Does Hunter Biden want to sabotage his dad’s reelection bid? The recent theatrics from the president’s troubled son really make you wonder. The Hunter circus returned to Capitol Hill last week as the younger Biden and his lawyer and bank roller caused a ruckus by crashing a House Oversight Committee hearing, during which the members were deciding whether to hold Hunter in contempt of Congress for defying congressional subpoenas. This came on the heels of a stunt that had landed Hunter in hot water in the first place. On December 13, he was supposed to sit for a deposition with House impeachment investigators per the subpoenas. Hunter ignored those demands. Instead, he took to the Senate side of the Capitol, where the House sergeant-in-arms couldn’t arrest him, and delivered a statement daring Republican members to hold him in contempt. The legislators called his bluff with the contempt proceedings, the Oversight and Judiciary Committees both voting to hold him in contempt. If the full House approves the related resolutions, Joe’s DOJ will have to decide whether to pursue charges. Adding insult to injury, Hunter also brought even more heat on his father. It wasn’t just that he shifted the goalposts into another state by changing the story for the millionth time to now clarify that Joe Biden, who once knew nothing about Hunter’s dubious business dealings, now was merely not financially involved. Making matters worse, when he defied the subpoenas and gave a statement, Hunter’s gambit ended up expanding the impeachment inquiry. What else, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president was quote, certainly familiar with what his son was going to say. So the president presumably knew Hunter was going to defy the congressional subpoenas and may have even counseled him on them. On December 27, the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees delivered a letter to the White House Counsel indicating the Impeachment Inquiry would now encompass whether the president had, quote, engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding of Congress. Needless to say, between Hunter’s exploits on the hill, the lawsuits he’s been filing against everyone and their mother involved in exposing his misconduct and his frequent appearances by his father’s side, the man is not keeping a low profile. What is he thinking? Maybe that the best defense equals a good offense? But is there any evidence this quarterback has any command of the playbook whatsoever? Maybe the idea is to hang a lantern on your problem.

If Hunter can frame himself as the victim of a right-wing witch hunt, propagating the narrative, as he’s done in public writing, that the recovering drug addict is being not only unfairly but dangerously targeted by the president’s foes, maybe that makes him sympathetic and diverts attention from Joe. That story certainly reads better than the Biden family, led by Hunter, monetized patriarch Joe’s office to the tune of tens of millions of dollars from the Chinese, Ukrainians, and Russians, arguably selling out and compromising America, that the family denied it all, and so to conceal the ill-gotten gains by flowing them down through a couple dozen shell companies, even one of the president’s grandchildren, that the family committed all manner of alleged crimes in the process, and that the president’s Justice Department labored to cover these acts all up while seeking to lock up his most likely presidential opponent to boot. If the public is focused on Hunter, that beats the focus on Joe, but even if the idea is to make Hunter a scapegoat, do the president and his surrogates really want Hunter constantly in the public eye?

To play armchair psychologist here leads to another theory. What if, through Hunter’s conspicuous moves, he’s consciously or subconsciously trying to undermine his father? He’s engaged in destructive behavior before, he documented his reckless and allegedly criminal acts on a laptop, surely knowing how devastating it could be for his father if the material emerged. Was he careless and cavalier with that laptop because of his substance abuse? Or because he thought he was above the law? Or might have been that at some level he wanted to be caught, and not only out of guilt, or in a cry for help, but out of spite? Is it possible that Hunter resented his father for being made to shoulder the load of leading the family’s influence-peddling operation, an operation that exposed him above all others to all manner of legal peril in the shadow of his high-flying brother? We know Hunter at times covered his dad’s expenses.

While corporate media have thrown cold water on the significance of the text Hunter wrote in January 2019, to his daughter, Naomi, quote, I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years, adding, but don’t worry, unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary. So is this theory that farfetched? Regardless of Hunter’s intent, he’s inadvertently doing the public a favor by remaining in the spotlight. In so doing he serves as an ever-present symbol, not only of the Bidens’ seeming belief they are above the law, but about the apparent corruption that looms over a disastrous national security and foreign policy record Americans will have the ability to correct in November.