Game on. Hunter Biden is prepared to testify publicly before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee on December 13. Biden, whom House Republicans subpoenaed in early November, is essentially calling their bluff. “We have seen you use closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public. We therefore proposed opening the door,” Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell declared.

After years of trying and failing to avoid the spotlight, Hunter Biden is taking a leaf from Donald Trump—he’s fighting back. Like Trump, Biden has a checkered past. Like Trump, he is a businessman. Like Trump, he has been widely vilified and enmeshed in protracted legal disputes. And like Trump, he’s viewed with unease by the political class.

Now, as Politico reports, he’s decided that the best defense is a good offense. Rather than cower before Republican attacks, he’s attacking his attackers by filing a variety of lawsuits and subpoenaing Trump himself. Could Hunter become his father’s secret weapon to win reelection in 2024?

So far, the White House has tried, as far as possible, to bury the Hunter Biden story. There’s no question that he has a record of dubious foreign business ties in China and Ukraine, not to mention drug use. Hunter is the ne’er-do-well of the Biden family, the scapegrace who could never measure up to his older brother Beau.

But his sins are at most venial, and Papa, to the consternation of a number of White House aides, has embraced him—even as his Republican detractors contend that as vice-president during the Obama administration, he was in cahoots with his son, engaging in financial chicanery that jeopardized American national interests.

Despite the farrago of allegations and the talk of a “Biden crime family,” however, Republicans, led by Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, have produced no persuasive evidence to indicate that President Biden engaged in wrongdoing at any point, let alone an “abuse of power.”

This provides Hunter with a golden opportunity to face down his detractors in December. He needs to demonstrate his mojo. Bluff and bombast, much in the Trumpian vein, can carry him a long way when queried about his ties to Ukraine or China or whatever else his antagonists on Capitol Hill dream up.

His best moves: stonewall, deny, change the subject, and, above all, repeatedly represent himself as the innocent victim of a witch-hunt led by nefarious Republican elites who have come to compose their own Deep State in Washington. His ties to Ukraine? No more significant than Russiagate. His gun charges? Mere piffle aimed at demonizing a red-blooded American exercising his constitutional right to defend himself. And so on.

Can it work? You betcha. As Jamal Simmons, a former communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris, told Politico, “The American public likes to see people fight back. People who fight for themselves tend to get the benefit of the doubt from the public. And I actually think that probably does help the president in the long run.”

Hunter Biden has a long cast of Republicans that he can emulate in turning himself into the victim—Richard Nixon during his September 1952 Checkers speech, Oliver North defending himself before Congress in 1987 over Iran-Contra, and Trump, the greatest Republican grievance warrior of all time.

As Republicans prepare to engage with Hunter Biden, they would do well to remember that if he plays his cards right, he might emerge as a national hero, not only defending his own valor but also his father’s. Make no mistake: December 13 could prove to be a turning point in President Biden’s electoral fortunes.

About the Author

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He has written on both foreign and domestic issues for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Reuters, Washington Monthly, and The Weekly Standard. He has also written for German publications such as Cicero, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel. In 2008, his book They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons was published by Doubleday. It was named one of the one hundred notable books of the year by The New York Times. He is the author of America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators, coming in 2024.

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