The 2024 presidential campaign will not only be marked by the legal problems of one of the (foreseeable) candidates, Donald Trump. Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election in the elections, will also have his share of concern in this regard, although less, after his own attorney general – a position equivalent to that of Minister of Justice in Spain – has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the President’s son, Hunter, for alleged tax evasion and illegal possession of a gun.
The announcement by the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, represents an escalation in the legal pressure against Hunter Biden, who until just two weeks ago had reached a provisional agreement with the prosecutors in the case according to which they would not press charges against him in exchange for He was held for two years on probation.
The judge in the case, Naryellen Norieka, who was nominated for the position by Donald Trump but has a long history of donating to the Democratic and Republican parties, rejected the agreement, which may have ended the pools in which the judge appeared as a favorite for promotion in the American legal system, at least during Joe Biden’s presidency. Garland has appointed Republican David Weiss, who was already in charge of the case against the president’s son, to the position of special prosecutor.
The investigation against Hunter Biden is based on two charges: tax fraud – since in 2017 and 2019 he did not file the Personal Income Tax Declaration – and illegal possession of a revolver. While these are charges that pale in comparison to those facing Donald Trump, they are not without political risk. The Republican Party and a network of conspirators on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Rumble have spread all kinds of rumors involving the current president, his son, and the Government of Ukraine, since between 2014 and 2019 Huter Biden was on the council of management of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Hunter Biden has spent two decades fighting different addictions to alcohol and other drugs and, according to his own testimony, he has spent more than 11 million dollars (10 million euros) to pay for these substances.
Garland’s decision has been harshly criticized by some Democrats, who point to the alacrity with which the Attorney General has moved against the president’s son with the glacial slowness with which he reacted to Donald Trump’s theft of state secrets and his attempts to steal the 2020 election that culminated in the storming of the Capitol. The presence of a Special Prosecutor also puts pressure on the White House’s strategy in the case, consisting of keeping silent and letting the Justice do its job, as with the Trump accusations, especially when the Republican Party is trying to capitalize on the scandal to involve the president.
