US President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, the embodiment of white privilege

Hunter Biden is still cashing in, even after his addictions and dodgy connections last year threatened to destroy father Joe Biden’s bid for the US Presidency, writes Miranda Devine.

After writing a book about his adventures in crack addiction, the US president’s wayward son looks as if he can’t believe his luck, cruising through a string of mollycoddling interviews on a tightly-controlled publicity tour.

But as Hunter Biden has his reputation laundered by a fawning media, his abandoned laptop reveals the extent of entitlement and privilege long enjoyed by the President’s family and vigorously exploited by his crack-loving son.

In a 2015 email exchange, for instance, Hunter’s cousin Missy Owens asks him to procure a government appointment for her mother, Valerie Owens, the sister of then-Vice President Joe Biden: “I really want to get on something, but … mom needs it more than I do right now.”

Hunter replies: “I didn’t know she wanted to do [one] of these … Let’s go through the list with Steve [Ricchetti, then Joe‘s chief of staff, now White House counsellor] and see what makes sense. I don’t know how much 2016 [the election] and nepotism plays into it.”

US President Joe Biden speaks about the March jobs report at the White House. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

US President Joe Biden's son Hunter. Picture: Democratic National Convention/AFP

Lo and behold the following year, President Obama appoints Aunt Val to a ceremonial role at the United Nations, a four-month stint that pays $26,000.

In addition, a memo to Hunter from his business partner Eric Schwerin in 2016 sets up two $12,500 per month “consulting” contracts for Aunt Val when the UN gig runs out.

The Biden Foundation is to provide a “Consulting Contract with Valerie Owens or her LLC for $12,500 a month for one year”.

The other one-year consultancy is with the University of Delaware, to coincide with the announcement of its Biden Institute, with Joe as “founding chair”.

“I had a better seat at the table because my brother is at the head of the table,” she has acknowledged of her brother’s influence.

Missy herself, along with sister Casey, landed a federal job during the Obama administration, before moving to a lucrative “government relations” gig with Coca-Cola. See how it works?

The rules never apply to the Bidens. Jobs, Ivy League berths, internships, judge clerkships, cut-price mansions, generous investors, all are there for the taking.

Artwork: Terry Pontikos

When family members have a run-in with the law, they are treated with kid gloves, whether it’s drunk driving, credit card fraud, shoplifting, assaulting police, or lying on a background-check form about your drug use when buying a gun, as Hunter did in 2016.

Black people have served serious time for less. Rapper Kodak Black, for instance, was sentenced to 46 months in prison on federal weapons charges in 2019 after lying on the form to buy firearms.

It’s a sick irony that, while Joe Biden wages war on white privilege, his 51-year-old son is the living embodiment of the worst of it.

The admiring treatment from the media the past week is an extension of that special Biden privilege

There have been no questions about Hunter’s international influence peddling scheme, trading on his father’s name in between crack deals.

Any time a question ventures into incriminating territory, Hunter loses his memory, like a chip off the old block.

But it’s no wonder he says he can’t recall abandoning a laptop at a Mac repair shop in Delaware in 2019.

The infamous device, dubbed “Laptop from Hell” by Donald Trump, contains thousands of emails, texts, documents, photographs, videos and voicemails that chronicle Hunter’s life over almost a decade, and include communications with his father, ex-wife, lovers, business partners, drug dealers and hookers.

Plenty of people struggle with addiction and you can only wish them best in their recovery.

But the significance of the laptop is not in the sordid record of a life off the rails.

US President Joe Biden (right) hugs his son Hunter Biden and US First Lady Jill Biden after being sworn in as the 46th US President. Picture: Olivier Douliery/AFP

It is not the before-and-after photos of Hunter’s “meth mouth” dental work to fix his drug-damaged teeth, although those do beg the question of why anyone would pay US$83,000 a month for such a wastrel to sit on their board, as the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma did for five years.

No, Hunter’s laptop matters because it is witness to the involvement of Joe Biden in his family’s efforts to cash in on his name in parts of the world, such as China and Ukraine, where he wielded immense power in America’s name.

It matters because it is a window into the sort of Tammany Hall graft that plagues Washington and for which no one has been brought to account.

Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends”, calls it “corruption by proxy”, the enrichment of powerful politicians’ families by foreign governments or oligarchs.

Hunter’s laptop is a blueprint of how the game works, where power and privilege are your birthright, and you lecture the rest of the world about integrity.

“The fact of the matter is, it’s a red herring,” Biden told late night host Jimmy Kimmel.

That is his fervent wish. And so far the media is obliging.

*Miranda Devine’s book “Laptop From Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide” is out in September

Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph