‘Hunter is innocent’: Jill Biden defends stepson during federal probe

First lady Jill Biden has insisted her embattled stepson Hunter is “innocent” and has broken no laws amid an ongoing federal investigation.

“Everybody and their brother has investigated Hunter,” Jill Biden told NBC News in an interview published Friday.

“They keep at it, and at it, and at it,” the first lady added. “I know that Hunter is innocent. I love my son, and I will keep looking forward.”

Investigators have reportedly gathered enough evidence to charge the 52-year-old Hunter with potential tax crimes and allegedly lying about his drug abuse so he could buy a gun.

Hunter, who has denied any wrongdoing, will also face congressional probes into his foreign business dealings in China, Ukraine and other countries if Republicans regain control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

Earlier this month, President Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper that “I have great confidence in my son.”

“I love him and he’s on the straight and narrow and he has been for a couple years now. And I’m just so proud of him,” the president added.

Hunter’s relationship with his stepmother appeared to be strained based on text messages reportedly sent to his ex and his uncle in 2018 that were recovered from his abandoned laptop, according to the Sun. 

In one message sent to his late brother Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden, who he was dating at the time, the president’s drug-addled son went off on his stepmom.

“F–k my stepmother for always being as much of a selfish silly entitled c–t as you,” he reportedly told Hallie in a vicious text. 

In the texts to his uncle James Biden, the president’s brother, Hunter told him that he had called his stepmom a “f–king moron, a vindictive moron.”

He also said that he had questioned the first lady’s intelligence in texts to his uncle.

“And you do know the drunkest I’ve ever been is still smarter than you could ever even comprehend and you’re a shut [sic] grammar teacher that wouldn’t survive one class in a ivy graduate program,” Hunter told his uncle in a text message.

“So go f–k yourself Jill let’s all agree I don’t like you anymore than you like me,” he added. 

Meanwhile, the 71-year-old first lady appears to support her husband running for re-election in 2024, despite polls indicating even a majority of Democrats don’t want him to do so. 

A bid for a second Joe Biden term is “something both Dr. Biden and the family fully support,” NBC quoted a senior Jill Biden adviser as saying, though the first lady did not go so far in her interview. 

“He understands government better than anybody else,” the first lady told the network when asked about 2024. 

The interview follows a series of reports indicating the first lady has carved out a prominent role inside the White House as her husband’s protector and favored surrogate. 

In January, Jill Biden reportedly tore into White House staffers after they failed to cut off Joe Biden’s second solo press conference, allowing him to keep going after then-press secretary Jen Psaki signaled to the president to wrap it up.

According to the New York Times, Jill Biden popped into a meeting of top White House officials after the two-hour presser and “pointedly asked the group, which included the president, why nobody stepped in to stop it.”

“Where was the person, she demanded, who was supposed to end the news conference?” the Times reported earlier this week.

The first lady, rather than the president himself, has also made several campaign stops in swing states leading up to the 2022 midterm elections.

“She does not offend people in a way that a president can because she’s much less polarizing and political,” Michael LaRosa, Jill Biden’s former spokesman, told the New York Times last week. “It’s why she was sent all over rural Iowa and New Hampshire during the campaign and why she can go places now that the president can’t.”