The language is undeniably different, and yet White House officials said four different times Wednesday that “nothing has changed” concerning President Biden’s longstanding denial that he was ever involved in the foreign business dealings of his son Hunter.

House Republicans, meanwhile, contend that the deviation in wording now employed at the White House reflects a strategy to distance the president from Hunter Biden ahead of potentially damaging new testimony.

Biden told Fox News on the campaign trail in September 2020, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” a categorical denial he later repeated the next month in a radio interview with WBZ Boston when he said, “I don’t discuss business with my son.”

But the verbiage shifted in June when Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House counsel’s office, told the Washington Examiner, “As we have said many times before, the president was not in business with his son.” On Tuesday, the White House press secretary repeated that line.