There’s no question that Hunter Biden has a messy personal life. The question is whether or not his dad aided and abetted his professional life.

Everyone knew that this had to be coming from other candidates and the media. There is no Biden-mania. There seems to only be a sad feeling of inevitability from the hard left. As a result, the media is now shocked, SHOCKED, about things the former vice-president has said.

my favorite media genre for the next year will be Journalist Discovers For First Time Controversial Comments Made Decades Ago By Man Who Spent Eight Years A Heartbeat Away From Presidency

— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) June 19, 2019

But some the media questions directly relate to his son Hunter – and they are legitmate questions.

More than once, after his father engaged in diplomacy on behalf of the United States in foreign countries, Hunter Biden conducted business in the same country. At two separate campaign stops on Monday, Biden avoided questions about his son while his staff blocked reporters from approaching the candidate.”

Biden’s campaign did provide ABC News with a statement saying the former vice president has always adhered to “well-established executive branch ethics standards,” adding that if Biden wins the White House he will issue an executive order to “address conflicts of interest of any kind.”

“This process will be set out in detail in the executive order,” the statement reads, “that President Biden would issue on his first day in office.”

The ethics pledge follows renewed questions about a pair of overseas business opportunities involving Hunter Biden – one in Ukraine, another in China – that already have begun to generate political attacks from Joe Biden’s conservative critics. Ethics experts interviewed by ABC News said these are legitimate questions about possible past and future conflicts of interest.”

For his part, Hunter Biden claims that he didn’t benefit from his father’s connections.

“At no time have I discussed with my father the company’s business, or my board service,” Hunter Biden said in statement forwarded to ABC News by his attorney. “Any suggestion to the contrary is just plain wrong.”

An attorney for Hunter Biden told ABC News the vice president’s son merely accompanied his daughter, Finnegan Biden, on the Air Force Two trip to Beijing and conducted no business during the visit.”

Credit where it’s due, this is a pretty solid piece from ABC News. I expect that other campaigns will bookmark this and have it in their back pocket for future use against Joe Biden. This would not be the first time that Hunter Biden has been able to slide by in life by virtue of his parentage. Hunter’s issues with drug use have been documented repeatedly (including his failed drug test in the Navy which put an end to a specially-granted commission), and he has never been charged or prosecuted for his drug use. Like many a child of a privilege, Hunter Biden has been allowed to fail upward. It’s obvious that being the vice-president’s son made his problems a lot easier to sweep under the rug. The question is whether dear old dad Joe made sure that Hunter had some cushy gigs to fall back on even while his personal life was a train wreck – and continues to be a hot mess.

Even leaving the personal issues aside, the ethical implications for Joe Biden regarding Hunter are not going away. And with ABC News giving the story legitimacy in the media, the Biden campaign would be wise to prepare some answers for their candidate ahead of the debates – because those questions are coming.

Featured image: Hunter Biden (screenshot via ABC News on YouTube)