Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 227 | Who's Hunter Biden?

Episode Date: October 19, 2019

A little political, but Jeffy goes down the report of who’s Hunter Biden and his past. Does this hurt his father who’s running for President. You decide  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Chewing the Fat. Today's a little special for me because I wanted to talk about Hunter Biden. He's everywhere right now. He sat down with ABC earlier in the week. He stepped down from the Chinese board that they say he stepped down because of the Trump attacks. And we all know Ledbeck here at the Blaine. has been all about his business dealings and how bad they are. And unfortunate for his father and his family.

But what kind of guy is he to have done? I mean, he's everywhere, and yet nobody seems to know much about him. Well, there was this article in The New Yorker from Adam Etnis that talks about with the headline, Will Hunter Biden jeopardize his father? campaign. And it talks, it goes in depth inside the story. It's a very long story.

It goes in depth about, uh, about the business dealings. But it also talks about the life and times of Hunter and his dad and his brother Bo and his family, his mother, sisters. And what kind of makes him, him?

It, It's fascinating to me, fascinating to me. You know, life and times of Joe Biden and family, and he's interviewed in this story. So he has his outlook. It's kind of almost a puff piece to Hunter, but it's not really. It's a sad piece.

And for those of you that watch the HBO show, show Succession. It does resemble the father-son story in succession with Kendall Roy and Logan Roy. Logan is the dad and

Kendall is the son. Kendall is seemingly like Hunter. It starts with Beau his father writes was Joe Biden 2.0, a war veteran, a prosecutor and a promising politician who had all the best of me, but with the bugs and

flaws engineered out. In the early months for the 2020 race, Joe Biden holds the lead over the Democratic rivals, which is dwindled dramatically now. He's 76 and sometimes shows it. He often stumbles when defending his five-decade public history. Hunter Biden, who is four. 49 is described as a supportive son and sibling. In speeches, Biden rarely talks about Hunter.

And of course, news outlets, mainstream media organizations, including the Times, not mentioned in the story, the Blaze, Glenn Beck, have honed in on him, reprising old controversies over Hunter's work for a bank, for a lobbying firm, for a hedge fund, and scrutinizing his business dealings in China and Ukraine. He has struggled for decades with alcohol addiction and drug abuse. He went through an acrimonious divorce from his first wife, Kathleen Buell, and he had a subsequent relationship with Beau's widow, Haley. He was recently sued for child support by an Arkansas woman, which he denies.

on May 17th, the day before Hunter planned to appear at one of his father's rallies in Philadelphia, Breitbart News published a story based on a Prescott, Arizona police report from 2016 that named Hunter as the suspect in a possible narcotics offense. On stage at the rally, Jill Biden introduces her husband, the Biden family is ready, she said.

The last seat in the row with a piece of paper on it that said reserved remained empty. He claims it was heartbreaking for him not to be there, for him not to be with his dad next to the Rocky statue in Philadelphia. Dad says be here, mom says be here, but at what cost? He claims everybody faces pain, everybody has trauma, there's addiction in every family. I was in that darkness. I was in that tunnel. It's a never-ending tunnel.

You don't get rid of it. you figure out how to deal with it. In November, this is the starting of such a sad life, really, but a good life all the same. In November, 1972, Joe Biden was elected into the Senate. Think of that. 1972, he was elected into the Senate. That December, while Biden was in Washington interviewing staff for his new office, his wife took the children to Wilmington to go Christmas tree shopping.

at an intersection, the family car collided with the truck. Nelia and Naomi, wife and mother of Joe, were killed almost instantly. Bo sustained numerous broken bones, and Hunter suffered a severe head injury. He's frequently said that his first memory is waking up in the hospital bed next to Bo, who turned to him and said, I love you, I love you, I love you. On January 5, 1973, Biden was sworn in. in as a senator in his son's hospital rooms. Everyone had a hand in raising us.

