Hunter Biden, the son of the American president, held a rare press conference on Wednesday, December 13, to clear his father of any involvement in his controversial affairs, which have come under scrutiny from Republican opposition. “Let me say this as clearly as possible: my father was never financially involved in my affairs,” the fifty-year-old told the American Congress in a serious tone. “Not as a lawyer, not when I was on the board [du géant gazier ukrainien] Burisma, not when I did business with a Chinese, not when I made investments here or abroad, and certainly not when I was an artist,” he listed.
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The White House, which maintains the greatest possible distance from the impeachment proceedings initiated by conservatives, limited itself on Wednesday to the remark that Hunter Biden, as a “citizen,” had “spoken from the heart.” President Joe Biden was “aware” of what his son would say, his spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said during his regular news conference. The Democrat and his wife Jill Biden “are proud of it[Hunter Biden]as he continues to rebuild his life,” and otherwise the president is “focused on the important work he has to do for the American people,” she said.
The conservatives, who make up a majority in one of the two chambers of the American Congress, accuse Joe Biden of using his influence as Barack Obama's vice president (2009-2017) to enable his son to do questionable deals in China and Ukraine. For this reason, they have launched an impeachment inquiry in Congress, which they plan to formalize on Wednesday afternoon. The president, Democrats and his son all deny these allegations.
A privileged target of the American right
Hunter Biden, a 53-year-old former businessman, has become a popular target of the American right. In front of the US Congress on Wednesday, the 50-year-old, with a history of addiction problems and accused in two cases in court, admitted that he had “made mistakes in his life”. But he accused “the Trumpists” of trying to “dehumanize” him in order to “hurt” his father. “For six years they have (…) violated my privacy and targeted my wife, my children, my family, my friends. They ridiculed my battle with addiction,” he said.
That's why Mr. Biden refused to attend a closed-door hearing organized by Republicans, who summoned him to appear at the Capitol on Wednesday. Joe Biden never spoke in detail about Hunter's problems, but always assured him of his fatherly love. “During my battle with addiction, my parents were there for me, they literally saved my life,” his youngest son admitted Wednesday.
In his book Les Belles Choses (2021), Hunter Biden tells of drinking vodka from the bottle, the nightly forays into seedy convenience stores in search of crack, and the failed detox attempts. The fifty-year-old says he is “clean” now. Remarried and, like his late brother, the father of a little boy named Beau, he turned to painting.
Hunter Biden, whom the American president sometimes refers to as his “only surviving son,” is a source of political complications but also personal torment for Joe Biden. The American president lost his first wife and a young daughter in a car accident in 1972, in which his other two sons from his first marriage, Hunter and Beau, were seriously injured. Beau Biden, the Democratic darling, died of brain cancer in 2015.
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