Hunter Biden: Who is former Vice President Joe Biden's son mentioned in Ukraine-Trump call?
WILMINGTON, Del. – He's been featured in countless newspaper articles, and even got his own New Yorker profile.
Some might enjoy that kind of exposure, but it's been a major headache for Hunter Biden – and for his father Joe's presidential campaign.
It's nothing new. The former vice president's middle child has long faced public scrutiny, much of it while his father was still in office.
Family ties
Hunter Biden is the younger son of Joe Biden and Neilia Hunter, who married in 1966. They had three children – Beau, Hunter and Naomi – before Neilia and Naomi were killed in a car crash in 1972.
Joe went on to marry Jill in 1977, and the couple had their daughter, Ashley, in 1981.
Hunter, like his dad and brother, went to Archmere Academy. He graduated from Georgetown University and Yale Law School.
Hunter Biden has three children, Naomi, Finnegan and Maisey, with his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle.
In 2016, Hunter Biden began dating Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother, Beau.
His parents supported the couple. In 2017, they said, "We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness. They have (our) full and complete support and we are happy for them.”
When asked to comment on his family life for a January 2019 article in Vanity Fair, Hunter Biden wrote:
"Even though my life has been played out in the media, because I am a Biden, my father never once suggested that the family's public profile should be my priority. The priority has always been clear for my dad, as it is, now, for me: Never run from a struggle. Love people and find a way to love yourself."
In May, Hunter Biden met Melissa Cohen, a 32-year-old South African filmmaker. Less than a week later, he proposed.
The Biden family was not at the wedding. Hunter told The New Yorker of his father's support for the marriage.
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“I called my dad and said that we just got married. He was on speaker, and he said to her, 'Thank you for giving my son the courage to love again.'
“And he said to me, 'Honey, I knew that when you found love again that I'd get you back ... And my reply was, I said, 'Dad, I always had love. And the only thing that allowed me to see it was the fact that you never gave up on me, you always believed in me.' "
Struggles with substances
In 2013, Hunter Biden was selected to be a direct commission officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, but was discharged months later after he tested positive for cocaine.
That wasn't the first time drugs and alcohol took a toll on his life.
In the New Yorker profile, Hunter Biden opened up about his struggle with alcohol and drugs.
“Look, everybody faces pain,” he said in the story. “Everybody has trauma. There's addiction in every family. I was in that darkness. I was in that tunnel – it's a never-ending tunnel. You don't get rid of it. You figure out how to deal with it.”
Although Joe Biden, who had relatives with alcohol problems, has never had a drink, Hunter Biden started drinking alcohol as a teenager.
The story describes how he occasionally used cocaine while a student at Georgetown, even once buying crack.
In the early 2000s, he tried to get sober, including rehab in 2003.
He relapsed in 2010, after seven years of sobriety, when he had drinks during a business trip. Hunter Biden then told his brother, Beau, and he returned to rehab. But after suffering from shingles, for which he was prescribed painkillers, he started drinking again.
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After Beau died in 2015, Hunter Biden began doing yoga, but also continued to drink heavily.
"Several times a day, his father called him, and Hunter assured him that he was OK. Eventually, Biden showed up unannounced at the apartment," The New Yorker reported.
"Hunter said that his father told him, 'I need you. What do we have to do?' "
In the fall of 2016, Hunter Biden arranged to go to rehab in Sedona, Arizona.
During an unexpected layover in Los Angeles, he bought crack several times that week, The New Yorker reported. After days of not sleeping, on Oct. 28, Hunter was driving on Interstate 10 near Palm Springs and eventually lost control of the car.
He eventually dropped off the rental car and called the rehab center to pick him up.
Shortly after the article was published last summer, Joe and Jill Biden commented on it during an interview on CNN.
"Beau was my soul, Hunter is my heart," Joe Biden said. "Hunter has been through some tough times, but he's fighting."
Business ties scrutinized
Hunter Biden is a lawyer and founder of the venture capital firm Eudora Global, which specializes in health care, online gambling and renewable energy.
But that's not why he's been in the spotlight recently.
In 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company. During his tenure, Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin investigated the company.
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The New York Times reported in May that Joe Biden, while in office in 2016, threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees unless Ukraine reduced its corruption. Part of that demand called for removing the country's top prosecutor, Shokin, who was investigating the oligarch behind an energy company where Hunter Biden served on the board.
Shokin was accused by U.S. officials of ignoring corruption in his own office. The Ukrainian Parliament eventually voted him out.
But Yuriy Lutsenko, a former Ukraine prosecutor, told Bloomberg News Service in May that he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden or Hunter Biden.
“Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws – at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing,” Lutsenko told Bloomberg. “A company can pay however much it wants to its board.”
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Hunter Biden told the Times in May that he had "no role whatsoever" in the Ukrainian investigation of the company or any of its officers. The Washington Post has reported there is "no evidence" Joe Biden was trying to help his son.
As President Donald Trump criticized the Bidens, the former vice president swung back, appearing in Wilmington on Tuesday to state that he supports the impeachment of Trump if the White House does not comply with Congress' requests for details about a call he made to Ukraine's president in which they discussed the former vice president.
On Wednesday, the president released notes about the call.
Trump campaign officials also fought back prior to Joe Biden's speech, sending out a list of questions that they said Biden should answer. It included "an explanation for why he believes it was appropriate for Hunter (Biden) to make millions of dollars in Ukraine at the same time Joe Biden was leading diplomatic relations with Ukraine."
Contributing: Bart Jansen, USA TODAY. Follow Meredith Newman and Andrew Sharp on Twitter: @MereNewman and @buckeye_201
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Hunter Biden: Who is Joe Biden's son mentioned in Ukraine-Trump call?
