How Trump has tried to use Hunter Biden as a way to attack his father

Former President Donald J. Trump has been one of the most persistent Republican voices trying to use Hunter Biden as a way to discredit his father, President Biden — and Tuesday’s guilty plea quickly became yet another point of attack when Mr. Trump’s third Republican presidential nomination.

But for Mr. Trump and his allies, denouncing Hunter Biden has long served as a political round of applause — particularly during the 2020 race.

It was in the run-up to that campaign that Mr Trump was impeached for the first time in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — allegations stemming from a phone call Mr Trump made to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in which he urged Zelensky to investigate leading Democrats and open an investigation into Hunter Biden.

Mr. Trump repeatedly spread baseless claims in attempts to link his Democratic rival to his son’s business dealings, which he described as corrupt, even before Mr. Biden became his party’s nominee.

In 2019, Mr. Trump publicly called on China to investigate Hunter Biden’s financial dealings in the country. Mr. Trump claimed, without evidence, that Hunter Biden “made millions of dollars off China” and that he used his political connections to persuade China to invest $1.5 billion in a fund he was involved with.

At campaign rallies, Mr. Trump frequently made claims that Hunter Biden was corrupt, often pointing to a New York Post report on a laptop seized by the FBI.

And during an October 2020 presidential debate, Mr. Trump repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that Mr. Biden had both served as an adviser and used his former position as vice president to help broker business deals for his son. That string of attacks brought increased public attention to Mr. Biden’s son’s activities, as searches for “Hunter Biden” skyrocketed following the exchanges during the debate.

Mr. Trump later called on his Attorney General, William P. Barr, to take action against his Democratic challenger for his son’s work just two weeks before the 2020 election.

With Mr. Trump recently indicted on federal charges for his handling of classified documents, he and many Republicans have sought to view Hunter Biden’s agreement with federal prosecutors as overly lenient and sought to establish a double-standard narrative.

Mr. Trump likened Hunter Biden’s charges to those of a “traffic map,” in a post on his Truth Social website shortly after the guilty plea was announced Tuesday.