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      Collapse of Hunter Biden Plea Deal Could Be a Liability for the President

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      The collapse of a plea deal and the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden mean the president could face political fallout for months to come.They thought it was over, that they could put it in the rearview mirror. All that Hunter Biden had to do was show up in a courtroom, answer a few questions, sign some paperwork and that would be it. Not that the Republicans would let it go, but any real danger would be past.Except that it did not work out that way. The criminal investigation that President Biden’s advisers believed was all but done has instead been given new life with the collapse of the plea agreement and the appointment of a special counsel who now might bring the president’s son to trial.What had been a painful but relatively contained political scandal that animated mainly partisans on the right could now extend for months just as the president is gearing up for his re-election campaign. This time, the questions about Hunter Biden’s conduct may be harder for the White House to dismiss as politically motivated. They may even break out of the conservative echo chamber to the general public, which has largely not paid much attention until now.It remained unclear whether Hunter Biden faces criminal exposure beyond the tax and gun charges lodged against him by David C. Weiss, the prosecutor first appointed in 2018 to investigate him by President Donald J. Trump’s attorney general. It may be that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s decision to designate Mr. Weiss a special counsel with more independence to run the inquiry means that there is still more potential legal peril stemming from Hunter Biden’s business dealings with foreign firms.Yet it may amount to less than meets the eye in the long run. Mr. Weiss’s announcement abandoning the plea agreement he originally reached with Hunter Biden on the tax and gun charges means he could take the case to trial in states other than Delaware, where he is U.S. attorney and has jurisdiction. Some analysts speculated that requesting special counsel status may be about empowering him to prosecute out of state.“Friday’s announcement feels more like a technicality allowing Weiss to bring charges outside of Delaware now that the talks between sides have broken down,” said Anthony Coley, who until recently served as the Justice Department’s director of public affairs under Mr. Garland. “It will have limited practical impact.”Even if so, a trial by a jury of Hunter Biden’s peers would be a spectacle that could prove distracting and embarrassing for the White House while providing more fodder to the president’s Republicans. The president’s advisers were frustrated as a result and resigned to months of additional torment, even if they were not alarmed by the prospect of a wider investigation.“After five years of probing Hunter’s dealings, it seems unlikely that Weiss will discover much that is new,” said David Axelrod, who was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “On the other hand, anything that draws more attention to Hunter’s case and extends the story into the campaign year is certainly unwelcome news for the president’s team.”As it happened, Mr. Garland’s appointment of Mr. Weiss as special counsel did not solve part of the problem it was meant to address. A special counsel designation is intended to insulate an investigation from politics, but the attorney general’s decision still drew fire from Republicans who derided the choice of Mr. Weiss because he had signed off on the original plea agreement, which they had described as a “sweetheart deal.”Never mind that Mr. Weiss was a Trump administration appointee whom the Biden administration kept on to show that it was not attempting to tilt the case in favor of the president’s son. Since Mr. Trump and his allies did not like the apparent outcome of the investigation, some have painted Mr. Weiss as a lackey of the Biden administration and have showcased whistle-blowers who said the prosecutor had been hamstrung even though he insisted he was not.“This move by Attorney General Garland is part of the Justice Department’s efforts to attempt a Biden family cover-up,” said Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee who has led congressional investigations into the president’s son.Such attacks also serve the purpose of discrediting Mr. Weiss in advance if in the end he does not confirm their unsubstantiated charges of corruption against the Biden family. Testimony and news accounts have indicated that Hunter Biden traded on his name to make money and a former business partner has said that his father was aware. But no evidence has emerged that the president personally profited from or used his power to benefit his son’s business interests.Still, other Republicans said the party should welcome the appointment of Mr. Weiss as special counsel. There would be no need for one if there was nothing to investigate, they argued, and it was Mr. Biden’s own attorney general now saying there was a need.“It shows that there is more than just smoke,” said Douglas Heye, a longtime Republican strategist. “It makes it impossible to define this now as simply a House Republican or MAGA thing. This has to be covered differently now. And as we’ve learned from other special counsel investigations, where a special counsel starts is not necessarily where it ends up.”For the White House, the attorney general’s Friday afternoon announcement was an unpleasant surprise, a head-snapping reversal from just seven weeks ago, when the president’s team thought it had turned a corner with Hunter Biden’s agreement with Mr. Weiss to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and accept a diversion program to dismiss an unlawful gun possession charge.The Biden camp was deeply relieved that five years of investigation had added up to nothing more serious. The president made a point of inviting his son, who has struggled with a crack cocaine addiction, to a high-profile state dinner two days later in what was taken as a spike-the-ball moment declaring victory over the family’s pursuers. The fact that Mr. Garland was also at the state dinner, hanging out just across an outdoor tent from the man his department was prosecuting, left even some Democrats feeling uncomfortable.But any sense of relief was premature. When Hunter Biden showed up at the Federal District Court in Wilmington, Del., on July 26 to finalize the plea deal, it all unraveled under questioning from a judge in just a few hours. At the heart of the matter was a disagreement over what the agreement meant. Hunter Biden and his lawyers thought it ended the investigation, while prosecutors made clear it did not.The Hunter Biden legal team wants certainty that a guilty plea would end the matter, given that Mr. Trump has vowed to prosecute him if elected president. But as Mr. Weiss revealed on Friday, subsequent negotiations intended to iron out the disconnect have reached an impasse, making a trial all but certain to be the next step and making it easier for Republicans trying to shift attention from Mr. Trump’s three indictments.They are, of course, hardly comparable cases. Hunter Biden was never president and never will be president, and even the most damning evidence against him does not equate to trying to overturn a democratic election in order to hold onto power. But it has been a useful strategy for Republicans to complain about what they call a “two-tier justice system.”Three-quarters of Republicans believe the president’s son got preferential treatment in the plea deal, compared with 33 percent of Democrats, according to a poll by Reuters and Ipsos in June. But most voters indicated that they thought Mr. Biden was “being a good father by supporting his son,” and only 26 percent said they were less likely to vote for him as a result of Hunter’s legal troubles.The president’s strategists have argued that Republican attacks on Hunter Biden did not work in the 2020 election when Mr. Biden beat Mr. Trump or in the 2022 midterm elections when Democrats did better than anticipated. Nor, they added, has the issue resonated with voters who will be important to the president’s re-election in 2024, meaning independents and disappointed Democrats.That is an assumption that in the months to come will be put on trial, in effect, at the same time as the president’s son. More

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      Republican 2024 Candidates Cast Doubt on Hunter Biden Special Counsel

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      Republican presidential candidates, some of whom were stumping in the early-caucusing state of Iowa on Friday, largely derided the news that the prosecutor investigating President Biden’s son Hunter had been elevated to special counsel status.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, during a campaign stop in Audubon, Iowa, cast doubt on the independence of the special counsel, David C. Weiss, who had already been overseeing a yearslong investigation of the president’s son. “It just seems to me that they’re going to find a way to give him some type of soft-glove treatment,’’ he said. And Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, spoke disdainfully of the new title and power for Mr. Weiss.“I don’t think the American people trust the Department of Justice or anything this is going to do,” Ms. Haley said in an appearance on Fox News. “I think this was meant to be a distraction.”At the same time, she called it a “response to the pressure that the Biden family is feeling” and called on House Republicans who have been investigating the Bidens “to keep their foot on the gas.” So far, the investigations have found no hard evidence that President Biden used his influence while vice president to benefit his son’s business deals.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota also said he doubted the independence of Mr. Weiss. In an interview while twirling around on the Iowa State Fair’s Ferris wheel, he called the move “too little, too late” and said few Republicans would view the step as a serious development, given Mr. Weiss’s role in offering Hunter Biden a plea deal in the case. That plea deal has fallen apart.Mr. Weiss is a federal prosecutor in Delaware who was originally appointed by former President Donald J. Trump. He was left in his position by President Biden to continue the Hunter Biden inquiry to avoid the appearance that the president would seek special treatment for his son.In a statement attributed to a spokesperson, Mr. Trump, who is being investigated by the special counsel Jack Smith, claimed without evidence that the Department of Justice has protected President Biden, Hunter Biden and other family members “for decades.” The statement cast doubt on Mr. Weiss’s independence and criticized him for not already bringing “proper charges after a four-year investigation” of Hunter Biden.Mr. Smith has brought two indictments against Mr. Trump.Not all of the candidates were disdainful of the appointment of the special counsel, which Republicans have urged for some time. Vivek Ramaswamy, who said last month that a special counsel was warranted, called the appointment of Mr. Weiss “good” on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “Now let’s see if it’s more than a fig leaf,” he added.Former Vice President Mike Pence, who was flipping cuts of pork at the Iowa State Fair on Friday, said he approved of the Department of Justice’s move to upgrade Mr. Weiss’s power.“I think it’s about time that we saw the appointment of a special counsel to get to the bottom of not only what Hunter Biden was doing, but what the Biden family was doing,” Mr. Pence said. “The American people deserve answers, and I welcome the appointment.”Anjali Huynh More

