US election 2020: Meet Hunter, presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s problem child
Hunter Biden’s struggles with addiction and why he took ill-advised job at Ukraine’s largest private gas company.
Opponents and allies of Hunter Biden agree that it was an error for him to take a job at Ukraine’s largest private gas company in 2014 while his father, then the vice-president, was leading US policy in the region and encouraging the country to increase its gas production.
But Joe Biden’s son had been struggling with alcohol and drug addiction and it seems he needed the money. He had an expensive lifestyle: a large mortgage and three children at a leading private school. “I’ve pretty much always lived pay cheque to pay cheque,” he told The New Yorker last year.
He was born in 1970, the second of three children, to Joe and Neilia Biden. The eldest, Beau, was a year his senior; Naomi was born 21 months later. In December 1972 Neilia took the children Christmas tree shopping. Their car was struck by a lorry and she and Naomi were killed.
Hunter married Katherine Buhle in 1993. He worked as a lawyer for a banking firm and later found a job in the Clinton administration. He quit as a lobbyist after his father was named as Barack Obama’s running-mate and started a consulting firm and then another company that made contacts in China. White House staff are said to have worried that this work would raise questions. There were further concerns when Hunter took a role on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma.
Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015 and Hunter continued to struggle with addiction. After separating from Ms Buhle, he had a relationship with his brother’s widow, Hallie. Last year, after they split, he met a South African filmmaker named Melissa Cohen and proposed to her less than a week later. They married in May last year.
The Times
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