Hunter Biden goes on offense with public remarks that could complicate court cases

Hunter Biden twice referenced his battle with addiction during remarks at a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, but leaning into his story of struggle and recovery could bolster allegations made against him in his two indictments.

The president’s son has recently taken an uncharacteristically public approach, often invoking his past struggles with substance abuse, to defend himself amid heightened scrutiny for the 12 federal charges brought against him in September and December.

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“In the depths of my addiction, I was extremely irresponsible with my finances,” Biden said Wednesday during a speech outside the Capitol, which he held in lieu of complying with House Republicans’ subpoena for a closed-door deposition.

Less than a week ago, he appeared on a podcast with the musician Moby, and the pair talked about how they bonded through their recoveries from addiction.

Biden accused Republicans of attempting to “undermine” his father, President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign by pushing him to relapse.

“They just began to attack, and attack, and attack, and, you know, addiction provides for a lot of openings for people,” Hunter Biden said, adding, “They’re trying to kill me through other means.”

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, speaks during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, in Washington.

Mariam Zuhaib/AP

Roughly a month earlier, Hunter Biden wrote in an op-ed in USA Today about how in 2019, he “chose life over the slow strangle-death grip of addiction,” noting that in his case, his addiction “consisted each day of a bottle of vodka and as many hits on a crack pipe as possible.”

Outside of this recent string of public remarks and the publication of his memoir in 2021, Hunter Biden has remained largely in the background as headlines about his past played out. In the memoir, he wrote that his brother’s death in 2015 exacerbated his addiction and that he became sober in 2019.

Hunter Biden’s high-profile shift to becoming vocal in his own defense comes against the backdrop of the Department of Justice bringing criminal charges against the first son for allegedly failing to pay his taxes from 2017 to 2020 and allegedly unlawfully purchasing a gun by lying on a federal form about his drug addiction in October 2018.

In the tax indictment, the DOJ alleged that in 2020, when he filed his 2018 tax returns late, Hunter Biden falsely characterized hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal spending as business expenses on his tax forms.

Special counsel David Weiss highlighted in the indictment that Hunter Biden’s drug use called into question whether he was conducting any business at all in 2018, and Weiss used the first son’s own words about substance abuse from his memoir against him to make that point.

Despite the legal exposure, Hunter Biden appears to be digging in and taking his story about his past struggles and vices to the public stage in other formats, including press conferences and interviews.

Weiss alleged in the indictment that Hunter Biden, who has said he was sober in 2020, did not alert the accountants that year to his past drug use, which Weiss said would have raised a red flag as they helped prepare his taxes. The returns filed for tax year 2018 included the exorbitant claims of business expenses.

“Unbeknownst to the [California] Accountants, in his memoir, the Defendant described 2018 as being dominated by crack cocaine use ‘twenty-four hours a day, smoking every fifteen minutes, seven days a week,'” Weiss wrote in the indictment.

Weiss accused Hunter Biden of claiming nearly $400,000 in “business-related travel” despite having none that year. Weiss also alleged that the first son used his company’s funds to spend tens of thousands of dollars living out of luxury hotels and paying “wages” to women he was sexually involved with but who did no work for him. He did not claim these expenses as personal expenses, Weiss noted.

The special counsel cited several excerpts from Hunter Biden’s memoir as evidence that he did not conduct any legitimate business in 2018. The memoir detailed how Hunter Biden spent most of 2018 under the influence, living lavishly in Southern California while partying with strippers.

In the gun case, Hunter Biden has filed several motions to dismiss his case, but if those are unsuccessful and the case does go to trial, any attempts to prove that he was sober when he purchased the gun could be an uphill task.

The first son’s defense team has already asked Weiss for any exculpatory evidence that could prove his sobriety at the time, including “any documents and/or information reflecting Mr. Biden’s sobriety in 2018” and “any documents and/or information sent or received (including internal memoranda) addressing the … analysis of the evidence of Mr. Biden’s state of sobriety on or around October 12, 2018,” according to court filings.

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At least one excerpt in Hunter Biden’s memoir would conflict with that defense if the first son were to make it in a trial.

He wrote, “I had returned [to the East Coast] that fall of 2018, after my most recent relapse in California, with the hope of getting clean through a new therapy and reconciling with Hallie [Biden]. Neither happened.”