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      Fact-Checking Trump Defenders’ Claims After Indictment in Election Case

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      Former President Donald Trump’s supporters have made inaccurate claims about the judge presiding over his case and misleadingly compared his conduct to that of other politicians.Allies of former President Donald J. Trump have rushed to his defense since he was charged on Tuesday in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.They inaccurately attacked the judge assigned to oversee the trial, baselessly speculated that the timing of the accusations was intended to obscure misconduct by the Bidens and misleadingly compared his conduct to that of Democratic politicians.Here’s a fact check.What Was Said“Judge Chutkan was appointed to the D.C. District Court by Barack Obama, and she has a reputation for being far left, even by D.C. District Court standards. Judge Chutkan, for example, has set aside numerous federal death-penalty cases, and she is the only federal judge in Washington, D.C., who has sentenced Jan. 6 defendants to sentences longer than the government requested.”— Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, in a podcast on WednesdayThis is exaggerated. Mr. Cruz is correct that Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the trial judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s prosecution in the case, was appointed by President Barack Obama. While she has gained a reputation for handing down tough sentences to people convicted of crimes in the Jan. 6 riot, she is not the only federal judge who has exceeded prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations.Of the more than 1,000 people who have been charged for their activities on Jan. 6, 2021, about 561 people have received a sentence, including 335 in jail and another 119 in home detention, as of July 6, according to the Justice Department. Judges have largely issued sentences shorter than what prosecutors sought and what federal sentencing guidelines recommend, data compiled by NPR and The Washington Post shows.Senator Ted Cruz described Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s appointment as “highly problematic,” but in the Federal District Court in Washington, cases are randomly assigned.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesJudge Chutkan ordered longer penalties in at least four cases, according to NPR, and appears to have done so more frequently than her peers. But other judges in Federal District Court in Washington have also imposed harsher sentences.Those include Judge Royce C. Lamberth, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, who sentenced a man to 60 days in prison while the government had asked for 14 days. He sentenced another to 51 months, rather than 46 months, and another to 60 days, rather than 30.Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, sentenced another defendant to 30 days, twice as long as the government recommendation. Judge Reggie B. Walton, nominated by President George W. Bush, sentenced a defendant to 50 days compared with the recommended 30 days. And Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, appointed by President Bill Clinton, sentenced a man to 60 days rather than 45 days.Moreover, Mr. Cruz described Judge Chutkan’s appointment as “highly problematic” given her political leanings. But it is worth noting that in the Federal District Court in Washington, cases are randomly assigned — similar to how Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee, was randomly assigned to preside over the case involving Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left office.What Was Said“All of these indictments have been called into question because they come right after massive evidence is released about the Biden family. On June 7, the F.B.I. released documents alleging that the Bidens took in $10 million in bribes from Burisma. The very next day, Jack Smith indicted Trump over the classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. And then you go to July 26. That’s when Hunter Biden’s plea deal fell apart after the D.O.J. tried giving him blanket immunity from any future prosecutions. The very next day, Jack Smith added more charges to the Mar-a-Lago case. And now, just one day after Devon Archer gave explosive testimony about Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter Biden’s business deals, Smith indicts Trump for Jan. 6.”— Maria Bartiromo, anchor on Fox Business Network, on WednesdayThis lacks evidence. Mr. Trump and many of his supporters have suggested that the timing of developments in investigations into his conduct runs suspiciously parallel to investigations into the conduct of Hunter Biden and is meant as a distraction.But there is no proof that Mr. Smith, the special counsel overseeing the cases, has deliberately synced his inquiries into Mr. Trump with investigations into the Bidens, one of which is handled by federal prosecutors and others by House Republicans.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Mr. Smith as special counsel in November to investigate Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol as well as the former president’s retention of classified documents. After Republicans won the House that same month, lawmakers in the party said they would begin to investigate the Bidens. (The Justice Department separately began an inquiry into Hunter Biden’s taxes and business dealings in 2018.)Over the next few months, the inquiries barreled along, with some developments inevitably occurring almost in tandem. In some cases, Mr. Smith has little control over the developments or when they are publicly revealed.The first overlap Ms. Bartiromo cited centered on an F.B.I. document from June 2020 that contained an unsubstantiated allegation of bribery against President Biden and his son, and on charges filed against Mr. Trump over his handling of classified documents.Jack Smith was appointed in November 2022 to investigate Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot.Doug Mills/The New York TimesRepresentative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, issued a subpoena in May for the document. The F.B.I. allowed Mr. Comer and the committee’s top Democrat access to a redacted version on June 5. That same day, Mr. Comer said he would initiate contempt-of-Congress hearings against the F.B.I. director on June 8, as the agency was still resisting giving all members access to the document.Two days later, on June 7, Mr. Comer announced that the F.B.I. had relented and that he would cancel the contempt proceedings. Members of the committee viewed the document on the morning of June 8, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, held a news conference that afternoon describing the document.That night, Mr. Trump himself, not the Justice Department, announced that he had been charged over his mishandling of classified documents, overtaking any headlines about the Bidens. The department declined to comment, and the indictment was unsealed a day later, on June 9.In the second overlap, on July 26, a federal judge put on hold a proposed plea deal between Hunter Biden and the Justice Department over tax and gun charges. Ms. Bartiromo is correct that a grand jury issued new charges against Mr. Trump in the documents case on July 27.The timing of the latest developments in Ms. Bartiromo’s third example, too, was not entirely in Mr. Smith’s hands.Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer was first subpoenaed on June 12 to testify before the committee on June 16. Mr. Comer told The Washington Examiner that Mr. Archer rescheduled his appearance three times before his lawyer confirmed on July 30 that he would appear the next day. Mr. Archer then spoke to the House oversight committee in nearly five hours of closed-door testimony on July 31. Republicans and Democrats on the committee gave conflicting accounts of what Mr. Archer said.Mr. Trump announced on July 18 that federal prosecutors had informed him he was a target of their investigation into his efforts to stay in office, suggesting that he would soon be indicted. Mr. Trump’s lawyers met with officials in the office of Mr. Smith on July 27. A magistrate judge ordered the indictment unsealed at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 1.What Was Said“All of the people who claim that the 2016 election wasn’t legitimate, all of the people who claimed in 2004, with a formal objection in the Congress, that that election wasn’t legitimate, and in fact, objected to the point where they said that the voting machines in Ohio were tampered with and that President Bush was selected, not elected — and not to mention former presidents of the United States and secretary of states, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter and a whole slew of House Democrats who repeatedly led the nation to believe — lied to the nation, that they said Russia selected Donald Trump as president, that the election was completely illegitimate — all of that was allowed to pass, but yet, once again, we see a criminalization when it comes to Donald Trump.”— Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, on CNN on WednesdayThis is misleading. Mr. Trump’s supporters have long argued that Democrats, too, have objected to election results and pushed allegations of voting malfeasance. None of the objections cited, though, have been paired with concerted efforts to overturn election results, as was the case for Mr. Trump.Democratic lawmakers objected to counting a state’s electors after the elections of recent Republican presidents in 2001, 2005 and 2017. In 2001 and 2017, objecting House members were unable to find a senator to sign on to their objections, as is required, and were overruled by the vice president. In 2005, two Democrats objected to counting Ohio’s electoral votes. The two chambers then convened debate and rejected the objections.In each case, the losing candidate had already conceded, did not try to overturn election results and did not try to persuade the vice president to halt proceedings as Mr. Trump is accused of doing in 2020.Mrs. Clinton has said repeatedly that Russian interference was partly to blame for her defeat in the 2016 presidential election. But she is not accused of trying to overthrow the results of the election. Prosecutors have not detailed any involvement on her part in a multifaceted effort to stay in power, including by organizing slates of false electors or pressuring officials to overturn voting results.What Was Said“Indicting political opponent candidates during a presidential election is what happens in banana republics and Third World countries.”— Representative Andy Harris, Republican of Maryland, in a Twitter post on TuesdayThis is exaggerated. Mr. Trump is the first former U.S. president to be indicted on criminal charges, but he is not the only presidential candidate to face charges in the United States and certainly not in the world.Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, was indicted in August 2014 and accused of abusing his power. Mr. Perry, who ran for president in 2012, had hinted that he would run again and set up a political action committee the same month he was indicted. He officially announced his presidential bid in 2015 but dropped out before a court dismissed the charges against him in 2016.Eugene V. Debs, the socialist leader, ran for president behind bars in 1920 after he was indicted on a charge of sedition for opposing American involvement in World War I. He was sentenced in 1918 to 10 years in prison.It is also not unheard-of for political leaders in advanced economies and democracies to face charges while campaigning for office. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of fraud and bribery. After losing power, he returned to his post in November 2022 while still facing charges. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi faced numerous charges and scandals over tax fraud and prostitution while he served as prime minister in the 2000s.And in Taiwan, prosecutors said in 2006 that they had enough evidence to bring corruption charges against the president at the time, Chen Shui-bian. Mr. Chen remained his party’s chairman through parliamentary elections in 2008 as the investigation loomed over him, and he was arrested and charged that November. More

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      The Biden Family Drama Is Far From Over

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      Gail Collins: Bret, I suspect our first big argument today will be about Hunter Biden. But I feel sorta obliged to start with Donald Trump. I mean, how often do you have a former president facing the threat of multiple indictments on alleged transgressions ranging from paying hush money over a sex scandal to prompting a riot that stormed the Capitol to trying to fix an election?Bret Stephens: While reportedly ordering an employee to delete potentially incriminating security camera footage in Mar-a-Lago. My preferred nickname for the 45th president, as you know, is Benito Milhous Caligula, but maybe we could switch that to G. Gordon Berlusconi.Gail: Said former president is, of course, the front-runner for the next Republican nomination.What’s your take on all this?Bret: Two thoughts. First, Trump belongs in prison, assuming Jack Smith, the special counsel in the documents matter, can prove his case in court. At a minimum, it looks to me like an open-and-shut case of obstruction of justice. Apparently, nobody told The Donald that the cover-up is usually worse than the crime.Gail: From your lips to God’s ears.Bret: Second, the more the legal system comes after Trump, the more the Republican rank-and-file will rally around him as both a truth-teller and a martyr. The hard right increasingly views the U.S. justice system in ways that the far left traditionally has: as a rigged, corrupt system in which sinister insiders use the levers of power to advance the interests of the elite at the expense of ordinary people.And of course, the Hunter Biden saga plays right into that narrative.Gail: Knew you’d be dying to go on to Hunter. I thought the plea deal was pretty reasonable. His crimes were tax evasion and lying when he bought a gun by failing to acknowledge he was a drug addict. I hate the idea of virtually anybody being able to obtain a gun. But even I do not expect drug addicts will voluntarily share that information when they attempt to buy one. So, definite criminal behavior but not a real shocker.Bret: If Hunter had been poor and Black, would the justice system have been as indulgent?Gail: A fair point. But in most places, a poor Black defendant from a responsible family who’s subsequently been living a sober, well-supervised life probably could have made this kind of deal. Or, OK, at least in some places.Bret: Hmmm.Maybe Hunter is a swell guy in private, and I have sympathy for anyone struggling with addiction. But what’s in the public record about him — from his obvious willingness to trade on the perception of access to make his living from dubious foreign sources to his reluctance to acknowledge paternity of one of his daughters to his career as a mediocre artist selling work at curiously astronomical prices to not paying taxes and then almost getting off with what seemed like a wrist slap — doesn’t exactly brighten the Biden family name. And while Republicans are jumping to conclusions without rock-solid evidence, I’m not entirely confident that Joe Biden really had no inkling of what his son was up to or that the larger Biden family didn’t benefit from Hunter’s shenanigans.Gail: Absolutely no evidence Joe Biden knew about Hunter’s lawbreaking. But one charge I’d bet on is that Hunter dropped dad’s name a lot when trying to do business with foreign honchos. Sort of hard to imagine him being saintly enough to avoid it. And the whole idea of his making deals with foreign honchos in the first place while his father was vice president is … bad.Bret: When it came to the Trump family’s finances — from his tax avoidance schemes to his foreign hotels to Jared Kushner’s sweetheart financing with Saudi Arabia — the news media left no stone unturned. It behooves journalists to be as aggressively curious about the Biden family’s finances. Especially since a federal judge wasn’t at all keen on Hunter’s plea deal, and I.R.S. agents are alleging political interference in the case.Gail: Absolutely. And news of Hunter’s unacknowledged daughter — brought to us by The Times’s great reporting — is a deeply depressing embarrassment for both father and grandfather. I was happy to see Joe Biden acknowledge her last Friday.But I still don’t believe anything on the Biden bad-behavior ledger compares to the way Trump built a personal real estate empire on smarmy-to-corrupt practices.Bret: Yeah — probably.Gail: And you know, as irritating as I find Donald Jr. and Eric making pots of money off their family name, I wouldn’t find that alone a major reason to violently oppose their father’s presidential ambitions.I think it’s the same with Hunter Biden — the House Republicans may be trying to make him a big campaign issue, but voters mostly don’t care.Bret: I bet plenty of voters would like to know how the extended Biden family raked in $17 million from foreign sources between 2014 and 2019, as a whistle-blowing I.R.S. agent testified. This was a period that seems to have coincided with Hunter’s crack binges. Just what expert services was he providing for that kind of income? Glassblowing?Gail: Well, we’re not gonna resolve every part of this today. Always enjoy having a Hunter fight with you, Bret, and we’ll undoubtedly turn back to this subject. But let’s move on to Congress. Lots to discuss there.Bret: Ad aspera per aspera, as some Roman must have said.Gail: Mitch McConnell seemed to go totally blank while talking with reporters last week. People are wondering if he’s developed serious aging problems that should make him step down from his job as Senate minority leader. What do you think?Bret: That one is between him and his physician, and he seemed to recover his faculties later during the press conference. But as with Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Grassley or, ahem, Joe Biden, elderly politicians do themselves no favors by trying to hang on to office for too long. Interesting question is who might replace him. Any free advice for the Senate Repubs?Gail: We both agreed long ago that we wished the president wasn’t intent on running for re-election in his 80s. As to McConnell, I’ll never forgive him for squatting on Barack Obama’s final nomination to the Supreme Court. Still, I have to admit he’s generally seemed at least non-crazy as minority leader.But proposing a successor is your territory. Any ideas?Bret: I don’t think McConnell will step down right away, but someone I know who knows things tells me that the likeliest replacements are either South Dakota’s John Thune, the current No. 2, or Texas’ John Cornyn. My own preference would be Cornyn: a smart and sober guy and a non-MAGA conservative. Whatever else you might say about Cornyn, he is to the junior senator from Texas what pumpkin pie is to a jack-o’-lantern.Gail: Love your Ted Cruz reference. Hehehehe.Bret: Can I switch the subject to cultural issues? First, Kevin Spacey’s acquittal in a London courtroom on nine charges of sexual assault.Gail: Bret, not having really kept up on the Spacey situation, I’m going to have to defer to you.Bret: This is Spacey’s second acquittal, following last year’s in a case brought in New York by the actor Anthony Rapp. What bothers me is that even now, Spacey will face an “uphill battle” to get major roles again, according to a report in The Times. He’s one of the greatest actors alive, the Laurence Olivier of our day. He’s spent the last six years as persona non grata. He’s been declared not guilty by two juries in two countries. I think his case, like that of Armie Hammer, will be remembered as another ugly instance of #MeToo opportunism. To borrow a line from Raymond J. Donovan, Ronald Reagan’s unjustly indicted labor secretary, to which office does he go to get his reputation back?Sorry, I had to rant. I hope some major Hollywood director has the guts and grace to give him a starring role.Gail: Rant away! And as I said, I’m following your lead on this one. Except for your #MeToo swipe. The whole #MeToo opportunism reference hurts me.On a far less somber note, I have to say I’m siding with the law-and-order crowd when it comes to the Biden family dog, Commander, who’s allegedly bitten Secret Service agents at least 10 times over the last few months.I’m sure Commander has his own side of the story, but he should be exiled to the countryside forever. No deal with the prosecutor where he pleads guilty and then gets nothing but probation.Bret: Maybe Commander got hold of that stash of white powder that was found in the White House? “Cocaine K-9” could make an interesting sequel to “Cocaine Bear.”The other subject I wanted to raise is Sinead O’Connor, the Irish singer who sadly passed away last week. She basically blew up her musical career in the United States when in 1992 she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live” in protest of the church’s cover-up of clerical sexual abuse. Your thoughts?Gail: I’d love to see Sinead O’Connor’s story enshrined with other celebrities who did something righteous and fell into career limbo as a result. Many celebrities have been outspoken with few repercussions. But messing with religious leaders will almost always get you in deep trouble. Even when they deserve it.Bret: O’Connor was calling attention to hideous facts about the church a decade before The Boston Globe’s Spotlight stories put it on the national agenda. She used her musical celebrity in exemplary fashion to call out monstrous evil. She went directly after one of the most beloved public figures of the time, now canonized, and she did so at heavy cost to her own career. It was an exemplary use of free speech and an extraordinary act of courage.Nothing compared 2 her. Rest in peace.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Hunter Biden Plea Deal Put on Hold as Judge Questions Its Details

