Inside the life of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s scandal-plagued son

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been back in the news since his father announced his 2020 run last year.

 

By Emily Jacobs| nypost.com | October 14, 2020

 

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been back in the news since his father announced his 2020 run last year.

Hunter Biden made headlines again on Oct. 14 when The Post exclusively reported on emails between him and Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.

The emails reveal the possibility of a previously unreported meeting between the elder Biden and an official from Burisma, any involvement with which the Democratic presidential nominee has adamantly denied without going into detail.

Here’s what we know about Hunter Biden before he found himself swept up in yet another scandal.

Early life

Born on Feb. 4, 1970, Robert Hunter Biden and his older brother Beau’s lives were rocked when their mother, Neilia Biden, and sister, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in December 1972.

Just one month later, Hunter and Beau found themselves surrounded by reporters as their father was sworn in as the youngest-ever member of the US Senate.

Hunter Biden (center) with his father, Jill Biden and brother Beau at a campaign event in 1988.

 

The two boys continued growing up in Wilmington, Del., with their widowed father commuting back and forth each day by train to be with them at night.

The Biden brothers encouraged their father to date in the years after their mother’s passing, and he eventually did, meeting Dr. Jill Jacobs, who later became his wife and took his name.

They had a daughter, Ashley, born in 1981.

Love life

Hunter Biden met and married Kathleen Buhle in 1993. The two divorced in 2017 after a 22-year marriage that produced three daughters. In divorce papers, Kathleen accused her ex of blowing family funds on drugs and prostitutes.

The same year as the split — as was first reported by Page Six — Hunter began dating his widowed sister-in-law, Hallie Biden, who had lost her husband, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015.

The two began dating while he was recovering from a crack binge, which he explained in a New Yorker interview last July took place while grieving his brother’s death.

Hunter and Kathleen Biden

Hunter had been kicked out of his marital home with then-estranged wife Kathleen over his failure to stay sober, and began spending most nights at Hallie’s house “sharing a very specific grief” over Beau.

The former vice president did not initially know of the relationship, and found out after being reached for comment by Page Six.

After being made aware, the VP and second lady offered their blessing of the relationship in a statement.

“We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness. They have mine and Jill’s full and complete support and we are happy for them,” the two said at the time.

The New York Post cover featuring Biden and Lunden Alexis Roberts.

 

In January 2020, an Arkansas judge ruled that Biden was the “biological and legal father” of the baby, noting that a DNA test had showed “with near scientific certainty” that Hunter was the parent.

The two reached an out-of-court settlement in which Biden agreed to retroactively pay child support going back to November 2018.

Hunter has since gotten remarried to a South African woman named Melissa Cohen, whom he wed just 10 days after meeting her. They welcomed their first child, a boy, in April of this year.

Drug problems

Hunter Biden has long suffered from drug problems, and it even ended his brief attempt at a military career in his 40s. He was discharged from the Navy Reserve in February 2014 after he tested positive for cocaine.

He was serving as an ensign after being given two waivers, one for his age and one for his drug use as a younger man.

“It was the honor of my life to serve in the US Navy, and I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge,” he said after news of his discharge broke.

When President Trump brought the incident up at last month’s debate, Joe Biden defended his son.

“My son, like a lot of people at home, had a drug problem,” he said. “He’s overtaking it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son.”

Hunter discussed his drug use during his New Yorker interview last year, in which he admitted to almost having a brush with law enforcement after damaging a rental car in Arizona in 2016.

After the car was replaced by Hertz, the rental car company, a rental officer found a crack pipe in the car along with a white powder residue.

Police were called, but there was no evidence that Hunter had used the pipe, so narcotics charges weren’t pursued, the magazine reported.

The younger Biden’s drug problems date back far further than 2016, however.

Hunter was arrested in 1988 for drug possession, something he admitted to in a 2006 disclosure form after being nominated to serve on the Amtrak Reform Board.

“I was cited for possession of a controlled substance in Stone Harbor, NJ. There was a pre-trial intervention and the record was expunged,” he admitted.

In November 2019, Page Six exclusively reported that the former vice president’s son was suspected of smoking crack inside a Washington, DC, strip club where he dropped “thousands of dollars” during multiple visits.

The incident, which took place at Archibald’s Gentlemen’s Club late last year, represents the most recent alleged drug use by Biden, who has acknowledged six stints in rehab for alcoholism and addiction.

Security worker Ranko Petrovic said Biden  would routinely hole up in a VIP room and drink during his visits.

Although Petrovic said the club “had no issue with him,” former Archibald’s managing partner James Ritter said one occasion in late 2018 was marred by a “suspicion of drug use.”

He checked into rehab at the Grace Grove Lifestyle Center in Sedona, Ariz., in October 2016, but left after one week and headed to the nearby Mii Amo resort spa.

It was there that Hunter and Hallie launched their affair, he told the New Yorker.

Page Six has also spotted Biden on multiple occasions at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club NYC in Hell’s Kitchen. He was seen on each occasion with a woman who was not a dancer at the club. The two spent thousands each night on pricey booze and were joined by several strippers.

At one point, a stripper was scrambling to buy a sex toy so others could use it on him.

Ukraine

Hunter did not become a mainstay in the news until his role with Burisma during his father’s tenure as vice president became a primary focus of the Ukraine scandal surrounding Trump, an issue that led to the president’s eventual impeachment trial along party lines in the House and acquittal by the Senate.

During the hearings and subsequent trial, Democrats accused Trump of offering a quid pro quo by requesting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky launch an investigation into the Bidens while Trump was withholding nearly $400 million in aid to the country.

Republicans, meanwhile, argued that allegations against the Bidens were damning enough to merit the president asking for a probe, regardless of Joe’s candidacy for president.

Hunter has been accused of profiting off his father’s vice presidential status by earning tens of thousands of dollars per month to sit on a board for a corrupt company in an industry in which he had no prior experience.

At the time, the elder Biden led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.

Hunter’s role with Burisma raised red flags for some in the Obama administration’s State Department, which a recent Senate Homeland Security Committee report found were raised to Biden and those in his orbit.

The 87-page report published late last month noted that two American officials — George Kent, former acting deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Kiev, and senior State Department official Amos Hochstein — “raised concerns” to Biden’s staff and directly to Biden, respectively.

“Despite the efforts of these individuals, their concerns appear to have fallen on deaf ears,” the report says.

“Moreover, this investigation has illustrated the extent to which officials within the Obama administration ignored the glaring warning signs when the vice president’s son joined the board of a company owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch.”

Joe and Hunter Biden

 

Joe Biden said last year of Hunter, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” including his reported $83,000 monthly pay on Burisma’s board.

Both he and Hunter have denied any wrongdoing with respect to Ukraine, and spokespeople for Joe Biden’s campaign have repeatedly slammed the Senate probe as biased and political.

That Senate report also found that in 2014, the younger Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the richest woman in Russia and the widow of Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow.

“Baturina became Russia’s only female billionaire when her plastics company, Inteko, received a series of Moscow municipal contracts while her husband was mayor,” it said in providing background on the businesswoman.

The report described her involvement with Biden as “a financial relationship,” but declined to delve deeper into why the wire transfer was made.