VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: What game is Hunter Biden playing?

What shameless act or felonious activity was not evidenced on Hunter Biden’s laptop? Racist attitudes toward Asians? Soliciting prostitution? Felonious use of drugs? Photographed nudity and perverse sex? Admissions to illicit foreign shakedowns?

Hunter all but accused his own father, President Joe Biden, of also being on the foreign take: “I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family… Unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”

Hunter Biden’s alleged felonies range from bribery to tax evasion. That he has not yet been prosecuted for anything is scandalous. His exemption is attributable only to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s likely weaponized directives to federal prosecutors to downgrade or forget altogether felony charges against him.

So given such wild behavior, why would not Hunter Biden tone it down, stop the global grifting, cease the reckless behavior — and quit redirecting attention to the likely illegal acts of his father, the president?

Why did not Hunter Biden early on just settle the child support suit filed by his paramour, Lunden Roberts? Why haggle over money for his own daughter?

He instead outrageously claimed near poverty. That excuse was hilarious given he flies on private jets and pays nearly $16,000 a month to rent a house in tony, celebrity-ridden Malibu.

Why did Hunter Biden ever get involved with a performance stripper in the first place after his past widely publicized liaisons with prostitutes? Why also with his own widowed sister-in-law?

Given Hunter Biden has little or no experience or training in high-stakes international finance and investment — and thus has no market value as an investor or broker. But he was infamous for translating that nothingness into millions in lucre solely because of his ability to monetize the influence of then-Vice President Joe Biden.

So why now when under 24/7 scrutiny, would Hunter Biden dare re-create himself as an “artist,” by blowing through straws in his mouth?

His amateurish canvasses somehow have sold for up to $500,000 a pop. Both Biden donors and gamers saw their buys of such mediocre art as gambits either to meet with or profit from his father, Joe Biden.

But would not his painting grift only bring greater prosecutorial scrutiny and greater embarrassment to the president?

Hunter Biden’s attorneys sought to leverage federal prosecutors into agreeing to drop their charges — by threatening to call in as a pro-Hunter witness President Joe Biden himself and thereby likely invoke a constitutional crisis!

In such a scenario, the president under oath would be forced to lie again that he had no knowledge of or involvement in Hunter Biden’s illegal behavior. Or if he admitted the truth that he did, he would thus contradict years of his adamant denials.

Why would Hunter Biden put his father and president in such a publicity circus?

Hunter Biden has lost an incriminating laptop by abandoning it at a repair shop. He has forgotten his crack pipe in a rental car. His illegally registered handgun turned up in a trash dumpster near a school.

So would not the carefree Hunter Biden insist that all the Bidens in the spotlight remain extra careful never to abandon incriminating drugs — especially in the White House.

Yet in a West Wing first, recently cocaine was found lost in an entrance vestibule. Various media outlets claimed it belonged to someone in the “Biden family orbit.”

One of two things explain the continuous reckless behavior of wayward son Hunter Biden:

One, he is either still on drugs or so suffers from past addiction that he has lost all common sense and judgment, and simply cannot control his behavior.

Or, two, Hunter Biden is an embittered, angry son. As the Biden bagman for foreign shakedown cash, he did the dirty work and most risked the legal exposure that made all the Bidens rich.

Yet, instead of familial praise — or so the broke Hunter Biden seems to whine on his laptop — he gets no respect from those he enriched.

And now he, not they, might first go to jail.

As a result, does his continuous recklessness send a not so-subtle reminder to all the Bidens — his father the “Big Guy” especially?

That is, Hunter Biden is not going to take the fall. He will not end up in prison for decades while the other exempt Bidens continue to enjoy their ill-gotten riches, due to Hunter’s imaginative cons.

No wonder the first family for months moved Hunter Biden into the White House and put him on Air Force One.

Is it now, “Keep Hunter close and self-important — or else”?

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and a classicist and historian at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com.