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      A federal judge on Wednesday put on hold a proposed plea deal between Hunter Biden and the Justice Department that would have settled tax and gun charges against the president’s son, stunning the courtroom and raising legal and constitutional questions about the agreement.After moments of high drama in which the deal appeared headed toward collapse, the judge, Maryellen Noreika of the Federal District Court in Wilmington, Del., sent the two sides back to try to work out modifications that would address her concerns and salvage the basic contours of the agreement.Under the proposed deal, Mr. Biden would have pleaded guilty to two tax misdemeanors and averted prosecution on a gun charge by enrolling in a two-year diversion program for nonviolent offenders.Prosecutors and Mr. Biden’s team had both started the day confident that the proceeding would go smoothly and the judge would sign off on the deal immediately. As he entered the courtroom, Mr. Biden drew a deep breath and plunged forward to greet the prosecutors who investigated him for five years with handshakes and a smile.But Judge Noreika had other ideas, telling the two sides repeatedly that she had no intention of being “a rubber stamp,” and spending three hours sharply questioning them over nearly every detail of the deal.“I cannot accept the plea agreement today,” said Judge Noreika, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald J. Trump in 2017 with the support of Delaware’s two Democratic senators.An exhausted-looking Mr. Biden trudged out of the courthouse looking a bit stunned, as his lawyers puzzled over what to do next. At the end of the hearing, Mr. Biden entered a plea of not guilty on the tax charges, which he will reverse if the two sides revise their agreement to the judge’s satisfaction.The muddled outcome only underscored how Mr. Biden’s personal and legal troubles have become an entrenched political issue in Washington, where Republicans have long sought to show that his foreign business ventures were aided by, or benefited, President Biden.Those efforts have only intensified as Mr. Trump’s legal troubles have deepened and Republicans in Congress have sought to undercut the president heading into the 2024 election.Republicans have accused David C. Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware who was retained by the Biden administration to complete the investigation into Mr. Biden, of cutting a “sweetheart deal” intended to help Democrats.They have sought to cast the Biden family as corrupt and assailed the proposed deal as far too lenient, citing testimony from two I.R.S. investigators as evidence that the Justice Department had hamstrung the investigation and that President Biden played a role in his son’s business deals with companies and partners in Ukraine and China.Hunter Biden’s foreign business ventures raised ethical concerns, especially while his father was vice president, and his personal problems — he has acknowledged being addicted to crack cocaine for a number of years — have given conservatives an endless stream of material to assail him. But Republicans have produced no compelling evidence that President Biden used his office to help his son in any substantive way.The White House declined to comment directly on Wednesday’s court proceeding while communicating the president’s support for his son’s efforts to put his problems behind him.“Hunter Biden is a private citizen, and this was a personal matter,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Wednesday. “As we have said, the president, the first lady, they love their son, and they support him as he continues to rebuild his life.”Judge Noreika’s concerns appeared to center on two elements of the proposed deal. One was a provision that would have offered Mr. Biden broad insulation against further prosecution on matters scrutinized by federal prosecutors during the five-year inquiry, providing him with some protection against the possibility that Mr. Trump, if re-elected, or another Republican president might seek to reopen the case. The other had to do with the diversion program on the gun charge, under which she would be called on to play a role in determining whether Mr. Biden was meeting the terms of the deal.Judge Noreika said she was not trying to sink the agreement, but to strengthen it by ironing out ambiguities and inconsistencies, a view held by some former department officials.“The judge appropriately wanted to make sure that the parties were clear on whether Hunter Biden could be prosecuted for additional crimes in the future,” said Barbara L. McQuade, who was the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010 to 2017.Judge Noreika kicked off the hearing by telling lawyers that they did not need to keep “popping” up and down every time she asked them a question.It was a signal that she was about to subject them to a relentless interrogation over elements of an agreement she described, variously, as “not standard, not what I normally see,” possibly “unconstitutional,” without legal precedent and potentially “not worth the paper it is printed on.”Judge Noreika quickly zeroed in on a paragraph offering Mr. Biden broad immunity from prosecution, in perpetuity, for a range of matters scrutinized by the Justice Department. The judge questioned why prosecutors had written it in a way that gave her no legal authority to reject it.Then, in 10 minutes of incisive questioning, she exposed serious differences between the two sides on what, exactly, that paragraph meant.Christopher Clark, Mr. Biden’s lead lawyer, said it indemnified his client not merely for the tax and gun offenses uncovered during the inquiry, but for other possible offenses stemming from his lucrative consulting deals with companies in Ukraine, China and Romania.Prosecutors had a far narrower definition. They saw Mr. Biden’s immunity as limited to offenses uncovered during their investigation of his tax returns dating back to 2014, and his illegal purchase of a firearm in 2018, when he was a heavy drug user, they said.When the judge asked Leo Wise, a lead prosecutor in the case, if the investigation of Mr. Biden was continuing, he answered, “Yes.”When she asked him, hypothetically, if the deal would preclude an investigation into possible violation of laws regulating foreign lobbying by Mr. Biden connected with his consulting and legal work, he replied, “No.”Mr. Biden then told the judge he could not agree to any deal that did not offer him broad immunity, and Mr. Clark popped up angrily to declare the deal “null and void.”The disagreement over such a central element of the deal was remarkable, given the months of negotiations that went into reaching it.“Today was very unusual, but based on my experience, I think the deal will now get done,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “Judges are reluctant to reject deals but do ask questions. These should have been cleared up before today’s hearing, but they were not, so she helped provide more clarity.”The 30 journalists in the gallery then witnessed a remarkable tableau of real-time, public deal-making. With the judge having called a recess, the defense and prosecution teams first separated into two packs, then merged into a circle to hash out a new compromise. An unsmiling Mr. Weiss paced back and forth, jaw tense and hands jammed into the pockets of his suit.After an official recess was declared, Mr. Clark agreed to the narrower terms on Mr. Biden’s behalf.But Judge Noreika still appeared to be unconvinced. She turned her attention to the fine print of the deal that had been struck on the gun offense, requiring Mr. Biden to avoid using drugs or owning a firearms during the two-year diversion program.She objected strenuously to how a violation of its terms would be handled.Typically, the Justice Department could independently verify any breach and bring charges. But Mr. Biden’s team, concerned that the department might abuse that authority if Mr. Trump is re-elected, successfully pushed to give that power to Judge Noreika, arguing that she would be a more neutral arbiter.Judge Noreika suggested that such an arrangement could be unconstitutional because it might give her prosecutorial powers, which were vested in the executive branch by the Constitution.“I’m not doing something that gets me outside my lane of my branch of government,” said the judge, adding, “Go back and work on that.”Erica L. Green More

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      Democrats, It’s OK to Talk About Hunter Biden

