ROBERTS: Biden has a Hunter problem

Last May, President Biden defended his son Hunter against allegations of criminal behavior. “First of all, my son has done nothing wrong,” he told MSNBC. “I trust him. I have faith in him.”

As a father and grandfather, I have deep appreciation for the president’s show of loyalty toward a son who has struggled to recover from drug addiction. But there’s a problem: The president’s statement was not true.

Hunter Biden has done many things wrong. He was prepared to plead guilty last June to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay taxes and a felony charge of lying about his dependency on an application to purchase a firearm.

The deal fell apart under questioning by a federal judge, and special counsel David Weiss says that he will bring an indictment on the gun violation by the end of the month. New charges on the tax issues remain likely, as well.

Moreover, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — under pressure from his hard-right colleagues — has announced that Republicans will initiate an impeachment inquiry focusing on the president’s possible links to Hunter’s shady business deals.

All this means that Hunter remains a significant political problem for his father and the Democrats — a problem the White House seems to be ignoring, and that’s a big mistake. Biden’s bid for a second term against Donald Trump is likely to be very close, and he cannot afford even small missteps, let alone a major error.

Simply saying his son has “done nothing wrong” smells like a cover-up, or at least a denial of reality. The president should be confronting the problem a lot more directly. Instead, Hunter is photographed often at White House events or traveling with his father, images that provide fuel for the Republican attack machine.

“I know a lot of Democrats have wondered why the president is so accommodating of a son who’s clearly been unethical and casts a really unfortunate shadow on both the president, the administration and Democrats writ large,” a Democratic lawmaker told CNN.

There is an explanation — a profoundly painful one. Joe Biden’s son, Beau, his anointed political heir, died of brain cancer at 46 in 2015. His death left the president deeply shaken and overly protective of his lone surviving son. A totally understandable reaction on a personal level — but dangerous politically.

CNN reports, “If someone talks to someone in the White House staff (about Hunter), they get yelled at or they are told it’s a non-touchable issue.”

That attitude would be fine if Biden were a popular president cruising to reelection, but he’s not. In the latest CNN poll, his job approval rating remains stuck at 39%. Fully 58% say his economic policies have actually made matters worse, and 70% “say things in the country are going badly.” Only 28% say Biden “inspires confidence,” down 7 points since March.

It’s in this context that the “unfortunate shadow” cast by Hunter’s troubles is particularly alarming. In the CNN poll, 61% believe the president has had “at least some involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings.”

To be clear: Hunter Biden used his father’s name to peddle influence, but House Republicans have yet to prove that the president knew about those efforts or profited from them. Even Rep. Ken Buck, an outspoken Biden critic, told MSNBC that damning evidence against the president “doesn’t exist right now.”

That has not deterred his Republican colleagues, however, who simply want to shift attention away from Donald Trump’s many legal problems and say the words “Biden Crime Family” as often as possible. It’s also true that the relatively minor charges Hunter is facing don’t begin to rival the vast and serious allegations against Trump, who has been indicted on 91 counts in four different cases.

And the Republican vendetta against Hunter and his father could clearly backfire. Every American family (including mine) has relatives who suffer from some form of addiction. And 18 Republican House members who represent districts won by Biden could face real jeopardy if they are forced to vote for impeachment.

“Oh, 100% it puts them at risk,” Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina admitted on CNN. And since the Republican margin in the House is only six votes, a serious backlash could shift control of that chamber next year.

Still, Hunter Biden represents a real political headache for his father. And denying or avoiding that problem is not the smart way to handle it.