Array
President Biden said Tuesday that his son Hunter Biden is “on the straight and narrow” and denied his offspring committed a gun-purchase crime that the US attorney in Delaware reportedly is considering charging.
CNN host Jake Tapper asked Biden to respond to a report last week that said the FBI believes there’s enough evidence to charge Hunter, 52, with tax fraud and lying on a gun-purchase form by denying his drug use.
“Personally and politically, how do you react to that?” Tapper asked Biden, whose own involvement in his family’s overseas dealings will be a top focus of Republicans if they retake Congress in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
“Well, first of all, I’m proud of my son. This is a kid who got, not a kid — he’s a grown man. He got hooked on — like many families have had happen, hooked on drugs. He’s overcome that. He’s established a new life,” the president told Tapper.
“He is — I’m confident that he is — what he says and does are consistent with what happens. And for example, he wrote a book about his problems and was straightforward about it. I’m proud of him.”
Biden added, “He came along and said, by the way, this thing about a gun — I didn’t know anything about it. But turns out that when he made [an] application to purchase a gun, what happened was he say —- I guess you get asked, I don’t guess, you get asked a question, are you on drugs or do you use drugs? He said no. And he wrote about saying no in his book.”
“So I have great confidence in my son,” Biden concluded. “I love him and he’s on the straight and narrow and he has been for a couple years now. And I’m just so proud of him”
A Hollywood attorney associated with the first son recently paid the IRS about $2 million in back taxes on foreign consulting income in an effort to head off criminal charges, though doing so does not absolve the crime of non-payment.
Critics say the potentially limited charges against Hunter Biden would be a best-case scenario for the Bidens.
“Neither prosecutors nor the press have seemed interested in pursuing allegations of criminal or corrupt practices by some members of the Biden family. Now we have this FBI leak,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote last week.