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      If you travel in predominantly Democratic circles and want to have a really trying day, write or publicly say something unflattering but true about President Biden, a lament legible or audible beyond people who can be safely depended on to vote for him. Then brace for the furies.Observe that it’s one thing — a noble, beautiful thing — for him to give steadfast support and unconditional love to his profoundly troubled son, but that it’s another for that son to attend a state dinner days after he had cut a deal with federal prosecutors on tax and gun charges. Many of your liberal acquaintances will shush and shame you: Speak no ill of Joe Biden! That’s an unaffordable luxury. You’re playing into his MAGA adversaries’ hands.Note that Biden seems less physically peppy and verbally precise than in years past and suggest that it might be best, for him and for continued Democratic control of the White House, if he let Democrats choose a different 2024 nominee. You’ll be likened to an anchor for Fox News. You’ll be chided for age discrimination. Never mind that you’re examining his behavior, not the year on his birth certificate. You’re being counterproductive.You’ll be asked: What do Hunter Biden and diminished vim matter next to the menace of Donald Trump and a Republican Party in his lawless, nihilistic thrall? That’s a fair question — to a point. But past that point, it’s dishonest and dangerous.Dishonest because the question is often leveled at essentially Biden-friendly observers who have lavished, oh, 100 times as many words on Trump’s epic moral corruption as on Biden’s blind spots and missteps, creating zero impression of any equivalence.Dangerous because it suggests that Americans can’t be trusted to behold politicians in their full complexity — and reality in all its messiness — and distinguish unideal from unconscionable, scattered flaws from through-and-through fraudulence. I don’t see how that’s consonant with the exaltation and preservation of democracy, in which it exhibits scant trust.It also plays into the portrait of Democrats as elitists who decide what people should and shouldn’t be exposed to — what they can and can’t handle. How’s that a winning look?I believe that a victory by Trump in 2024 would be devastating beyond measure for the United States. I believe that a victory by any Republican who has indulged, parroted or promoted Trump’s fictions and assaults on democratic norms would also be a disaster. His abettors have shown their colors and disqualified themselves. And I’ve said that — and will continue to say that — repeatedly.I also believe that Biden has been a good president at a very difficult time, and that even if he’s not near peak vigor, we’d be much, much better served by the renewal of his White House lease than by a new tenant in the form of Trump or one of his de facto accomplices. Biden’s second term, like his first, would be about more than the man himself. It would be about a whole team, a set of principles, a fundamental decency, a thread of continuity, an investment in important institutions.And I believe that there’s more than ample room in all the above to talk about whether Biden is the strongest of the possible Democratic contenders to take on Trump, Ron DeSantis or whomever — although that particular conversation may soon be moot, given the ever-shrinking amount of time for those contenders to put together campaigns and for Democratic voters to assess them.Likewise, it’s possible — no, necessary — to have nuanced conversations about Biden’s and his administration’s mix of virtues and vices. If a big part of the horror of Trump is his estrangement from and perversion of truth, how is the proper or even strategic response to gild or cloak truth and declare it subservient to a desired political end?The intensity of many House Republicans’ fixation on Hunter Biden is deranged, and journalists would be wrong to chronicle every breathless inch of their descent down that rabbit hole. But we’d also be wrong to ignore Hunter Biden entirely, and Democratic partisans who urge that aren’t being realistic and are doing as much to feed suspicions as to quell them.As Peter Baker wrote in The Times last month, “In modern times, the harsh spotlight of media scrutiny has focused on Donald Nixon’s financial dealings with Howard Hughes, Billy Carter’s work as an agent for Libya, Neil Bush’s service on the board of a failed savings and loan, Roger Clinton’s drug convictions and of course the various financial and security clearance issues involving Mr. Trump’s children and son-in-law.”Baker later added: “Even some of the president’s Democratic allies have privately said there were legitimate questions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China that seemed to trade on his name.”This is a strange, scary time. The leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination is an indicted, twice-impeached former president who cares only for his own eminence and survival and doesn’t let a shred of civic concern, genuine patriotism or recognizable scruple dilute his solipsism. He could well take up residence in the White House again.So the temptation, given the stakes, is to bathe whichever Democrat stands in the way of that in a beatific light, to sing that person’s praises as loudly and unflaggingly as vocal cords permit. That feels like the prudent response. It feels like the ethical one.It’s neither, certainly not for those of us in the news media. It would put us in the business of creating outcomes, not chronicling events, which would be obvious to voters on top of being wrong. It would further erode our credibility, which has suffered plenty of erosion already. It would betray the fundamental purpose and real power of journalism.We do best as a profession — and all of us do best as a democracy and a society — when we hold everyone accountable, regardless of the special circumstances, and when we’re honest across the board. To act otherwise is to send the message that all is gamesmanship and that integrity is for suckers. That’s probably not how we defeat Trump. It’s more likely how he defeats us, long before and long after whatever happens in November 2024.For the Love of SentencesAdele performs in Las Vegas.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for ADIn recognition of a time of year with much volitional long-haul air travel, David Mack mulled matters baggage-related in The Times: “I’m terrible at packing. Laughably terrible. Concerningly so. On a recent trip to Las Vegas with my boyfriend (I’m gay) and both our mothers (again, we are extremely gay) to see Adele (you get the idea), we both packed so much that you’d be forgiven for thinking we were moving there.” (Thanks to Conrad Macina of Landing, N.J., and Jean Dunn of Southbury, Conn., for spotlighting this.)Also in The Times, Jane Margolies described a growing trend of corporate office buildings trimmed with greenery that requires less maintenance: “As manicured lawns give way to meadows and borders of annuals are replaced by wild and woolly native plants, a looser, some might say messier, aesthetic is taking hold. Call it the horticultural equivalent of bedhead.” (Sally Hinson, Greer, S.C.)And Michael Kimmelman bemoaned the Sisyphean efforts to make Penn Station in Manhattan bearable: “The only thing everyone seems to know for certain is that nothing meaningful ever really happens to improve North America’s busiest and most miserable train hub, despite decades of demands and promises. Hope has long gone to die on the 6:50 to Secaucus.” (Guy Heston, Las Vegas, and David Ballard, Asbury Park, N.J.)In The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Cathal Kelly pondered the cantankerous trajectory of the tennis star Andy Murray: “In his dotage, Murray has become the guy who’s visibly counting what you’ve put down in the ‘eight items or less’ checkout line.” (Hamish Cameron, Toronto)In The Guardian, Stuart Heritage reflected on the end of the Sussexes’ deal with Spotify, for which Meghan Markle hosted “Archetypes,” a short-lived, inspiration-minded podcast on which she interviewed other prominent women: “As an entity, Harry and Meghan are only interesting for as long as they can destabilize the monarchy. Their Oprah interview did that. Their documentary did that. Harry’s book ‘Spare’ did that. ‘Archetypes’ did not do that, and as such was roughly as interesting as listening to changing-room chatter in the world’s most insufferable yoga studio.” (John Donaldson, Carlsbad, Calif.)In The Boston Globe, Scot Lehigh pondered a popular current riddle: “DeSantis must have some political skills. Saddled with qualities that evolution traditionally rewards in porcupines but not politicians, he has still managed to succeed on a state level.” (Kathie Lynch Nutting, Mashpee, Mass.)In The New Yorker, Julian Lucas profiled the trailblazing and visionary science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany, now 81: “With long white hair, heavy brows and a chest-length beard that begins halfway up his lightly melanated cheeks, Delany has the appearance of an Eastern Orthodox monk who left his cloister for a biker gang.” (Max Sinclair, DeKalb, Ill.)And in a letter to the editor in The Washington Post, a reader named Michael D. Schattman poked fun at the oddities of a now-famous plaintiff: “A fair reading of the Supreme Court’s opinion in 303 Creative v. Elenis is that the Colorado anti-discrimination law is in fact constitutional, except when applied to a business that does not wish to provide a product it does not offer to a nonexistent gay couple who are not seeking a website for an imaginary wedding of which the business owner does not approve.” (Lee Hudson, Gilboa, N.Y.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.On a Personal NoteStephen Speranza for The New York TimesNot all seasons are created equal. If you live in a place with a real autumn — with that football-weather nip in the air, those leaves going out in a blaze of glory — you know that it has no match. And if you live in a place with a real spring — with that sudden return of birdsong, those pink and red and purple blossoms — you know that it comes a close second.But how to rank summer and winter? Most of the people I know put winter last, and many of them misguidedly vault summer all the way to the top. For me, summer’s the bottom, and T.S. Eliot’s take on the calendar was all wrong. August is the cruelest month, barely edging out July.In the great outdoors, it’s harder to get cool in the summer than warm in the winter, when layers do the trick. And it’s getting harder all the time. Earth experienced what scientists said was probably its hottest day in modern history a week ago Monday. Then it beat that — twice — in the days just after that.The languid summer air is a soporific. And summer comes wrapped in the oppressive insistence that it’s the season of liberation, of abandon, of fun: no school, less clothing, vacations, the beach, the beach, the infernal beach. Summer is like New Year’s Eve that way. It’s decreed revelry. I like my revelry spontaneous, serendipitous and in soft, long-sleeved, flab-concealing flannel shirts.I like seasons with fewer ticks, fewer mosquitoes, less sunburn. Summer is hazardous. I’m surprised it doesn’t make everyone sign some sort of waiver.Perhaps you disagree? I hope you disagree. Because if you do, I invite you to send me, at this address, anywhere from one to four sentences arguing summer’s case. If I get enough deft, spirited responses, persuasive in their humor or eloquence, I’ll compile and share some of them in a newsletter between now and the end of this over-baked stretch of the calendar.Meantime? Apply your sunscreen. Trim your toenails (all those damned sandals and flip-flops). HAVE FUN! Summer will tolerate nothing less. More

