -10.5
(RCP average)
AMERICANS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS CHINA
Percentage who say China is an enemy of the US: 59%
Percentage who say the Biden administration is too weak on China: 61%
Percentage who say US should commit to protecting sovereignty of Taiwan: 66%
(The Messenger)
Best of the rest
Bojan Pancevski, Wall Street Journal: Prigozhin planned to capture Russian military leaders
Sophie Cai, Axios: Trump plots Twitter return
David M. Drucker, the Dispatch: GOP contenders overhype plans to overhaul the DOJ
Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review: Does everyone agree that affirmative action has to go?
