WASHINGTON \u2014 The attorney general’s appointment of a special counsel in the Hunter Biden probe creates a fresh headache for the re-election campaign of President Joe Biden, distracting from his message and potentially drawing attention away from likely GOP opponent Donald Trump\u2019s mounting legal problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president’s allies worry that Republicans will attempt to exploit his son’s predicament the same way they weaponized Hillary Clinton\u2019s private email server in 2016, sowing doubts about the Democratic nominee’s character and sapping enthusiasm from her presidential campaign. Clinton never faced charges over her reliance on private email as secretary of state, though the issue dogged her and she lost the election to Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt creates a Hillary-email vibe all over again, and it creates a false equivalency between the very real attacks on American democracy that Trump committed and much lower-scale things in this case that will muddy the waters for the 2024 election,\u201d said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two weeks ago, Hunter Biden’s legal saga seemed to be nearing the finish line. He was preparing to accept a plea deal over tax charges that would have spared him any jail time, an outcome that would have allowed the Biden campaign to argue that the issue had been fairly adjudicated and was now closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the deal with prosecutors collapsed under questioning by the judge in the case, setting off a chain of events that culminated in Friday\u2019s announcement from Attorney General Merrick Garland that the prosecution of Hunter Biden was continuing, with no end in sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The development makes it tougher for Democrats to capitalize on Trump\u2019s more direct and immediate legal troubles. A renewed investigation into Hunter Biden\u2019s business dealings, depending on what it uncovers, could tarnish the president\u2019s image as someone who had avoided scandal through a career in politics that stretches more than 50 years. Biden has already proclaimed that his son \u201chas done nothing wrong,\u201d a blanket claim that will surely be tested if special counsel David Weiss files new charges that result in a criminal trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some Democrats believe the appointment of Weiss, the U.S. attorney in charge of the matter who was nominated by Trump in 2017, is merely a procedural step to enable him to take the Hunter Biden case to trial, given the jurisdictional hurdles he would otherwise face.
Still, other Democrats hope that Hunter Biden\u2019s fate will be irrelevant to his father\u2019s re-election chances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Hunter Biden special prosecutor changes absolutely nothing,\u201d said Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins. \u201cRepublicans have been using Hunter as a vessel to investigate the president for the last four years. There has been no substantial evidence of any crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hopkins said Biden should stick with his 2024 strategy and keep highlighting contrasts with Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe president should continue to stay above the fray, focus on his administration\u2019s wins, and remind voters of how chaotic and dangerous a return to Trump would be,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden has not been implicated in his son\u2019s alleged misdeeds, despite five years of federal investigations by a Trump-picked U.S. attorney and months of probes by the House Republican leaders aimed at establishing a connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump, however, is already facing three criminal indictments, one of which goes to the heart of his efforts to subvert the popular will and overturn his electoral defeat. A fourth indictment is possible in Georgia as early as next week, also with a focus on 2020 election interference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scott Rogers, 47, a software engineer from St. Louis and an independent voter, was at the Grand Canyon earlier this week with his family and spoke to NBC News about Hunter Biden\u2019s travails.
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\u201cI hear everybody yelling about his laptop,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s on his laptop. I hear people yelling about Burisma,\u201d the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden served on the board. \u201cI don\u2019t know what happened at Burisma. I don\u2019t see any substance behind the accusations. I know he\u2019s got a problem with addiction, but he\u2019s not the president. He\u2019s not in political office. So that, to me, is neither here nor there. If I start hearing about corruption from Joe Biden directly, that might open my eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet the appointment of a special counsel creates potential pitfalls for Democrats. It keeps Hunter Biden\u2019s legal problems in the public consciousness and is likely to redouble GOP efforts to look for a link between the son\u2019s business dealings and the father\u2019s exercise of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tim Miller, a former Republican operative who led early attacks on Clinton over the assault on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, but abandoned the GOP after Trump\u2019s rise, offered this warning to Democrats: Republicans are simply \u201cout for blood\u201d when it comes to Joe Biden and \u201cthere is no satisfying them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s little evidence that the GOP\u2019s attempt to conflate Hunter with Joe Biden has worked with voters. But some political analysts say the issue has the potential to further confuse key voting blocs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSwing voters are already struggling to keep the dizzying number of Trump indictments straight. Add Hunter Biden\u2019s travails into the 2024 mix, and these voters may well suffer from vertigo,\u201d said Rich Thau, president of the research firm Engagious, who moderates focus groups for the Swing Voter Project of battleground state voters who backed Trump in 2016 and switched to Biden in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One recent focus group of Trump-to-Biden voters in Michigan found they had little grasp of the controversies that have shadowed Hunter Biden. Participants largely said they didn\u2019t believe the criminal investigation into Biden\u2019s dealings implicated his father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only two of the 13 voters described President Biden as \u201ccorrupt,\u201d and only two said Congress should launch an impeachment inquiry into the Biden family\u2019s dealings, according to Thau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Capitol Hill, reaction to the appointment of a special prosecutor split along partisan lines Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the chair of the Judiciary Committee and a Biden ally, said the attorney general’s move demonstrates the Justice Department’s commitment to avoiding \u201ceven the appearance of politicization\u201d when it comes to the president\u2019s son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAppointing Weiss special counsel doesn\u2019t solve any of the problems exposed in this case,\u201d Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump ally and the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Citing unproven claims of meddling that Weiss has disputed, Graham added: \u201cWhistleblowers have told Congress time and time again that the Justice Department had its thumb on the scale when it came to the Hunter Biden investigation. The only solution for this problem is to have a new set of eyes on all things Hunter Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n