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      La hija de Hunter Biden y una historia de dos familias

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      El relato que rodea a la nieta del presidente en Arkansas, que aún no ha conocido a su padre ni a su abuelo, trata de dinero, política corrosiva y lo que significa tener el derecho de nacimiento de los Biden.Hay una niña de 4 años en una zona rural de Arkansas que está aprendiendo a andar en una cuatrimoto con estampado de camuflaje junto a sus primos. Algunos días lleva un lazo en el cabello y otros pasa su larga cola de caballo rubia por detrás de una gorra de béisbol. Cuando tenga edad suficiente, aprenderá a cazar, como su madre cuando era joven.La niña sabe que su padre es Hunter Biden y que su abuelo paterno es el presidente de Estados Unidos. Habla a menudo de ambos, pero no los conoce. Su abuelo materno, Rob Roberts, la describe como muy inteligente y divertida.“Puede que no sea el presidente de Estados Unidos”, señaló Roberts en un mensaje de texto, pero afirmó que haría cualquier cosa por su nieta. Dijo que ella “no necesita nada y nunca lo necesitará”.La historia que rodea a la nieta del presidente en Arkansas, cuyo nombre no figura en los documentos judiciales, es la historia de dos familias: una de ellas es poderosa; la otra, no. Pero, en el fondo, es una historia de dinero, política corrosiva y lo que significa tener el derecho de nacimiento de los Biden.El jueves, sus padres pusieron fin a una larga batalla judicial por la manutención de la niña al acordar que Hunter Biden, quien ha iniciado una segunda carrera como pintor y cuyas obras se han ofrecido hasta por 500.000 dólares cada una, cederá varios de sus cuadros a su hija, además de darle una pensión mensual. La niña seleccionará los cuadros de Biden, según los documentos judiciales.“Lo resolvimos entre nosotros”, dijo Lunden Roberts, la madre de la niña, en una entrevista con The New York Times. “Se resolvió” en una conversación con Biden, dijo.Hunter Biden no respondió a una solicitud de comentarios para este artículo.Hunter Biden se mantiene cercano a su padre y aparece a menudo en actos de la Casa Blanca.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesRoberts aseguró que retiró la petición de que se cambiara el apellido de la niña de Roberts a Biden (Biden se había opuesto a que su hija llevara su apellido). Roberts se limitó a decir que la decisión de retirar la petición fue mutua. “Ambos queremos lo mejor para nuestra hija, y ese es nuestro único objetivo”, declaró.Aunque se ha evitado el juicio previsto para mediados de julio, personas de ambas partes temen que se mantenga la toxicidad política que rodea al caso. Los medios de comunicación conservadores, desde Breitbart hasta Fox News, ya han hecho eco del caso, y los comentaristas conservadores atacaron a la familia Biden tras darse a conocer el acuerdo.Tanto Hunter Biden, el hijo privilegiado y problemático de un presidente, como Roberts, la hija de un armero rural, tienen aliados cuyas acciones han politizado más la situación. No hay pruebas de que la Casa Blanca esté implicada en esas acciones.Clint Lancaster, abogado de Roberts, ha representado a la campaña de Donald Trump. También llamó a Garrett Ziegler, un activista y exasesor de Trump en la Casa Blanca que ha catalogado y publicado mensajes de una memoria caché de archivos de Hunter Biden que parecen proceder de una computadora portátil que dejó en un sitio de reparaciones, para que actúe como testigo experto en el caso de la pensión alimenticia. En la otra esquina, aliados de grupos demócratas dedicados a ayudar a la familia Biden han difundido información sobre Ziegler y la familia Roberts para destacar sus vínculos con Trump.Y luego está el presidente.Su imagen pública gira en torno a su devoción por su familia, incluyendo a Hunter Biden, su único hijo varón sobreviviente. En las reuniones de estrategia de los últimos años, se ha dicho a los asesores que los Biden tienen seis nietos, no siete, según dos personas familiarizadas con las conversaciones.La Casa Blanca no respondió preguntas sobre el caso, en consonancia con la forma en que los funcionarios han respondido a las preguntas sobre la familia Biden anteriormente.Varios aliados del presidente temen que el caso pueda dañar sus posibilidades de reelección al atraer más atención sobre un hijo al que algunos demócratas ven como un lastre. Otros dicen que la extrema derecha se ha centrado en Hunter Biden, un ciudadano que no es servidor público, pero ha ignorado las fallas morales y éticas del expresidente Trump.“Tiene más acusaciones que todos los jugadores de dos equipos del Super Bowl”, dijo de Trump el escritor y estratega político Stuart Stevens, quien abandonó el Partido Republicano en 2016. “Pero eso no importa: ahí está Hunter Biden. Es solo ira en busca de un argumento”.‘La gente se hace una imagen de mí’Lunden Roberts, de 32 años, procede de un clan tan unido como el de los Biden. Su padre es un fabricante de armas de un estado republicano, entre cuyos compañeros de caza se encuentra Donald Trump Jr., y le enseñó a cazar pavos y caimanes desde muy pequeña. Trabaja en la empresa familiar, situada en una sinuosa carretera rural salpicada de pastizales a las afueras de Batesville, Arkansas.Roberts, de 1,73 metros de estatura y el orgullo de su familia, se graduó con honores en la secundaria Southside de Batesville, y jugó baloncesto en la Universidad Estatal de Arkansas, donde, según una biografía del equipo, disfrutaba la caza y el tiro al plato. Tras graduarse, se trasladó a Washington para estudiar investigación forense en la Universidad George Washington. Nunca terminó el programa. Fotos de esa época la muestran asistiendo a partidos de béisbol en el Nationals Park y a conciertos de Drake y Kanye West.Lunden Roberts llegando para una audiencia en el caso de paternidad en Batesville, Arkansas, en mayo. Roberts y Hunter Biden llegaron a un acuerdo el jueves.Karen Pulfer Focht/ReutersEn el camino, conoció al hijo de un futuro presidente que estaba cayendo en la adicción y visitaba los clubes de bailarinas desnudas de Washington.A mediados de 2018, Roberts trabajaba como asistente personal de Hunter Biden, de acuerdo con una persona cercana a ella y a los mensajes de una memoria caché con archivos de Biden. Su hija nació a finales de ese año, pero, para entonces, Biden había dejado de responder a los mensajes de Roberts, incluido uno en el que le informaba la fecha de nacimiento de la niña. Poco después de que nació su hija, en noviembre de 2018, quitó a Roberts y a la niña de su seguro médico, lo que llevó a Roberts a ponerse en contacto con Lancaster.Ella interpuso una demanda en mayo de 2019, y las pruebas de ADN de ese año establecieron que Hunter Biden era el padre de la niña. En la presentación de una solicitud de custodia en diciembre de 2019, Roberts dijo que Hunter Biden no conocía a su hija y “no podría identificar a la niña en una serie de fotos”.Roberts aseguró en una entrevista que se había acostumbrado a la avalancha de escrutinio en torno al caso: “Leo cosas sobre mí de las que no tengo ni idea”, afirmó. Pero una cosa que no soporta es que la llamen mala madre. “La gente puede llamarme como quiera, pero no pueden decirme eso”, dijo.Su cuenta pública de Instagram narra su propia historia: “Espero que algún día, cuando mires atrás, te enorgullezcas de quién eres, de dónde vienes y, lo más importante, de quién te crio”, escribió al pie de una foto de las dos en la playa a principios de este año. En otra fotografía, compartida en su cuenta en abril de 2022, su hija llevaba una gorra de béisbol del Air Force One y estaba delante del Jefferson Memorial.“La gente se hace una imagen de mí, pero pocos aciertan”, escribió Roberts en otra foto de julio de 2022.Roberts publicó una foto de ella y su hija en Washington el año pasado.Visto desde un ángulo, las fotos son un poderoso testamento público de amor de una madre a su hija. Desde otro punto de vista, son explotadoras, desde luego desde la perspectiva de los aliados de Biden, que temen que las imágenes —y la niña— estén siendo utilizadas como arma contra la familia Biden.Por su parte, Roberts dijo que no llevó a su hija a Washington para castigar a los Biden. Dijo que la llevó a Washington porque no muchas niñas pueden decir que su abuelo es el presidente.“Está muy orgullosa de quién es su abuelo y quién es su padre”, dijo Roberts. “Eso es algo que nunca le permitiría pensar de otra manera”.Un hijo problemáticoHunter Biden, de 53 años, se está recuperando de su adicción al crack y es el último hijo varón sobreviviente del presidente, ya que perdió al mayor, Beau, por un cáncer cerebral en 2015. El menor de los Biden tiene cinco hijos y ha dicho que fue padre de la cuarta en un momento bajo de su vida.“No recordaba nada de nuestro encuentro”, escribió Biden en su libro de memorias de 2021. “Así de poca conexión tenía con toda la gente. Era un desastre, pero un desastre del que me he hecho responsable”.Antes del acuerdo del jueves, Biden le había pagado a Roberts más de 750.000 dólares, según sus abogados, y había intentado reducir el pago de 20.000 dólares al mes por la manutención de su hija alegando que no tenía el dinero. La nueva cantidad es inferior a la ordenada originalmente por el tribunal, según una persona familiarizada con el caso.“Estoy muy orgulloso de mi hijo”, declaró recientemente el presidente Biden a la prensa.Al Drago para The New York TimesCon juicio o sin él, Hunter Biden seguirá siendo uno de los puntos débiles políticos de su padre. Desde que su adicción se descontroló y sus tratos con gobiernos extranjeros llamaron la atención de los conservadores, las decisiones de Hunter Biden se han convertido en combustible para los memes, los paneles de noticias por cable conservadores y la recaudación de fondos de los republicanos. La ronda más reciente se inició después de que llegó a un acuerdo con el Departamento de Justicia para declararse culpable de dos delitos fiscales menores y aceptar condiciones que le permitieran evitar ser procesado por otro cargo de posesión de armas.Además, ha sido objeto de múltiples investigaciones en el Congreso, y el contenido de la computadora portátil que dejó en un local de reparaciones ha sido estudiado y difundido por activistas que afirman que sus comunicaciones privadas demuestran la comisión de delitos.En la Casa Blanca, los asuntos relacionados con Hunter Biden son tan delicados que solo los asesores de más alto rango del presidente hablan con él sobre su hijo, de acuerdo con personas familiarizadas con la situación.A pesar de todo, el presidente lo ha apoyado de manera incondicional. En lugar de distanciarse de su hijo, ha incluido a Hunter Biden en los viajes oficiales, ha viajado con él a bordo del Marine One y se ha asegurado de que esté en la lista de invitados a las cenas de Estado.