Blow to Biden’s re-election hopes

Hunter Biden’s indictment on gun charges adds a major dimension to the darkening electoral nightmare confronting Joe Biden ahead of next year’s presidential election. But if trust in the rule of law in the US is to be regained, the charges against the President’s son must be allowed to run their course. And Mr Biden must stick by last week’s pledge that he will not intervene to grant a pardon to his son, as he has the power to do.

The legal system is already tainted by the indulgent deal concluded in June – after almost five years of investigation – that would have seen Mr Biden Jr get off virtually scot-free on the charge of lying about being a drug addict when he bought a .38 revolver and his failure to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. That deal was tossed out by a US District Court judge in July. Mr Biden Jr’s indictment last week on gun charges that carry potential penalties of 10 years in prison shows how justified the uproar about the deal was.

Hunter Biden is entitled to the presumption of innocence. And his descent into drug addiction, as The Wall Street Journal noted, was a “tragedy”. But that is no excuse for the years it has taken to bring him to book. The remarkably slow pace of dealing with him contrasts with the relative speed with which US authorities have pursued the indictment and prosecution of Donald Trump on a variety of charges that could see him detained in court during campaigning for the 2024 election.

It may be, as Abbe Lowell, one of Hunter Biden’s lawyers, said, that his client possessed the unloaded revolver for just 11 days in October 2018 and that it posed no threat to public safety before being thrown into a garbage bin across the street from a school. But his handling of the weapon, his unpaid tax bills and his drug addiction play into broader allegations of corruption and misconduct by the Biden family. These add to deepening concerns about Mr Biden’s age and encroaching senility. Polls show most Americans believe he was involved in his son’s business affairs and that, as President, he acted inappropriately over investigations into his son. As he prepares to mark his 81st birthday on November 20, that is a bad backdrop to his campaign for another four-year term in the White House. Democratic Party leaders must face reality. The party has several viable, credible alternatives.