San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Presidents, family ties, crime probes not new
In 1876, Orvil Grant, brother of President Ulysses S. Grant, was accused of involvement in a scheme of illicit payments to contractors at Indian trading posts run by the Army. President Grant reacted furiously, denouncing the allegations and arranging for the demotion and arrest of the chief accuser, Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Custer was quickly released and reinstated to his rank after a public outcry and soon led troops in the attack on Indian tribes at Little Bighorn, where he was killed. Orvil Grant was never charged with a crime. His brother left office in 1877 after a second term inundated by scandals.
Other presidential relatives have come under
investigation, most notably Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy, and as far back as President John Adams’ soninlaw. But now that President Trump’s Justice Department has launched an 11thhour tax investigation of Hunter Biden’s dealings in China, the advice that’s generally being offered to his father, Presidentelect Joe Biden, is not to follow President Grant’s example.
If the investigation is active when Biden takes office Jan. 20, “he should make clear that he will in no way be involved or have inside awareness of the investigation,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in political and ethical issues and is a former president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, which hears political corruption cases.
Biden “needs miles and miles between him and the federal authorities who are looking into this,” Levinson added. She said he could either advise his new attorney general to keep him out of the case, or appoint an independent counsel from outside the Justice Department, an option likely to have the “most credibility” with the public.
Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley, said the announcement of an investigation into Hunter Biden “does not mean that there is anything credible.” Trump, he noted, “repeatedly has called for his rivals to be investigated and prosecuted,” including both Bidens.
But if there are credible allegations of criminal activity, Chemerinsky said, Biden should be “walled off from any decisions. A special prosecutor would be advisable.”
The presidentelect has promised a Justice Department free of political influence.
“The person or persons I pick to run that department are going to be people who are going to have the independent capacity to decide who gets prosecuted and who doesn’t,” Biden said in a CNN interview earlier this month.
And before any announcement that the outgoing Justice Department would look into his son’s taxes, Biden told CNN, “My son, my family will not be involved in any business, any enterprise that is in conflict with or appears to be in conflict, where there’s appropriate distance from the presidency and government.”
Early word of the investigation came from Hunter Biden himself, who said Wednesday that the U. S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware had advised his lawyer that his “tax affairs” were being probed.
“I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisers,” he said in a statement.
Hunter Biden, 50, is an attorney and financial investor who has struggled with drug addiction and has been frequently accused of wrongdoing by Trump. He was a wellpaid member of the board of Burisma Holdings in Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, which coincided with the company’s leader being investigated for alleged money laundering. In July 2019, after freezing $ 391 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine, Trump asked its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Hunter and Joe Biden for corruption, a request that led to Trump’s impeachment.
In 2017, Hunter Biden recruited a Chinese company, CEFC, to invest in U. S. energy projects. The company’s founder gave Biden a valuable diamond ring that may be part of the tax investigation, CNN reported. Biden also was one of the lawyers for a businessman convicted in 2018 of arranging bribes to benefit CEFC.
The Justice Department has not commented publicly on the scope of the investigation.
One wellknown precedent
President Biden would need “miles and miles between him and the federal authorities who are looking into this.”
Jessica Levinson, Loyola law professor, on advice for handling a federal probe into a family member’s actions as president
involved Billy Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s younger brother, who was investigated by both the FBI and a Senate committee for his work on behalf of the government of Libya, led by autocrat Moammar Khadafy.
Billy Carter visited Libya in 1978, with all expenses paid by the government. Investigators found that he obtained a $ 220,000 loan and other benefits from Libya in 1978 and 1979 and tried to arrange sales of Libyan oil to
U. S. companies while publicly praising Khadafy’s government. Under pressure from the Justice Department, he registered as a foreign government agent in June 1980.
The president said his brother had no influence on U. S. policy. But Carter’s Justice Department reported in November 1980 that President Carter had not cooperated fully with its investigation.
Other investigated presidential relatives include:
Roger Clinton, who lobbied his half brother, President Bill Clinton, to pardon numerous offenders and denied allegations that he was paid to seek the pardons. He was pardoned by the outgoing President Clinton in January 2001 for a 1985 conviction for cocaine possession and drug trafficking. Orvil Grant, an investor in three Midwest trading posts that sold products at inflated prices to Army troops and Indians. Revelations by Custer and others led to the resignation of President Grant’s secretary of war, William Belknap, but not to any criminal charges. William Stephens Smith, soninlaw of President John Adams, who appointed him as surveyor and revenue inspector for the Port of New York in December 1800, two months before leaving office. In 1806, President Thomas Jefferson charged Smith with treason for allegedly using his position to recruit and finance a ship bound for Venezuela in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government run by Spain, a U. S. ally. Smith was acquitted and later was elected to Congress. Meanwhile, Trump is reported to be considering pardons for his own family members, and possibly for himself, to fend off potential investigations of their financial and political activities.