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focus on Trump, not his
son, who’s in Los Angeles
trying to rebuild his trou-
bled life.
Hunter told the New
Yorker he doesn’t think he
did anything wrong, al-
though he’s unhappy about
the pain he has caused his
father.
“I’m saying ‘Sorry’ to
him, and he says, ‘I’m the
one who’s sorry,’ and we
have an ongoing debate
about who should be more
sorry,” Hunter said. “And we
both realize that the only
true antidote to any of this is
winning [the election]. He
says, ‘Look, it’s going to go
away.’ ”
And it might. As more
information about Hunter’s
time in Ukraine has trickled
out, no evidence has turned
up indicating that either
Biden broke the law. Quite
the contrary.
Trump, Giuliani and
their surrogates allege that,
as vice president, Joe Biden
pushed Ukraine to fire a
prosecutor because he was
investigating Hunter’s
patron. But the evidence
available so far shows
Trump has the story back-
ward: the U.S. and its Euro-
pean allies wanted the
prosecutor replaced be-
cause he wasn’t pursuing
corruption vigorously
enough.
Some readers by now are
ready to scream: Why are
you talking about Hunter
Biden at all? What part of
“false equivalence” don’t
you understand?
There’s no equivalence.
Trump’s allegations
against Biden don’t stand
up. But the Democrats’
impeachment inquiry
against Trump, for pressing
Ukraine’s president to
investigate Biden during
a July 25 phone call, is based
in large part on the declassi-
fied account of the conver-The tangled
tale of Hunter
Biden is
worthy of a
Russian, or
maybe
Ukrainian,
novel: A
ne’er-do-well
son goes
abroad to seek his fortune,
but succeeds only in endan-
gering his father’s presi-
dential campaign.
In 2014, Hunter, a not-
very-successful lawyer who
had been in and out of alco-
hol rehabilitation and debt,
landed a lucrative job work-
ing for a Ukrainian energy
mogul.
Big mistake. His father
was vice president of the
United States. No matter
what work Hunter did or
didn’t perform, the aroma of
influence-peddling was
unavoidable. Second mis-
take: His father didn’t try to
talk him out of it.
Hunter’s contract, which
paid him $50,000 a month
for a period until he decided
not to renew it in May, has
given President Trump and
his personal investigator,
Rudolph W. Giuliani, an
enticing target — perhaps
even a way to knock a lead-
ing Democratic candidate
out of the 2020 presidential
race.
Trump himself asked the
president of Ukraine in a
telephone call to investigate
the two Bidens. The call was
the final straw that landed
Trump in impeachment
proceedings. That was
Trump’s mistake.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is
trapped between loyalty to
his son and the needs of his
presidential campaign. He’s
not saying anything about
the charges except that
they’re not true.
He wants to keep thesation released by the White
House.
Lawmakers still want to
know whether that demand
was linked to Trump’s deci-
sion to withhold $250 million
in weapons, communica-
tions gear and other mili-
tary aid to help Ukraine
fight a Russian-backed
insurgency.
Some Republicans argue
that Hunter Biden’s job
might be legal but still
doesn’t look right — be-
cause he appeared to be
trading on his connection to
his father.
They have a point. Hunt-
er Biden is only the latest in
a long line of relatives of
elected leaders who appear
to have used their names to
open doors. In recent
decades, Presidents Nixon,
Carter, Clinton and George
W. Bush all had trouble-
some family members.
Which brings us to three
other children: Donald
Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump
and Eric Trump.
Donald Jr. and Eric run
the Trump Organization,
which their father still owns.
They have promised to seek
no new foreign deals while
he is president, but they are
still building real estate
projects that were an-
nounced before his inaugu-
ration, and they say they will
resume making deals after
he leaves office.
Those self-imposed rules
come with loopholes: Don-
ald Jr. has met with wealthy
prospective buyers in Indo-
nesia, India and other coun-
tries since Trump took
office.
Ivanka Trump, officially
an advisor to the president,
operated her fashion com-
pany for a year and a half
after entering the White
House. She closed it in 2018,
saying it had become a
distraction.
Meanwhile, she collecteddozens of trademark grants
in China under applications
she filed before her father’s
inauguration. In 2017, she
received three trademarks
on the same day she and her
father dined with Chinese
President Xi Jinping at
Mar-a-Lago.
Anything illegal there?
Not at all. But would she
have been able to chat up
the leader of the world’s
second-largest economy if
her father wasn’t president?
Not a chance.
Just as with Hunter
Biden, foreign governments
and others see opportuni-
ties to curry favor by doing
financial favors for a high
official’s family.
On Sunday, Treasury
Secretary Steven T.
Mnuchin explained what he
thought was wrong about
the Biden case.
“What I do find inappro-
priate is the fact that Vice
President Biden’s son did
very significant business
dealings in Ukraine,” he
said.
Wouldn’t that restriction
cover Trump’s children?
Mnuchin fumbled. “I
don’t want to get into more
of the details,” he said, then
insisted that the Trump
deals “pre-dated his presi-
dency.”
Nonsense. If Trump’s
kids get a pass for cashing in
while their dad sits in the
Oval Office, Hunter Biden
does too.
But let’s give Mnuchin
credit for proposing, if only
inadvertently, a very sen-
sible “Mnuchin Rule”: rela-
tives of the president and
vice president should not
engage in “significant busi-
ness dealings” abroad.
Sorry, kids. That means you
too, Ivanka, Eric and Don-
ald Jr.McManus’ column appears
on Sunday and Wednesday.LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
JOE BIDENand son Hunter in 2010. Biden’s trapped between loyalty to his son and the needs of his campaign.Alexis C. GlennEPA/ShutterstockHunter, Don Jr., Ivanka, etc.
Relatives of politicians have long used their names to cash in
DOYLE McMANUSHeavy clouds loom over Pico Island as Hurricane Lorenzo bears down on the Azores. With Lorenzo pack-
ing a punch rarely seen in the mid-Atlantic Ocean, emergency services were on red alert for giant waves,
winds that could flatten homes and heavy rains that could turn into torrents on steep mountains. Waves
up to 72 feet high and wind gusts exceeding 124 mph were forecast for some islands. The U.S. National
Hurricane Center in Miami issued hurricane warnings for seven of the Azores’ nine volcanic islands and a
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