Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and other Democratic presidential candidates jumped to renew their calls for impeachment following reports that President Trump improperly pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
But even as Democrats band together to condemn Trump’s actions and resist scrutinizing Hunter Biden, the son of the former vice president and the longtime senator’s family business dealings could be liabilities for his campaign in the coming months as he attempts to secure the Democratic presidential nomination over candidates like Warren who run campaigns against corruption.
“I expect that Hunter Biden will be an issue in the Democratic primary at the ‘appropriate time,’” Democratic strategist Scott Ferson told the Washington Examiner.
A whistleblower complaint, according to news reports, says that in a phone call with new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked Zelensky to investigate whether then-Vice President Joe Biden improperly pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating an oil company that put Hunter Biden on its board.
A few days before, Trump directed the United States to delay $400 million in aid to Ukraine, according to another report. Trump said that the delayed payment had nothing to do with a potential Biden investigation, adding that he was waiting for other countries to pitch in their share of aid.
Joe Biden asserted Friday that there is “no credibility” to Trump’s claim that he acted improperly. When asked Saturday about Hunter’s business dealings, Biden grew angry and told the reporter to “ask the right questions,” redirecting focus at Trump.
The allegation that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate a political rival prompted Democratic presidential candidates to renew their calls for impeachment.
But Biden’s primary rivals have not gone as far as to defend Hunter’s role on the oil company board or Biden’s actions in pressuring Ukraine to fire the prosecutor.
When reporters asked Harris about voters feeling “discomfort” about Biden’s involvement in Ukraine, the California senator said, “I’ll leave that to the voters to decide.” When asked whether Trump’s actions attack Biden’s campaign or character, Harris did not have any comment, adding that she will “leave that up to the pundits.”
In a major campaign speech last week, Warren railed against corruption in government. “When you see a government that works great for those with money and connections and doesn’t work for much of anyone else, that’s corruption plain and simple, and we need to call it out for what it is,” Warren said.
Trump wading into the controversy, however, hinders candidates like Warren from alluding to potential corruption among the Bidens. Ferson said that Trump’s allegations of Biden’s wrongdoing are over-the-top and “clearly so ridiculous” that it turns Biden into a sympathetic figure. There is also the risk of Democrats appearing to take Trump’s side if they bring up Hunter Biden.
“The important thing is to, if you’re a Democrat, is to keep the focus on the president, his behavior, in a category all by itself,” Ferson said. But as “candidates find themselves still in the fight with Joe Biden at the top tier, Hunter Biden still has this history which is questionable.”
Ferson said that while there is “no evidence that anything happened that exploited” Biden’s name, the Ukrainian oil company “understood the optics of having somebody with the vice president’s last name on their board. It gets them significant cachet.”
“Hunter, I think, or certainly the vice president, should have understood that there was a problem,” Ferson said.
The Ukrainian oil board job is not the first time that Biden’s family business dealings have been scrutinized during his half-century in public life.
Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington noted in a 2007 report that he was one of 31 senators who had family members registered as lobbyists. Hunter Biden was a registered lobbyist while his father was a senator. The report noted that it is “legal for close relatives of members to lobby,” but “the unique access offered to these lobbyists creates a situation ripe for abuse.”
National security lawyer Bradley Moss told the Washington Examiner that he does not think Democratic primary voters will ultimately buy the spin from Trump and his allies to frame the whistleblower complaint as really being about ethical and legal issues surrounding the Biden family.
But controversy about Hunter Biden’s dealings could still be an albatross hanging around Biden’s neck later in the primary. Some Democratic primary voters negatively view Biden as part of a failed Washington, D.C., establishment class.
“The concern for the Biden team has to be getting smeared with the ‘not another Hillary’ tag and worries among primary voters that Biden has too much baggage for Trump to exploit in the general election,” Moss said.
