His candid chronicle of his drug- and alcohol-fueled binges and relationship with Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden, are sure to shock — but don’t let all the tabloid fodder fool you.

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, has seen his fair share of ugly things. His alcohol and drug addiction sent him spiraling for years and led him to cook his own crack cocaine. But he’s seen a lot of beautiful things, too — namely the love he shares with his father and brother Beau Biden, who died of glioblastoma in 2015.

Biden wrote about all of it in in his new memoir, “Beautiful Things” (Gallery Books, 255 pp.), out April 6. His candid chronicle of his drug- and alcohol-fueled binges and relationship with Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden, are sure to shock — but don’t let all the tabloid fodder fool you. Biden has found love again with new wife Melissa, whom he credits for getting him back on the winding path to sobriety.

“Where’s Hunter?” was a rallying cry from former President Donald Trump to try and smear Joe Biden. “I’m not going anywhere,” Biden writes. “I’m not a curio or sideshow to a moment in history, as all the cartoonish attacks try to paint me.”

Yes, the book touches on Trump and Biden’s Ukraine business, but more compelling are the vulnerable, human details of Biden’s personal life. Here’s what we learned about Biden by reading his devastating memoir.

Hunter talks trauma, addiction: ‘Why I feel the way I do’

Biden has been through more than most would dare to imagine. He and Beau were in the 1972 car accident that killed his baby sister and mother. It’s a moment that defined not only Joe, but his sons too. Biden doesn’t think he ever fully came to terms with the violence of it.

“I don’t see that tragic moment as necessarily resulting in behaviors that lent themselves to addiction,” he writes. “But I do have a better understanding of why I feel the way I do sometimes.”

He took his first drink – a glass of champagne the night his father was reelected to the Senate in 1978 – when he was 8 years old. He drank more when he was 14, even though he knew he shouldn’t be doing it. He went to Mass with a hangover and threw up outside during the service.

His drinking followed him into adulthood (he attended Georgetown University and later Yale Law School). After his third daughter, Maisy, was born in 2000 to then-wife Kathleen, he started to drink more heavily after work at his law firm. He ultimately went to rehab in Antigua and remained sober – for a time.

‘I would not have survived’

In November 2010, Biden relapsed and had three Bloody Marys on a plane; when his father joined Obama’s campaign ticket in 2008, he had to upend his career because of his lobbying work (i.e., it would be a conflict of interest). He “had huge expenses and no savings, and now I had to bust my (expletive) to build another career from scratch.”

After Beau’s death, everything Biden did “for the next four years, resulted in me stumbling, then sliding, then racing downhill.” As his marriage to Kathleen fell apart, he returned to rehab and tried to stay on the straight and narrow. His drinking, however, only worsened. “I was drowning myself in alcohol,” he says.

With the encouragement of his father, he again went to get clean. “Left on my own, I’m certain I would not have survived,” he writes.

By Memorial Day 2016, however, someone offered Biden cocaine. He took it.

This led to his buying crack cocaine in Washington from Rhea – a homeless, middle-aged woman he met while he was at Georgetown. Rhea is a pseudonym, Biden writes.

“I spent a couple of thousand dollars on crack in those first two weeks, with Rhea serving as my conduit,” he writes. She even moved into his apartment and stayed there for approximately five months. When he’s strong enough, he says he hopes to see her again and help “get her in a position where she wants to be saved.”

‘I was smoking crack every 15 minutes’

In the spring of 2018, he used his “superpower – finding crack anytime, anywhere” – in Los Angeles. At one point, a dealer pointed a gun at his head before he realized Biden was looking for drugs.

He later learned how to cook drugs and spent a lot of time with thieves, addicts and con artists. “I never slept. There was no clock. Day bled into night and night into day,” he writes.

The situation grew out of control. “I was smoking crack every 15 minutes,” he writes.

Biden returned to the East Coast in the fall of 2018, again wanting to get better, though that didn’t happen.

Eventually, his family tried to stage an intervention. “I don’t know what else to do,” Joe Biden told him. “I’m so scared. Tell me what to do.” His son replied: “Not (expletive) this.”

It wasn’t until he met now-wife Melissa Cohen in Los Angeles – whom he married after only a week of knowing – that he got sober again. They told each other they loved each other on their first date; she had the same eyes as Beau, he writes. She championed his sobriety and dumped out his crack.

Hunter’s relationship with Hallie doomed from the start: ‘A failure of epic proportions’

Hallie and Biden connected — romantically — in the wake of Beau’s death, between their grief and Biden’s addiction. His then-wife Kathleen discovered texts between them on an old iPad. “That gave her the gift of justification: I was the sicko sleeping with my brother’s wife,” he writes.

But once they tried living together full-time, it didn’t work.

“It was a giant miscalculation on both our parts, errors in judgment born of a uniquely tragic time,” he writes. And later, when they tried to rekindle their romance after he got sober (again) in January 2018, it didn’t work. “It felt like a failure of epic proportions,” he writes.

