After promising ethical administration, Biden pushes boundaries with son Hunter’s book

“I come from a family forged by tragedies and bound by a remarkable, unbreakable love,” writes Hunter Biden, 51, in a one-line excerpt from what Gallery Books describes as a “deeply moving memoir of addiction, loss, and survival.”

In response to a question, White House press secretary Jen Psaki last Friday read a statement on behalf of President Biden and first lady Jill Biden from behind her podium and its presidential seal, stressing that their comments were being made in a personal capacity.

“We admire our son Hunter’s strength and courage to talk openly about his addiction so that others might see themselves in his journey and find hope,” the first couple said.

Psaki added, “This is a personal book about his own personal journey, and I will leave it at that.”

But the blurring of personal and professional lines continued over the weekend when President Biden was asked about the memoir during his pre-Super Bowl interview with CBS.

“The honesty with which he stepped forward and talked about the problem, and the hope that — it gave me hope reading it. I mean, it was like, ‘My boy’s back.’ You know what I mean? Anyway, I’m sorry to get so personal,” Biden said before appearing to get choked up.

A clip of the interview, which was pretaped on Friday at the White House, was widely shared on social media. Many commentators focused on Biden’s emotional display. Others, such as former Obama administration U.S. Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub, fixated instead on the ethical dilemma posed by a president ostensibly publicizing his son’s forthcoming tome.

“It is not acceptable for the President of the United States to be part of the book promotion tour. No,” Shaub wrote in a now-deleted tweet.

Though Shaub took the post down, Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project On Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization specializing in uncovering ethical conflicts, agreed with his since-erased criticism of Biden’s remarks.

“It’s hard to ask President Biden to stop being a proud father, but ethics starts from the top,” Amey told the Washington Examiner in an email.

Amey did note that an anti-endorsement ethics provision doesn’t apply to the president. But he said Biden put himself in a compromising situation by weighing in on his son’s memoir, despite rolling out a wave of ethics rules for his federal employees to keep his promise to “restore” ethics to the White House.

“We had similar problems with the last administration, and it’s time for all public servants to avoid conflicts of interest, especially those involving using public office for financial or private gain,” he said.

During Trump’s four years in office, for instance, ex-first daughter Ivanka Trump wrote Women Who Work in 2017 while serving as a senior White House adviser. And former first son Donald Trump Jr. released two books, Triggered in 2019 and Liberal Privilege in 2020.

Before the Trump era, Jenna Bush Hager wrote Ana’s Story in 2007, a nonfiction account of a single mother she met during her UNICEF internship in Panama. Patti Davis, former President Ronald Reagan’s daughter, published a novel during her father’s eight-year tenure. And her brother, Michael Reagan, penned his own memoir, On the Outside Looking In, around the same period.

Gallery Books bought Hunter Biden’s memoir, which he wrote with author and journalist Drew Jubera, last fall before his father won the 2020 election. Multiple outlets have reported he began drafting Beautiful Things before the elder Biden became the front-runner for last cycle’s Democratic nomination, with pitches subjected to nondisclosure agreements. However, the publisher didn’t immediately return the Washington Examiner’s request for more information regarding the timeline and whether the younger Biden would pocket the proceeds or donate them to charity.

For Steven Mintz, a California Polytechnic State University professor emeritus, those details were important before condemning either Biden.

Mintz cautioned against pushing so-called cancel culture so far that “someone holding the most influential position in the world can’t positively influence those in society struggling with an addiction.” And without laws such as those covering federal government employees applying to the first family, he said ethics, in this case, turned on “motivation.”

“Let’s just say the optics are not good when the son of a president issues a book within weeks of his father taking office, depending on what his motivation was,” he said.

Mintz advised the president to explain how the memoir could help people experiencing addiction or who have dealt with their own personal demons in the past if he’s asked about the memoir in the future.

Hunter Biden’s questionable foreign business dealings and tabloid-esque personal life were fodder for Trump during the campaign. Trump even took a shot at President Biden during their first debate over how his son’s cocaine use got him kicked out of the Navy Reserve in 2014 with an administrative discharge. The younger Biden has publicly recounted first trying the drug as a college student at Georgetown University, an anecdote that will likely be included in Beautiful Things.

What is unlikely to be contained in the memoir is information about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China. His $50,000-a-month role on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings was critical to Trump’s first impeachment trial. Biden’s ties to China are now suspected to be key to a federal investigation run by the FBI and IRS into his taxes, dating back to 2018.

Hunter Biden is President Biden’s second son with his first wife, Neilia. His memoir is expected to discuss her death and that of his then-1-year-old sister Naomi in a 1972 Christmas car crash. It is also anticipated to touch on the loss of his older brother Beau, who died in 2015 at the age of 46 from brain cancer. The brothers would frequently refer to life’s joys as “beautiful things” after Beau’s diagnosis, according to Gallery Books.