Former Rep. Sean Duffy said many believed Special Counsel David Weiss was going to let Hunter 'skate' on some charges
Hunter indictment could put Joe in a Clintonian box: Turley
GWU Law Professor Jonathan Turley tells 'The Ingraham Angle' the president's protestation sound a lot like Lewinsky denials.
After a California grand jury is reportedly handing down an indictment of first son Hunter Biden, political analysts predicted the bombshell will put President Biden in a self-constructed "trap" after he again claimed allegations he was in influence-peddling cahoots with his brother and son were "lies."
Several sources told Fox News' David Spunt a grand jury empaneled in the Central District of California – which comprises Los Angeles – handed down an indictment against Hunter Biden.
Analysts predicted the indictment would be likely to cover tax-related violations, including former Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., who told Fox News there may also be FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act of 1938) allegations comprised within the indictment or any future charges.
"I think a lot of people felt … that David Weiss was going to let these charges skate and Hunter Biden would never be held accountable for making millions of dollars overseas. And a lot of people will say that was inappropriate," Duffy said.
BIDEN'S HOMETOWN OF SCRANTON REVEALS HOW IT REALLY FEELS ABOUT BIDENOMICS
An excerpt from the indictment obtained by Fox News did allude to tax violation allegations: "The defendant engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019."
Duffy also surmised that if legal conditions worsen for the Bidens in this Los Angeles case, that Democrats are going to seek an "off ramp [and] look to the hair-gel governor" there in 2024.
George Washington University Law Prof. Jonathan Turley told Fox News the indictment may rhetorically box-in President Biden, due to his long-held denials of knowledge or participation in his son's foreign business dealings.
Turley riffed that there's some similarity between Biden's denials and former President Clinton's famed attestation, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," during the 1998 Whitewater-Lewinsky scandal.
HUNTER BIDEN FACES NEW INDICTMENT IN CALIFORNIA
President Clinton's denials of relations with intern Monica Lewinsky sounded like Biden's denial of knowledge of his son's dealings, Turley said. (Harry Hamburg/NY Daily News via Getty)
"I mean, basically [Biden is] saying ‘I did not have interactions with those people’," Turley said.
"It didn't work for Clinton. And it's even more insulting here," he added, pointing to polling showing a majority of Americans including a swath of Democrats telling pollsters they don't believe Biden on this front.
Turley contrasted that with his own prediction that no Democrats would support the GOP's impeachment inquiry.
"But what the president is facing is a trap of his own making. He ran for office promising, assuring, the American people that he had no knowledge of these transactions," he said. "That has been directly contradicted. Hunter Biden himself contradicted his father on that. But you have Hunter's close associate saying that that's absolute nonsense, that, of course, he knew."
MOST FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES CONTINUE REMOTE WORK, CONTRADICTING BIDEN PLEDGE
"So, [Joe is] in this, this sort of frozen-in-amber with a story that he cannot possibly maintain," he added.
Turley later added that the Justice Department has let the statute of limitation run out on the "most serious" potential charges against Hunter Biden.
At the same time, he proffered that Republicans may actually suffer a political loss in one way from the indictment announcement, because the younger Biden may choose to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, and potentially therefore stymie Congress' ability to question him under oath.
Washington Times opinion editor Charles Hurt added to Fox News that the indictment must be "like a nuclear bomb going off for the Biden family," saying that it must terrify President Biden as he approaches his reelection contest to have his son indicted for something he may or may not be connected to.
"The other part of this is regardless [of whether] Joe Biden is completely untainted by any of this in any sort of legal sense or in any sort of business sense, which I would be highly skeptical of – but even if that were the case, he still has lied to the American people about it over and over and over again," Hurt said.
FOX News' David Spunt and William Mears contributed to this report.
Charles Creitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital.
He joined Fox News in 2013 as a writer and production assistant.
Charles covers media, politics and culture for Fox News Digital.
Charles is a Pennsylvania native and graduated from Temple University with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism. Story tips can be sent to
