OPINION:
The recent proceedings against Hunter Biden may have engendered sympathy for the wayward presidential son, whose troubles seem profound. Indeed, it is difficult not to feel some sense of compassion for an individual who has been so buffeted by his inability to restrain his worst instincts.
The disclosures of Hunter Biden’s failings revealed a man who, despite being given every opportunity to thrive and receiving incomparable advantages because of his family’s status, has squandered those benefits and descended into the hell of drug use and dissolution. Sadly, there is every indication that Hunter’s family, including his father, the president of the United States, not only did not succeed in preventing this destructive behavior, but may have also taken advantage of it and, perhaps, even (presumably, inadvertently) promoted it.
It is a matter of public record that Hunter Biden has regularly been protected by his father, whether when he was a senator, the vice president or now the president. Hunter has frequently accompanied his father on overseas trips and used those trips for impressive financial benefit. It is unclear as to who paid for these trips and visits, but it is undeniable that they would never have taken place but for the prominent public role of his father.
It is equally unclear how Hunter has amassed significant amounts of funds even though he has seemingly been unable to hold down a job or stay off drugs long enough to be productive.
Confronted with a deeply troubled young man, it would be normal for a family to intervene in every reasonable manner to try to redirect him to a better course. Engendering a stable home life and steering an individual toward productive employment seem to be the anchors that can drive people away from drug use and other addictions and to a more independent and positive life.
That does not appear to be the method adopted by the Biden family concerning Hunter. There is no indication that the Biden family has sought to prevail upon Hunter to find honest and honorable work, to take care of his family and to abandon addictive drugs and the dissolute life that has been his for decades. Instead, the Bidens have made excuses for Hunter’s reprehensible behavior and appear to have tolerated his seeming pursuit of the less beneficial business of influence peddling.
We are witness to something that can be characterized only as a kind of child abuse. A weak and unanchored personality has been allowed, if not encouraged, to make poor choices. He has been allowed to generate large amounts of money through disreputable, if not dishonest, means. He has assuredly used his familial connections and not his personal skills or hard work to generate huge amounts of money. Where those funds have ended up is unclear, but how they have been procured is apparent, and they are not especially savory.
While it is appropriate to be indulgent with a disturbed child, it is most unhelpful to that child for his father to encourage and even use the son’s failings for mercenary ends. Yet this is exactly what appears to have been ongoing in the Biden family for years.
Hunter’s bad life choices have been a scourge for years. His willingness to confront his demons has sometimes been commendable. (I had occasion nearly two decades ago to see Hunter as he emerged from a Washington weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meeting — both a recognition of his problems and a tribute to his efforts to try to remedy them.) Yet with the knowledge of those struggles, it appears that President Biden took advantage of the situation by letting Hunter do some of the family’s dirty work of accumulating wealth by means that may be less than appropriate for a prominent public servant’s family.
This enabling has taken the form of encouraging what appears to be influence peddling (taking money from Chinese, Ukrainian and other nationals for no apparent substantive work) and even blatantly lying about evidence of Hunter’s bad behavior (such as the self-serving denial of the authenticity of Hunter’s abandoned laptop).
It is important for each of us to be compassionate. Sometimes, however, compassion requires firmness, discipline and difficult decisions. The absence of those elements usually makes matters worse — even if sometimes it can provide unmerited wealth.
Today, there is again a need for compassion concerning a Biden family member, but it no longer involves Hunter’s weakness. More importantly, it involves his father, the president of the United States. Will the Biden family refuse yet again to face reality and take advantage yet again of the weakness of one of its members? Will the family fail to tell Joe Biden that he can no longer fulfill his office’s obligations and must step aside, as is apparent to anyone willing to be objective about the president?
Just as President Biden and the Biden family took advantage of the failings of Hunter for their collective benefit, will the family seek to have Mr. Biden seek to retain the presidency for its benefit? Will past child abuse be converted to elder abuse? This time, the consequences are so much greater. Now, it is not just financial benefits to a family that are at stake, but rather the safety, security and very future of our nation.
• Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington office of a national law firm. He is the author of “Lobbying for Equality: Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights During the French Revolution,” published by HUC Press.
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