“Estoy muy orgulloso de mi hijo”, declaró hace poco el presidente a la prensa.‘La bendición más grande de la vida’El presidente ha trabajado durante el último medio siglo para que su apellido sea sinónimo de valores familiares y lealtad. La fuerza de su personaje político, que hace hincapié en la decencia, la familia y el deber, fue suficiente para derrotar a Trump la primera vez, y tendría que mantenerla intacta si Trump es el candidato republicano en 2024.En una proclama emitida con motivo del Día del Padre, Biden aclaró que su padre le había “enseñado que, por encima de todo, la familia es el principio, el medio y el fin, una lección que he transmitido a mis hijos y nietos”. Añadió que “la familia es la mayor bendición y responsabilidad de la vida”.El presidente Biden; Jill Biden, la primera dama; y sus hijos y nietos observan los fuegos artificiales desde la Casa Blanca tras la toma de posesión de Biden en 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesDesde que llegaron a la Casa Blanca, el presidente y Jill Biden, la primera dama, han centrado su vida familiar en torno a sus nietos y les han brindado los beneficios que conlleva vivir en estrecho contacto con la Casa Blanca.Naomi Biden, de 29 años, es la hija mayor de Hunter, fruto de su primer matrimonio, con Kathleen Buhle, que terminó en 2017. Naomi Biden se casó en el Jardín Sur de la Casa Blanca el año pasado con un vestido de Ralph Lauren que ella definió como el producto de sus “sueños americanos”. Ella y sus hermanas han hecho viajes por todo el mundo con el presidente y la primera dama. Hunter Biden se casó con Melissa Cohen en 2019. Su hijo menor, que lleva el nombre de Beau y nació en 2020, es fotografiado con frecuencia con sus abuelos.En abril, el presidente relató a un grupo de niños que tenía “seis nietos. Y estoy loco por ellos. Y hablo con ellos todos los días. No es broma”.El hijo menor de Hunter Biden, Beau, es visto frecuentemente viajando y asistiendo a eventos con sus abuelos.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesPero el presidente aún no ha conocido ni mencionado públicamente a su otra nieta. La Casa Blanca no ha respondido a las preguntas sobre si la reconocerá públicamente ahora que se ha resuelto el caso de la pensión alimenticia.Sin embargo, Stevens, el estratega político, dijo que el apoyo de Biden a su hijo, incluso contra una avalancha de críticas republicanas y escándalos desagradables, solo ha enfatizado su amor incondicional por su familia.“El neto positivo de todo esto ha sido para Biden, por cierto”, dijo Stevens refiriéndose al presidente. “Ha estado a su lado”.Preocupaciones políticasPocos de los implicados creen que las particularidades de este caso, aunque se haya resuelto, se apacigüen, especialmente dada su omnipresencia en los medios de comunicación de derecha.“En otro acuerdo ventajoso, Hunter Biden se ha librado de la manutención de su hija”, escribió el consejo editorial de The New York Post, que ha seguido de cerca el caso.Aparte de la cobertura informativa y los comentarios, los aliados de la familia Biden temen en privado que la implicación de agentes de la derecha en el asunto haya dificultado cualquier compromiso de la familia.Ziegler, quien fue nombrado testigo experto en el caso, tuvo un papel destacado en los esfuerzos de Trump por impugnar los resultados de las elecciones de 2020: en diciembre de 2020, Ziegler escoltó al exasesor de seguridad nacional de Trump, Michael Flynn, y a la abogada Sidney Powell a la Oficina Oval, donde un grupo discutió con Trump un plan para tomar el control de las máquinas de votación en estados clave. Los privilegios de invitado a la Casa Blanca de Ziegler fueron revocados más tarde.Ziegler se negó a confirmar su participación en el caso de manutención de la niña.El abogado de Roberts, Lancaster, también tiene antecedentes en el activismo conservador. Él es elocuente en las redes sociales sobre su apoyo a Trump, a menudo retuiteando críticas de los medios conservadores y Elon Musk, el dueño de Twitter. También trabajó como abogado para la campaña de Trump durante un recuento de votos electorales en Wisconsin después de las elecciones de 2020.Simpatizantes del expresidente Donald Trump en un mitin en 2020. Aliados de la familia Biden temen que el caso de paternidad se utilice contra el presidente Biden en la campaña de 2024.Al Drago para The New York TimesPor otro lado, personas afiliadas a organizaciones de izquierda, como Facts First USA, un grupo de defensa dirigido por David Brock, desconfían de lo que pueda hacer el equipo que rodea a Roberts en la antesala de la campaña de 2024.Los miembros del grupo, que opera independientemente de la Casa Blanca y ha adoptado una actitud más antagónica con los críticos que el gobierno de Biden, han distribuido una foto del padre de Roberts posando con Donald Trump Jr.Roberts padre dijo en un mensaje de texto que había ido de caza con Trump, pero que no recordaba cuándo se habían conocido.El encuestador republicano Frank Luntz dijo que era “una pérdida de tiempo” que los activistas se enfocaran en atacar a la familia del presidente porque a los votantes no les importa Hunter Biden tanto como otros temas, como Ucrania y la inflación.“Tienen la responsabilidad de pedir cuentas a la gente, pero quiero ser claro: no cambiará ni un solo voto”, dijo sobre los problemas legales y personales de Hunter Biden.Si la familia Roberts está siguiendo consejos políticos —aparte de los que pueda dar el abogado de la familia—, no lo dicen. En Batesville, la abuela materna de la niña, Kimberly Roberts, dijo en una breve entrevista telefónica que no haría comentarios sobre el caso.Pero sí tenía algo que decir.“Mi nieta es feliz, sana y muy querida”, dijo Roberts, antes de colgar.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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      Hunter Biden’s Daughter and a Tale of Two Families

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      The story surrounding the president’s grandchild in Arkansas, who has not yet met her father or her grandfather, is about money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.There is a 4-year-old girl in rural Arkansas who is learning to ride a camouflage-patterned four-wheeler alongside her cousins. Some days, she wears a bow in her hair, and on other days, she threads her long blond ponytail through the back of a baseball cap. When she is old enough, she will learn to hunt, just like her mother did when she was young.The girl is aware that her father is Hunter Biden and that her paternal grandfather is the president of the United States. She speaks about both of them often, but she has not met them. Her maternal grandfather, Rob Roberts, described her as whip-smart and funny.“I may not be the POTUS,” Mr. Roberts said in a text message, using an acronym for the president, but he said he would do anything for his granddaughter. He said she “needs for nothing and never will.”The story surrounding the president’s grandchild in Arkansas, who is not named in court papers, is a tale of two families, one of them powerful, one of them not. But at its core, the story is about money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.Her parents ended a yearslong court battle over child support on Thursday, agreeing that Mr. Biden, who has embarked on a second career as a painter whose pieces have been offered for as much as $500,000 each, would turn over a number of his paintings to his daughter in addition to providing a monthly support payment. The little girl will select the paintings from Mr. Biden, according to court documents.“We worked it out amongst ourselves,” Lunden Roberts, the girl’s mother, said in an interview with The New York Times. “It was settled” in a discussion with Mr. Biden, she said.Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment for this article.Hunter Biden remains close to his father and often appears at White House events.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMs. Roberts said she dropped a request to have the girl’s last name changed from Roberts to Biden. (Mr. Biden had fought against giving their daughter the Biden surname.) Ms. Roberts would only say that the decision to drop the request was mutual. “We both want what is best for our daughter, and that is our only focus,” she said.Though a trial planned for mid-July has been averted, people on both sides fear that the political toxicity surrounding the case will remain. Already, it has been extensively covered in conservative media, from Breitbart to Fox News, and conservative commentators assailed the Biden family after news of the settlement.Both Hunter Biden, the privileged and troubled son of a president, and Ms. Roberts, the daughter of a rural gun maker, have allies whose actions have made the situation more politicized. There is no evidence the White House is involved in those actions.Clint Lancaster, Ms. Roberts’s attorney, has represented the Trump campaign. He also called Garrett Ziegler, an activist and former Trump White House aide who has cataloged and published messages from a cache of Hunter Biden’s files that appear to have come from a laptop he left at a repair shop, to serve as an expert witness in the child support case. In the other corner, allies of Democratic groups dedicated to helping the Biden family have disseminated information about Mr. Ziegler and the Roberts family, seeking to highlight their Trump ties.And then there is President Biden.His public image is centered around his devotion to his family — including to Hunter, his only surviving son. In strategy meetings in recent years, aides have been told that the Bidens have six, not seven, grandchildren, according to two people familiar with the discussions.The White House did not respond to questions about the case, in keeping with how officials have answered questions about the Biden family before.Several of the president’s allies fear that the case could damage his re-election prospects by bringing more attention to a son whom some Democrats see as a liability. Others say the far right has focused on Hunter Biden, a private citizen, but ignored any moral and ethical failings of the former president, Donald J. Trump.“He’s under more indictments than two Super Bowl teams’ worth of players,” the author and political strategist Stuart Stevens, who left the Republican Party in 2016, said of Mr. Trump. “But that doesn’t matter: You have Hunter Biden. It’s just anger in search of an argument.”