The efforts of Hunter Biden, 53, to put his rocky past behind him suffered a setback this Friday when the US Secretary of Justice, Merrick Garland, had no choice but to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate his affairs, pressured by the evident protectionism to the son of the tenant of the White House.
His personal and legal problems make him a target for republicans, due to the bias of the Department of Justice in his case, which is led by Garland, an ally of Biden, especially now that the president is running for re-election in the 2024 elections.
The Republicans in the Congress They have launched multiple investigations into the businesses that Hunter Biden did with China and Ukraine when his father was Barack Obama’s vice president (2009-2017).
Hunter Biden reached a plea deal with the Justice Department to avoid jail time on charges of tax evasion and illegal possession of a firearm, but the deal fell through over opposition from a judge. Garland promoted the person investigating the cases to special prosecutor on Friday.
By way of justifying the barrage of criticism from legislators and the distrust of many Americans in the Justice Department, Garland announced Friday that he had appointed a special attorney in the Hunter Biden investigation, deepening the investigation of the president’s son before the elections. of 2024.
There are those who see Hunter as the black sheep of the family, but his father has never turned his back on him.
“My son has done nothing wrong. I trust him. I have faith in him,” Joe Biden said recently as congressional Republicans opened a new investigation.
Hunter is frequently seen at his father’s side and takes trips abroad with him.
Hunter Biden faces investigation on two federal counts of tax evasion and illegal possession of a weapon, in a case that also targets the Justice Department with accusations of promoting a flawed investigation, involving political interference, and going “slowly” on the investigation. investigation to exhaust the terms of some possible charges, as testified by two agents of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Gary Shapleu and Joseph Ziegler, before the Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives.
alcohol and crack
Hunter Biden’s life was marred by addictions to alcohol and crack, alleviated with stints in rehab.
Hunter attributes it to the car accident that killed his mother and sister when he was three years old. He had to be hospitalized with a skull fracture.
He also lived in the shadow of his brother Beau, who had a glittering military career and entered politics before suffering brain cancer in 2015.
Joe Biden often speaks publicly about the death of his eldest son, in whom he saw a possible future president.
He rarely mentioned Hunter, who wrote in his memoirs that after Beau’s death he used more drugs.
He hit rock bottom when his father stepped down as vice president in 2017. His marriage broke up and he lost custody of his three daughters.
Amorous affair with his sister-in-law
He had an affair with his sister-in-law, Beau’s widow, had a daughter with an Arkansas woman who sued him for child support, and finally suffered the derision of seeing published the compromising emails and photos of his laptop that left him alone. they exhibit naked, with women and consuming drugs.
The Department of Justice investigated him for the millions of dollars he earned from his investments abroad.
But Joe Biden has always come to his son’s defense, such as during the 2020 presidential race, when Trump brought up Hunter’s drug use and shady dealings during a debate.
“My son, like many people (…) had a drug problem,” the president said on television.
“He got over it, he fixed it, he worked on it. And I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son,” he said.
Extortion and influence peddling?
Hunter Biden is being investigated for alleged influence peddling and for using his father’s position to promote his businesses that left him million-dollar profits.
On the subject, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, wrote on his Twitter account that during his testimony Devon Archer confirmed that Joe Biden was “the brand” that his son sold around the world to enrich the Biden family. “What were the Bidens selling? Nothing but access and influence to the highest levels of government,” he asserted, saying that President Biden needs to be honest. What else is he hiding?” he questioned.
After Biden was appointed in charge of US-Ukraine policy a couple of weeks later, his son Hunter joined Burisma’s board of directors. That fact, possible tax fraud, corruption in obtaining permits for gas production, and the possible sending of money to the United States were the subject of an investigation by Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies.
According to journalistic reports, Hunter Biden would be the target of investigations by the Prosecutor’s Office in Ukraine, and at the time they were preparing the request to question him for sending 3,000,000 dollars to the United States, then Vice President Biden traveled to Kiev and forced the Ukrainian president at that time Petro Poroshenko, to fire the attorney general Viktor Shokin, in charge of the investigation, otherwise he would not disburse a loan of 1,000 million dollars that Ukraine needed at that time to maintain economic solvency.
About the dismissal of the prosecutor, Biden himself spoke in 2016, but giving a different motivation to his decision, according to a video recorded during a Council on Foreign Relations event in 2016.
“I remember convincing our team that we should be providing loan guarantees, and I went… I guess the 12th or 13th time to kyiv, to announce that there were another billions of loans. I received a promise from (Petro) Poroshenko (President of Ukraine) and (Arseni) Yatsenyuk (Prime Minister of Ukraine at the time) that they would take action against the Prosecutor General, but they did not. And I told them we’re not going to give them $1 billion. They replied: “You have no authority, you are not the president, the president has promised.” I answered them: “Call him. I told you that you will not receive 1,000 million dollars.” I told them that I was leaving in 6 hours, and that if they did not fire the prosecutor by that time, they would not receive the money. And well, son of a bitch, they fired him, “said Biden about that fact, in a testimony collected on video.
The president’s account provoked laughter among the attendees.
“He never judged me”
In his 2020 memoir, Hunter Biden recounted his days drinking vodka, wandering seedy neighborhoods at night looking for crack, and his multiple failed attempts at rehab.
He said that in 2019 he got ahead thanks to the intervention of his father and his second wife, Melissa.
The only thing that helped him, he wrote, was his father’s unconditional love.
“He never abandoned me, never rejected me, never judged me, no matter how bad things got,” Hunter wrote.
Today Hunter claims to have left all that behind. He had a son with Melissa, whom he named Beau, and began painting, though the latter has also generated controversy due to the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid by unidentified collectors for his paintings.
FOUNTAIN: With information from AFP and EDITORIAL
