Former President Barack Obama’s ethics chief blasted President Joe Biden for promoting his son’s upcoming memoir, arguing it is inappropriate for a sitting president to try and boost his son’s book sales.
“It is not acceptable for the President of the United States to be part of the book promotion tour. No,” Walter Shaub, the former director of Obama’s Office of Government Ethics, wrote in a since-deleted tweet, according to the Washington Examiner.
Biden was asked about his son, Hunter, during a pre-Super Bowl interview on Sunday, and he praised Hunter for sharing his experience with drug addiction in his soon-to-be-released memoir, Beautiful Things.
“The honesty with which he stepped forward and talked about the problem, and the hope that — it gave me hope reading it. I mean, it was like, ‘My boy’s back.’ You know what I mean? Anyway, I’m sorry to get so personal,” Joe Biden said.
Shaub said that while it’s “wonderful” to see Hunter Biden open up about his struggles, Joe Biden should not comment on the book at all since it will be sold for profit.
This would not be the first time Hunter Biden used his father’s position to make money.
He came under fire last year for allegedly scoring a lucrative position on the board of an Ukrainian oil company while his father was helping the Obama administration conduct foreign policy in that region.
In 2019, Hunter Biden admitted he would not have been offered the position had his father not been vice president.
“I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden,” he said. “There’s literally nothing, as a young man or as a full-grown adult that — my father in some way hasn’t had influence over. It does not serve either one of us.”
Hunter Biden is currently under a federal tax investigation for alleged tax fraud and money laundering.
