Democrats seeking to topple Joe Biden as the 2020 front-runner are subtly attacking him over his son Hunter Biden’s lucrative ties to Ukraine despite the risk of being accused of helping President Trump.
Instead of avoiding ethics questions that involve Hunter Biden, several candidates have drawn clear distinctions between themselves and the former vice president.
The Bidens are at the center of a July phone call and a subsequent whistleblower complaint that has Democrats calling for impeachment based on Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate a political rival. Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Biden threatening to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine if that country did not fire a prosecutor who opened an investigation into the gas company Burisma that had Hunter Biden, 49, on its board on a salary of $50,000 per month.
“Probably not,” California Sen. Kamala Harris said when asked Saturday if she would allow the child of her vice president to serve on the board of a foreign energy company.
Perhaps in an attempt to head off any criticism that she was agreeing with Trump, she then defended Biden, 76. “As far as I’m concerned, leave Joe Biden alone. Just leave him alone on this issue of what this president has done that has been about corrupting America’s democracy, being in cahoots with a foreign leader to yet again try and manipulate the election of the president of the United States,” she said.
“I just don’t think children of vice presidents, presidents during the administration should be out there doing that,” New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said on CNN Sunday before shifting his aim to Trump. “But the fact right now that the Republicans are trying to use this to distract from the president of the United States and his own actions is, to me, incredible.”
There is no evidence that the Bidens did anything illegal, and the prosecutor was the target of many Western governments who thought he was corrupt. But many Democrats are uncomfortable with the appearance of a conflict of interest and the overwhelming consensus that Hunter Biden landed the lucrative board position because of his last name.
Criticizing Hunter Biden is risky, but his father’s rivals know that they have to defeat him in next year’s primaries if they want to face Trump in November’s general election. Democratic strategist Scott Ferson said that Hunter’s behavior was “unseemly,” but if candidates point that out, Trump can “use that as validation as to why this is all about the Bidens. And you can tell that none of these candidates want to give the president any ammunition.”
The Republican National Committee did exactly that in an ad released on Monday that featured a clip of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren answering an ethics question referencing Hunter Biden.
When asked last week if her ethics plan would allow her vice president’s child to serve on a foreign gas company board, Warren became uncharacteristically flustered. “No,” she said, before walking that back. “I don’t know. I mean, I’d have to go back and look at the details.” Warren’s campaign later clarified that the Massachusetts senator’s ethics plan “doesn’t prevent any children of a VP from serving on a company’s board.”
Biden’s top campaign communications director Kate Bedingfield on Monday condemned news outlets for asking questions about Hunter Biden. “There’s no evidence that he did anything wrong, and yet, he [Trump] still hopes that you guys will ask questions like that, that you will try to insinuate there was an optical issue, that there was some kind of, you know, some kind of issue there that wasn’t there,” Bedingfield said.
But Ferson said drawing a moral contrast made sense. “It’s an important behavior distinction between candidates in terms of how they would behave personally with relatives who may want to benefit from the job you have,” he said. “If I were advising a rival campaign of Biden, I would say, if asked, you have to address it, you have to answer it. But don’t belabor it.”
