Adam Boulton: Hunter Biden is just one example of many political children exploited to embarrass their powerful parents
Adam Boulton writes that like many political children, Hunter has been in the media spotlight for most of his life. He and his elder brother Beau were two and three in 1972 when their mother and sister were killed in a car crash.
Friday 23 June 2023 10:17, UK
Hunter Biden is 53 years old yet he is defined by being the child of his father, Joseph R Biden, now president of the United States.
Hunter's life has been particularly colourful. The public scrutiny that has exposed it shows yet again that it is not easy being the offspring of a president, prime minister or prominent politician.
There may be some perks, but as the Bushes, Thatchers, Kennedys, Blairs, Straws, Gummers, and many other political families have found out, there are penalties too when children's behaviour is exploited to embarrass their powerful parents.
In his efforts to damage his rival Joe Biden by claiming that the Bidens are a "crime family", President Donald Trump ordered a special prosecutor to investigate Hunter's activities.
This week Davis Weiss, the US attorney general for Delaware, concluded his inquiry. His findings do not amount to a Mafia style rap sheet.
Hunter has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanours for late payment of federal income tax - more than $100,000 (£78,000) was owed each time.
That money has now been paid along with fines. Hunter also reached a "pre-trial diversion agreement" with prosecutors relating to a false statement to possess firearms while a drug addict. He no longer faces going to prison.
A disappointed Donald Trump took to his platform Truth Social to describe the punishment as "a traffic ticket" from the "Corrupt Biden DoJ".
The same Department of Justice recently indicted Trump on 37 serious charges for theft of secret presidential documents.
Mr Trump's allies joined in the criticism of "a slap on the wrist"; House Speaker Kevin McCarthy denounced a "sweetheart deal".
Joe Biden and his wife Jill, Hunter's stepmother, issued a brief statement that they "love their son and support him".
Mr Biden has also spoken of his pride at his son overcoming his drug problem. Hunter was in the official party on the president's visit to Ireland.
Another recovered addict, and scion of perhaps the most famous political family, Patrick Kennedy, congratulated the Bidens on their "enlightened" openness about Hunter's problems.
Biden brothers responded to deadly car crash in different ways
Like many political children Hunter has been in the media spotlight for most of his life. He and his elder brother Beau were two and three in 1972 when their mother and sister were killed in a car crash.
Their father had just been elected the youngest member of the US Senate, for Delaware. He spent the first few months of his term at his injured sons' bedsides in hospital.
The brothers were close but they responded to the pressures in different ways, in a pattern familiar to other prominent families.
Beau became the hero, a veteran of the Iraq War and was attorney general for Delaware when he died of brain cancer in 2015. Hunter Biden was the black sheep - as was George W Bush, even though he beat his siblings to the White House.
Hunter was discharged from the navy for failing a drugs test. As a lawyer he was involved with various banking and lobbying businesses; in particular he was on the board of a Chinese company, BHR Holdings and Burisma, a gas provider controlled by a Ukrainian oligarch.
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Mr Trump alleged corruption by the Biden family. His attempt to withhold aid to Ukraine to force President Volodymyr ZelenAG百家乐在线官网y to launch an investigation into Hunter led to Mr Trump's first, unsuccessful impeachment by the US Congress.
This controversy also prompted Mr Trump to order the probe into Hunter's affairs, although nothing improper surfaced about his involvement in Ukraine.
In 2020, anti-Biden media sources were also passed the contents of a laptop that Hunter Biden had abandoned at a repair shop.
By now he was in a bad way following the death of his brother. Further embarrassment ensued including some sexually explicit photographs. Hunter is involved in an unresolved paternity suit over a four year-old girl.
Thatcher twins had similar story
The closest British analogues to the Biden boys are probably the Thatcher twins, Mark and Carol; 70 this year, they were six years old when their mother became an MP in 1959.
Margaret Thatcher never made any secret that Mark was her favourite. She sent them both to boarding school at an early age. The pair were in their 20s when their mother became Conservative leader and prime minister.
Carol kept a relatively low profile as a somewhat unlucky journalist. She was close to her father Sir Denis Thatcher and published a book about him.
A subsequent book about the Queen Elizabeth II ocean liner sunk without trace because it was published on 9/11, the same day as the al Qaeda attacks on America.
Carol's career as a TV personality came to an abrupt end when some light-hearted comments about the appearance of a tennis player were considered to be racist.
Sir Mark Thatcher inherited his title on the death of his father in 2003. As a young man he was keen to cash in on the reflected glory from him mother. According to her private secretary Sir Clive Whitmore, Mark was "driven by greed".
He caused his mother the prime minister much grief when he was temporarily lost in the desert during the Paris to Dakar rally in 1982.
After an international search was launched, he was found holed up in a hotel with his female co-driver. On his return to the UK, Mrs Thatcher's press secretary, Bernard Ingham, relished hearing Denis call his son "a little s***".
Mark was accused of exploiting his mother's contacts in his business dealings. He denied receiving millions from the Al-Yamamah arms deal between British Aerospace and Saudi Arabia.
He moved abroad permanently from 1986, initially to live in Dallas, Texas with his first wife and ultimately to South Africa where he married again.
In 2005, he was convicted in South Africa of involvement with the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea and received a fine of £226,000 and a four-year suspended prison sentence.
Most other political children come under examination for more trivial failings.
Trumps and Obamas have tried to spare children from limelight
Donald Trump's youngest son Barron was attacked in print for his teenage dress sense, prompting another presidential child, Chelsea Clinton, to tweet in his defence: "Let him have the private childhood he deserves."
Barron's mother Melania has done what she can to keep him out of the limelight.
The Obamas went to similar lengths with their daughters Sasha and Malia.
During her brief premiership Liz Truss did not allow a single picture outside Number 10 of her teenage daughters, Frances and Liberty.
That was a far cry from then-agriculture secretary John Gummer who notoriously fed his small daughter a hamburger in front of the cameras during the mad cow crisis.
Blair and Straw had to answer questions over their sons' behaviour
Try as the children or their parents may, it is almost impossible to avoid bad publicity.
Then-home secretary Jack Straw turned his son Will into the police for cannabis possession.
Tony Blair instructed Alastair Campbell to brief the media when his sixteen-year-old son Euan - now an entrepreneur - was involved in a drunken incident in Leicester Square.
Jenna Bush Hager is now a popular television personality but suffered the "public failure" of falling foul of US underage drinking laws. When she phoned her father the president to apologise he apologised to her.
"I'm sorry. I told you you could be normal and you can't be. You can't order margaritas."
In a study for the British Academy, Professor Elizabeth Hurren of Leicester University urged political parents to do more to protect their children's mental wellbeing.
"Political children need their private spaces," she warned. "But few get that chance in the social media era of faster news headlines and online clickbait."
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Western democracies are rightly inhospitable to political dynasties and those exploiting who their parents are. Still, even the offspring of the greatest can find it hard to live in their parents' shadow.
At least two of Winston Churchill's children became alcoholics and another killed herself.
The life story of Joe Biden's surviving son suggests that he has been not so much Hunter as hunted.