Though the New York Times on Thursday reported that former Vice President Joe Biden is reportedly “95 percent committed to running for president,” Biden is hesitating entering the race because he is reportedly “uneasy” about potential attacks on his son Hunter, who was a subject of Breitbart News Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster book, Secret Empires, which highlighted the “new corruption” associated with the Bidens.

In Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Schweizer revealed that in 2013 “Hunter Biden’s firm signed a billion-dollar deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China just 10 days after Joe and Hunter Biden flew to China aboard Air Force Two.”

Schweizer also detailed how Biden’s son Hunter sits on the board of Bohai Harvest RST (BHR), which invested in a Chinese company that was indicted for engaging in a “nuclear power conspiracy against the United States.”

“When you have the motive of greed and when you don’t worry too much about ethics, it’s very easy to come up with creative ways to enrich yourself, and one of those is what we call ‘American princelings,” Schweizer said on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Tonight last year. “The term ‘princelings’ is really a term that’s been widely used in China and in the West to talk about China, where in communist China, if you want to get deals done, if you want to get favors from the government, you basically do business with their children, and these children of communist party officials are called the princelings.”

Schweizer continued:

One of the things I argue in the book is that we are, in a sense, importing that model into the United States, and you see that a lot as it relates to the Chinese government. The Chinese government has figured out that the way to get favorable treatment from policymakers in Washington, DC, is by, basically, signing sweetheart deals with the children of politicians because they think by doing so, they’ll get better policy positions from our government, and the history indicates in the Obama administration that that’s exactly what happens.

The mainstream media have all but ignored Hunter Biden’s business dealings and instead focused largely on his substance abuse problems, divorce, and relationship with his late brother Beau’s widow.

In her 2017 divorce filings, Hunter Biden’s ex-wife Kathleen accused Hunter of spending lavishly on drugs, alcohol, and hookers: “Throughout the parties’ separation Mr. Biden has created financial concerns for the family by spending extravagantly on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations), while leaving the family with no funds to pay legitimate bills.”

While these salacious details received splashy headlines, Hunter Biden’s business dealings and associations could end up being Joe Biden’s Achilles’ heel.

According to a January Vanity Fair report, “two strategists for possible Democratic presidential contenders” said that “Hunter would inevitably become part of the public discussion if Biden were to join the 2020 race.”

Vanity Fair noted that “Hunter seems to have a gift for dubious associations”–Hunter was also “on the board of one of Ukraine’s largest gas companies, which was owned by an oligarch with connections to Viktor Yanukovych, the Russia-backed Ukrainian president who was one of Paul Manafort’s prime clients.”

Hunter in January tried to downplay the notion that his father might sit out the 2020 election to prevent Hunter from being at the center of news cycles.

“So, you ask me, whether my father might not run for President because of reports about me in the news. What you fail to realize, in asking such a question, is that my father has always been proud of me—whether when I was volunteering for the Jesuits, or working as a lawyer,” Hunter told Vanity Fair. “And he remains proud of me today. He loves me. And he loves the American people far too much to let any form of adversity stand in the way of service.”

If Joe Biden enters the race, his “high profile and overall popularity,” according to Gallup, combined with the fact that he has been at the top of nearly every 2020 poll, would instantly make him the front-runner.

A Thursday Gallup report noted that though Biden’s approval rating has dipped about five points since January of 2017, his 56% favorability rating “still ranks among the best Gallup has measured for him to date.”

Gallup’s Feb. 12-28 survey found that “eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have a favorable opinion of Biden” and nearly one in three Republicans also have a favorable view of the former vice president.

Democrats who were willing to overlook some of Biden’s centrist leanings because they believe he is the best candidate to defeat Trump in a general election could think twice about voting for the former vice president if Hunter’s business dealings become more heavily scrutinized.

Democrats are setting up their 2020 case that Trump should be voted out of office because he is using the White House to enrich his family. But if Biden wins the party’s nomination, Hunter Biden’s business dealings will make it difficult for Joe Biden to effectively make that argument against Trump.