Disgraced convicted felon Hunter Biden has reportedly been joining his embattled father in official meetings at the White House with top aides since the Biden family returned from Camp David, Monday evening.
The Biden family gathered at Camp David over the weekend, where Joe Biden sat for a previously scheduled photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz for the upcoming Democrat National Convention.
While staying at the presidential retreat in Maryland, according to reports, the family took the opportunity to urge him to stay in the race and keep fighting despite his humiliating debate performance.
Since then, the scandal-plagued younger Biden has “popped into” official White House meetings and phone calls with advisors, four people familiar with the matter told NBC.
Hunter has also reportedly been spotted talking to senior White House staff.
According to the sources, Joe Biden’s aides were “struck” by Hunter’s unusual involvement in these high-level discussions at the White House.
“What the hell is happening?” senior White House staff is quoted to have said.
Asked for comment, White House spokesman Andrew Bates told NBC News: “Hunter came back with the President from their family weekend at Camp David and went with the President straight into speech prep.”
Bates was referring to Biden’s angry and inaccurate teleprompter speech decrying the Supreme Court’s landmark decision on presidential immunity. After his four minute diatribe, Biden left the podium without taking any questions.
The elder Biden’s increased reliance on his son’s advice, comes less than a month after a jury in Wilmington, Delaware found Hunter guilty of all three federal gun charges tied to his possession of a gun while abusing drugs, and a year after a stash of cocaine was found on White House grounds.
The first son faces up to 25 years in prison for lying on a federal screening form about his drug use, lying to a gun dealer and possessing the gun.
Hunter still faces a tax evasion federal trial in California this coming September.
More serious charges related to money laundering, bribery, illegal influence peddling, and operating as an unregistered foreign agent of corrupt foreign governments were never brought against the first son.
The gun and tax evasion charges came only after U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected the “sweetheart” plea deal between Special Counsel Delaware United States attorney David Weiss and the defendant.
Hunter’s elevated role at the White House comes amid fierce infighting within the Democrat party over Joe Biden’s political future, with one faction calling on him to end his reelection campaign, and the other, reportedly led by Jill Biden, his family and his allies in the intelligence community urging him to stay in.