Dem
51
GOP
49
It is possible that the DoJ's investigation of Hunter Biden will lead to one or more indictments. How can the president handle this? Well, he could look to history. It turns out that numerous presidential relatives in the past thought they could cash in on their famous relative. Biden could learn from some of these.
FDR's son James, a paid member of the White House staff, didn't even bother to hide activities that were soley designed to enrich himself. It got so bad that William Douglas, then chairman of the SEC (and later Supreme Court justice) offered to resign out of frustration concerning James' conduct. FDR talked him out of it.
Richard Nixon's brother Donald was a problem for Nixon. Donald received a $200,000 loan from billionaire Howard Hughes. The loan haunted Nixon for years.
Jimmy Carter's brother, Billy Carter, tried to create a new product, Billy Beer, but the venture failed. It certainly embarrassed the straight-laced president. Even worse were the hundreds of thousands of dollars Billy got from the Libyan government. Carter simply disassociated himself from this brother's activities. The Biblically oriented president could have said: "Am I my brother's keeper?" but he didn't. He just cut the brother off.
Bill Clinton was involved in plenty of scandals as president, but so were Hillary Rodham Clinton's brothers, Tony and Hugh. They got involved in some strange business harvesting hazelnuts in Georgia (the country, not the state). Also, Hugh received $400,000 for work obtaining a pardon for some clients. He was forced to return the money.
More recently we have the Trump administration, which was purer than the driven snow. Well, with one or two exceptions, perhaps. For example, Ivanka Trump was having trouble getting trademarks for her products in China. But after her father become president, she got 18 of them very quickly. Then there was the billion-dollar bailout of Jared Kushner's troubled investment firm. Also, Kushner got $2 billion to invest for the Saudis despite having little to no knowledge of investment banking.
None of these problems led to debilitating political difficulties for the respective presidents. The voters understand that what a president's son or daughter or brother does, is not the president's fault. If Hunter Biden is indicted, Joe could say that unfortunately, Hunter, like millions of Americans, fell into drug abuse and it ruined his life, but no one is above the law and he will let the DoJ handle the case as it sees fit. And then he could talk about all the corruption during the Trump administration and ask what President Trump did for the Saudis that made them give $2 billion to little Jared?
In fact, somewhat perversely, a DoJ indictment of Hunter Biden might actually help the President in a roundabout way. Trump is almost certainly going to be indicted one of these days, and is going to claim it's a witch hunt and that the Biden administration is pulling the strings and has weaponized the DoJ. But if the President's son is also under DoJ indictment? That makes it rather harder to argue that the DoJ is taking its marching order from Biden. (V)