White House gets caught covering for Joe Biden’s lies on involvement with Hunter

“I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” President Joe Biden said in 2019 while on the campaign trail. When asked again last month, this time about whether that original statement was untrue, Biden gave a simple answer: “No.”

But during Wednesday’s White House press briefing, RealClearPolitics White House correspondent Philip Wegmann caught the White House trying to shift the goalposts and cover for Biden.

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Rather than maintaining what he said — namely, that he had never spoken with Hunter Biden about his business dealings — White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed the president “was never in business with his son.” But never speaking to Hunter Biden about his business is completely different than never being in business with him.

Wegmann pointed this out, asking, “Why the updated language? Which statement is true? Or is this semantics, and both statements are true?”

Jean-Pierre had no answer. She repeated the same nonanswer four times in her reply: “Nothing has changed.”

But the myriad follow-up questions write themselves — the most obvious being, “What do you mean by that?” Does she mean nothing has changed since Joe Biden stated he never spoke to Hunter Biden about it? Or that nothing has changed since she said he wasn’t “in business” with Hunter Biden, which would raise the question, again, of why the shift in language. Or does it mean something else? At this point, it’s anybody’s guess.

The actual answer as to why Jean-Pierre is being so evasive is fairly obvious, though. It is becoming quite clear that Joe Biden likely, at the very least, spoke many times with Hunter Biden about his business dealings abroad. Refusing to answer deflects from that.

There is going to be testimony from “a longtime friend and former business partner of Hunter Biden” that “the then-vice president was on more than two dozen business calls with his son.”

Additionally, an IRS criminal supervisory special agent said Hunter Biden used his father’s name to pressure a Chinese businessman. Hunter Biden’s texts read: “I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. … Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. … I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”

Photos show Hunter Biden was at Joe Biden’s house in Delaware on the day of those texts.

What purpose does the White House’s language shift serve, then? It’s simple: It serves to cover for the obvious fact Joe Biden lied about his involvement with Hunter Biden’s business dealings by resorting to semantic games.

The media must continue to push Jean-Pierre on this until she starts to give real answers.

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Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.