The title ‘Beautiful Things’ comes from Beau

Beau’s mantra to his brother during his illness was “beautiful things.” He wanted them to “dedicate our lives to appreciating and cultivating the world’s boundless beauty” – referencing relationships, places and moments.

“It was our code for a renewed outlook on life,” he writes. Shortly before Beau died, Biden promised him he would stay strong and sober. Beau had gone with him to his first AA meetings, found him his first sponsor and taken him to rehab plenty of times.

“I had no idea then how many dead-end detours I’d take before I could finally keep those promises,” he writes.

Still, “Beautiful Things” serves as a fitting title, considering the book closes with a letter to Beau.

“I’ve survived, buddy,” the letter reads. “I know you were with me through it all.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse or addiction, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Helpline at 800-662-HELP (4357) any time of day or night.

Read more at usatoday.com

Read More

by Chuck Ross

Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson called on the Biden administration Wednesday to turn over intelligence records regarding Hunter Biden’s work with a Chinese energy company with suspected ties to the Chinese military.

In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, Grassley and Johnson said that it is “imperative” for Congress to understand the relationship between the Biden family and CEFC China Energy, the now-defunct energy conglomerate.

CEFC China Energy paid Biden approximately $6 million from August 2017 to September 2018 for consulting and legal services, according to a report that Grassley and Johnson released last year.

The Republicans said in the report that banking regulators flagged some of the wire payments from CEFC to Biden for “potential criminal financial activity.” Grassley and Johnson also noted that CEFC’s founder, Ye Jianming, was an official in the mid-2000s for a front group of the Chinese Communist Party.

Biden met multiple times with Jianming, including at Jianming’s home in New York.

CEFC also paid $1 million to Biden to represent Patrick Ho, a former Hong Kong official who operated a think tank funded by the Chinese energy firm.

Ho was indicted in November 2017, and later convicted on charges that he offered bribes in 2014 to two leaders of African countries for oil drilling contracts on behalf of CEFC China Energy.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reported that the Justice Department obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Ho based on suspicions that he was acting as a foreign agent of China.

Grassley and Johnson called on the administration to produce “all intelligence records,” including information derived from the FISAs against Ho, by April 14.

Hunter Biden was first introduced to CEFC officials in 2015. In October 2015, a consultant working on behalf of the firm emailed Biden hoping to discuss investing up to $100 million in an asset management firm with links to Biden, according to records obtained by the DCNF.

In May 2017, Biden and a group of partners formed a consulting company that planned to scout out investment projects for CEFC China Energy in the U.S., South America and Europe.

Tony Bobulinski, one of the original partners, has said that Biden cut him out of the deal and formed a side partnership with CEFC in August 2017.

It is unclear what, if anything, Joe Biden knew about his son’s arrangement with CEFC.

In another email obtained by the DCNF, dated Sept. 21, 2017, Biden referred to his father and Gongwen Dong, a CEFC employee in the U.S., as “office mates.”

“The sharing of office space with Chinese nationals and entities linked to the communist regime and its military demands additional explanation,” Grassley and Johnson wrote.

Biden has acknowledged that he is the target of a federal investigation that started in 2018. He said in a statement on Dec. 9, 2020, that the probe centered on his taxes. CNN has reported that federal prosecutors have looked into Biden’s dealings in China and Ukraine.

– – –

Chuck Ross is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.

The post GOP Senators Demand Intelligence Records on Hunter Biden’s Dealings with Chinese Energy Conglomerate appeared first on The Georgia Star News.

NPR issued a correction Thursday to a book review after it incorrectly claimed that U.S. intelligence discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Ron Elving, NPR’s Washington desk senior editor and correspondent, wrote the lengthy review for Biden’s upcoming memoir “Beautiful Things.” The article pointed out various topics covered in the book, such as Biden’s “relationship with Burisma” and efforts by former President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to “portray Hunter as a liability” amid President Joe Biden’s candidacy.

“The last gasp of Giuliani’s campaign against the Bidens featured a laptop supposedly obtained from sources that would document the younger Biden’s drug use and other offenses,” the NPR review originally declared. “The laptop story was discredited by U.S. intelligence and independent investigations by news organizations.”

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter has acknowledged a laptop computer with a slew of previously secret messages could be his but also suggested he was hacked by Russians.

“There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me. It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was the—that it was Russian intelligence,” Hunter Biden told CBS in an interview clip released Friday.

The post Hunter Biden: Ukraine Laptop ‘Could’ Be His but Says He Possibly Hacked by Russians appeared first on NTD.

Hunter Biden was nowhere to be found when his father was running for president as controversy swirled over his business dealings overseas, including in China, but now […]

Continue reading Hunter Biden admits infamous laptop could be his, throwing media narrative for a loop …

National Public Radio has corrected a story about Hunter Biden that stated the U.S. intelligence community had discredited stories about a laptop he left at a repair shop and that perhaps had information about his overseas business dealings.

The correction was made on Thursday in a story about a recently published memoir by Biden, the son of President Biden, titled “Beautiful Things.”

Hunter Biden says an abandoned laptop “certainly” could belong to him. In CBS interviews, he also shares details of his family’s drug intervention.