‘People Have an Image of Me’Lunden Roberts, 32, comes from a clan as tight-knit as the Bidens. Her father is a red-state gun manufacturer whose hunting buddies have included Donald Trump Jr., and who taught her at a young age how to hunt turkeys and alligators. She works for the family business, which sits on a winding country road dotted with pastures on the outskirts of Batesville.The pride of her family, the 5-foot-8 Ms. Roberts graduated with honors from Southside High School in Batesville and played basketball for Arkansas State University, where a team biography said she enjoyed hunting and skeet shooting. After graduating, she moved to Washington to study forensic investigation at George Washington University. She never completed the program. Photos from that time show her attending baseball games at Nationals Park and attending Drake and Kanye West concerts.Lunden Roberts arriving for a hearing in the paternity case in Batesville, Ark., in May. Ms. Roberts and Mr. Biden settled the case on Thursday.Karen Pulfer Focht/ReutersAlong the way, she met the son of a future president who was sliding into addiction and visiting Washington strip clubs.In mid-2018, Ms. Roberts was working as a personal assistant to Mr. Biden, according to a person close to her and messages from a cache of Mr. Biden’s files. Their daughter was born later that year, but by then, Mr. Biden had stopped responding to Ms. Roberts’s messages, including one informing him of the child’s birth date. Shortly after their daughter was born in November 2018, he removed Ms. Roberts and the child from his health insurance, which led Ms. Roberts to contact Mr. Lancaster.She filed a lawsuit in May 2019, and DNA testing that year established that Mr. Biden was the father of the child. In a motion for custody filing in December 2019, Ms. Roberts said that he had never met their child and “could not identify the child out of a photo lineup.”Ms. Roberts said in an interview that she had grown used to the onslaught of scrutiny around the case: “I read things about myself that I have no clue about,” she said. But one thing she said she can’t stand is being called a bad mother. “People can call me whatever they want, but they can’t call me that,” she said.Her public Instagram account tells its own story: “I hope one day when you look back you find yourself proud of who you are, where you come from, and most importantly, who raised you,” she captioned a photo of the two of them at the beach earlier this year. In another photo, shared to her account in April 2022, her daughter wore an Air Force One baseball cap and stood in front of the Jefferson Memorial.“People have an image of me, but few get the picture,” Ms. Roberts wrote on another photo in July 2022.Ms. Roberts posted a photo of herself and her daughter in Washington last year. Seen through one prism, the photos are a powerful public testament of love from a mother to her daughter. Seen through another, they are exploitative, certainly from the perspective of Biden allies, who fear the images — and the child — are being weaponized against the Biden family.For her part, Ms. Roberts said she did not bring her daughter to Washington to punish the Bidens. She said she brought her to Washington because not many little girls get to say that their grandfather is the president.“She’s very proud of who her grandfather is and who her dad is,” Ms. Roberts said. “That is something that I would never allow her to think otherwise.”A Troubled SonHunter Biden, 53, is recovering from crack cocaine addiction and is the last surviving son of the president, who lost his eldest, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015. The younger Mr. Biden has five children, and has said that he fathered his fourth at a low point in his life.“I had no recollection of our encounter,” Mr. Biden wrote in his 2021 memoir. “That’s how little connection I had with anyone. I was a mess, but a mess I’ve taken responsibility for.”Before Thursday’s settlement, Mr. Biden had paid Ms. Roberts upward of $750,000, according to his attorneys, and had sought to reduce his $20,000-a-month child support payment on the grounds that he did not have the money. The new amount is lower than what had been originally ordered by the court, according to a person familiar with the case.“I’m very proud of my son,” President Biden told reporters recently.Al Drago for The New York TimesTrial or no trial, Mr. Biden will remain one of his father’s political vulnerabilities. Since his addiction spiraled out of control and his dealings with foreign governments caught the attention of conservatives, the younger Mr. Biden’s choices have become grist for memes, conservative cable news panels and Republican fund-raising. The most recent round kicked off after he struck a deal with the Justice Department to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and accept terms that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a separate gun charge.On top of that, Mr. Biden has been the subject of multiple congressional investigations, and the contents of the laptop he left at a repair shop have been pored over and disseminated by activists, who say his private communications show criminal wrongdoing.In the White House, matters involving Hunter are so sensitive that only the president’s most senior advisers talk to him about his son, according to people familiar with the arrangement.Through it all, the president has been staunchly supportive. Rather than distance himself, Mr. Biden has included Hunter on official trips, traveled with him aboard Marine One, and ensured that he is on the guest list at state dinners.“I’m very proud of my son,” the president told reporters recently.‘Life’s Greatest Blessing’President Biden has worked over the past half-century to make his last name synonymous with family values and loyalty. The strength of his political persona, which emphasizes decency, family and duty, was enough to defeat Mr. Trump the first time around, and he would need to keep it intact if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024.On a proclamation issued on Father’s Day, Mr. Biden said that his father had “taught me that, above all, family is the beginning, middle and end — a lesson I have passed down to my children and grandchildren.” He added that “family is life’s greatest blessing and responsibility.”President Biden; Jill Biden, the first lady; and their children and grandchildren watching fireworks from the White House after Mr. Biden’s inauguration in 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSince they entered the White House, President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, have centered their family lives around their grandchildren, and have given them the benefits that come with living in close contact with the White House.Naomi Biden, 29, is Hunter’s eldest child, from his first marriage, to Kathleen Buhle, which ended in 2017. Ms. Biden was married on the South Lawn of the White House last year in a Ralph Lauren dress that she called the product of her “American(a) dreams.” She and her sisters have taken trips around the world with the president and first lady. Hunter married Melissa Cohen in 2019. His youngest child, who is named for Beau and was born in 2020, is photographed frequently with his grandparents.In April, President Biden told a group of children that he had “six grandchildren. And I’m crazy about them. And I speak to them every single day. Not a joke.”Hunter Biden’s youngest son, Beau, is frequently seen traveling and attending events with his grandparents.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesBut the president has not yet met or publicly mentioned his other grandchild. His White House has not answered questions about whether he will publicly acknowledge her now that the child support case is settled.Still, Mr. Stevens, the political strategist, said that Mr. Biden’s support of his son, even against an onslaught of Republican criticism and ugly scandals, has only emphasized his unconditional love for his family.“The net positive of this has gone to Biden, by the way,” Mr. Stevens said of the president. “He stuck by him.”Political ConcernsFew involved think the particulars of this case, even though it has been settled, will stay at a simmer, especially given its ubiquity in right-wing media.“In yet another sweetheart deal, Hunter Biden got off easy in his child support case,” wrote the editorial board of The New York Post, which has followed the proceedings closely.Aside from the news coverage and commentary, allies of the Biden family are privately worried that the involvement of right-wing operatives in the matter has made any engagement harder for the family.Mr. Ziegler, who was named as an expert witness in the case, had a footnote role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election results: In December 2020, Mr. Ziegler escorted Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, and the attorney Sidney Powell into the Oval Office, where a group discussed with Mr. Trump a plan to seize control of voting machines in key states. Mr. Ziegler’s White House guest privileges were later revoked.Mr. Ziegler declined to confirm his involvement in the child support case.Ms. Roberts’s attorney, Mr. Lancaster, also has a background in conservative activism. He is vocal on social media about his support for Mr. Trump, often retweeting criticism from conservative outlets and Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter. He also worked as an attorney for the Trump campaign during an electoral vote recount in Wisconsin after the 2020 election.Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in 2020. Allies of the Biden family are concerned that the paternity case will be used against President Biden in the 2024 campaign.Al Drago for The New York TimesOn the other side, people affiliated with left-leaning organizations, including Facts First USA, an advocacy group run by David Brock, are wary of what the team surrounding Ms. Roberts may do as the 2024 campaign gets underway.Members of the group, which operates independently of the White House and has taken a more adversarial approach to critics than the Biden administration does, have circulated a photo of Ms. Roberts’s father posing with Donald Trump Jr. Mr. Roberts said in a text message that he has gone hunting with Mr. Trump but that he did not recall when they had first met.The Republican pollster Frank Luntz said it was “a waste of time” for activists to focus on attacking the president’s family because voters do not care about Hunter Biden as much as they care about other issues, including Ukraine and inflation.“You have the responsibility to hold people accountable, but I want to be clear: It will not change a single vote,” he said of Hunter Biden’s legal and personal problems.If the Roberts family is taking political advice — outside of any that might come from the family attorney — they aren’t saying. In Batesville, the girl’s maternal grandmother, Kimberly Roberts, said in a brief telephone interview that she would not comment on the case.She did have one thing to say, though.“My granddaughter is happy, healthy, and very loved,” Ms. Roberts said, before hanging up.Kenneth P. Vogel More