House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Sunday defended President Biden\u2019s past comment that his son, Hunter Biden, \u2018did nothing wrong.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jeffries\u2019 remarks came a day before the scheduled beginning of jury selection in the federal gun case against Hunter \u2013 and just days after former President Trump, President Biden\u2019s main election opponent, was convicted on 34 counts following the hush-money trial brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018President Biden commented as a loving father, as I would hope any loving father would do. Hunter Biden, of course, is entitled, as was Donald Trump, to the presumption of innocence and to a trial by a jury of his peers,\u2019 Jeffries said during an appearance on NBC\u2019s \u2018Meet the Press.\u2019 \u2018And this Justice Department is going to proceed in that fashion, present the facts and the law and then we\u2019ll all have to wait for a determination that is made by a jury as to Hunter Biden\u2019s guilt or innocence.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
In an interview with MSNBC in May 2023, President Biden insisted, \u2018First of all, my son has done nothing wrong,\u2019 adding that \u2018I trust him. I have faith in him.<\/p>\n
That was before what Republicans dubbed a \u2018sweetheart deal\u2019 with prosecutors for Hunter to plead guilty on misdemeanor tax charges fell apart in Delaware during a dramatic hearing last summer before a Trump-appointed judge. In response, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss, who had already been leading the investigation into Hunter\u2019s gun case, as special counsel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden, who spent the weekend with his father, has been charged with three felonies stemming from a 2018 firearm purchase when he was, according to his memoir, in the throes of a crack addiction. He has been accused of lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application used to screen firearms applicants when he said he was not a drug user, and illegally having the gun for 11 days.<\/p>\n
He has pleaded not guilty and has argued he\u2019s being unfairly targeted by the Justice Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden is also facing a separate trial in California in September on charges of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes. He has also pleaded not guilty in that case.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jeffries, meanwhile, also addressed Trump\u2019s conviction. The Democratic leader said the guilty verdict against the former president was a \u2018validation of the American judicial system,\u2019 when asked if the eight-year-old case would have been brought against anyone but the former president.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Donald Trump was entitled to the presumption of innocence, he received it,\u2019 he said. \u2018This is America. This is not a system that is occupied by a monarch or a king or a dictator. We are a democracy. And in a democracy, no one is above the law.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Sunday defended President Biden\u2019s past comment that his son, Hunter Biden, \u2018did nothing wrong.\u2019\u00a0 Jeffries\u2019 remarks came a day before the scheduled beginning of jury selection in the federal gun case against Hunter \u2013 and just days after former President Trump, President Biden\u2019s main election opponent, was convicted <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19964,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}