In 1977, Joe Biden married Jill Jacobs, the high school teacher. Hunter calls Jill Mom and refers to Nelia, his real mom, as Mommy. Then Biden sold off some of the land at his property to pay for Bo to go to the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. and he was running, he was going to help his father run for president in 87. When he was accused of copying large portions of a law review article as a student and of mimicking a speech given by British Labour Party leader and had to step down,

Hunter is reminded of a time they went to a football game and a group of heckler started to chant about the plagiarism scandal and he just jumped to his feet and started punching and punching these people out at the football stadium and Joe and Bo are pulling him back. The next year, 1988, Hunter enrolls in Georgetown University. In 92, after graduating with a bachelor's in history, he began a year of Jesuit volunteer at a church in Portland, Oregon.

During that time, he met Kathleen Buell, first wife. Three months after they started dating, she got pregnant. They were married in 19. With the baby on the way, he decided to go straight to law school, rejected from Yale, which was his first choice. He enrolled at Georgetown Law. In December, his first daughter was born, Naomi. After a year at Georgetown, he transferred to Yale Law, where he completed his degree in 1996. Kathleen and Naomi lived in Wilmington with Hunter.

Joe Biden was running for re-election in the Senate, and he appointed Hunter as his deputy campaign manager. In late 2000, 2001, he was working in D.C. and where he worked was across the street from the Bombay Club. It was an Indian restaurant that was popular with policymakers, lobbyists, diplomats, and journalists. The lounge there became an after-hours gathering place for Hunter

and a dozen of their colleagues. The bartender at the time, Norman, said that he would have a cigarette waiting for Hunter at his seat. In 2001, Hunter and Kathleen and their children moved back to Wilmington to be closer to the rest of the Biden family. Hunter commuted to Washington on Amtrak as his father did. Sometimes he missed the last train and stayed in a rental room at the Army and Navy Club. when I found myself making a decision to have another drink or get on a train, I knew I had a problem. In 2003, Kathleen and the girls returned to Washington,

and Hunter recalled that Kathleen told him to get sober, starting by not drinking for 30 days. And he said, I wouldn't drink for 30 days, but on day 31, I'd be right back at it. That September, in 2003, on a business trip, he looked up rehab centers and sued admitted himself to a crossroads center Antigua for a month. The day after his return,

Bo accompanied him to his first AA meeting in DuPont Circle. So he's already starting to have big issues. In the lead up to the January 2008, Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucus, Hunter drove from Washington to Du Bois to campaign with his father. I'm like a

security blanket. Biden did poorly in Iowa, soon dropped out of the race. But on August 23rd, 2008, Obama, the Democratic nominee, publicly introduced Biden as his running mate. Hunter always saw himself as a provider for the Biden family. He even helped to pay off Bose law school debts, often wished that like his father and his brother, he could contribute more to society. He then got to know an Australian-American former military intelligence

officer named Greg Keeley. Keeley helped convince Hunter that it wasn't too late for him to join the Navy. Join the Navy reserves. If you feel the call to serve, it doesn't matter what your rank is or what's on your shoulder board. It's you're serving your country. With a letter of recommendation from Keely, Hunter applied for an age waiver, which the Navy granted. The service has a zero tolerance for drug and alcohol abuse policy and states that all recruits will be asked questions about prior drug and alcohol use. He disclosed that he had used drugs in the past, but said he was now sober, And, of course, the Navy granted him a second waiver. He had a relapse.

According to him, after seven years of sobriety, in November of 2010, he drank three Bloody Marys on a flight home from a business trip to Madrid. He continued to drink in secret for several months, and then confided in Bo and returned to the Crossroads Center. And then he had another relapse in 2013, after he suffered a bout of shingles, for which he was prescribed painkillers. when the prescription ran out, he resumed drinking.

On May 7th of 2013, he was assigned to a reserve unit at the Naval Station in Norfolk. He had hoped to work in Naval Intelligence, but was given a job in a public affairs unit. In a small private ceremony at the White House, Hunter was sworn in by his father. Later that month, the night before Hunter's first weekend of reserve duty, he stopped at a bar a few blocks from the White House. And I want to remind you how many times it just happened to you? Outside, Hunter said he bummed a cigarette from two men who told him they were from South Africa. He felt amped up as he was driving down to Norfolk and then incredibly exhausted. He called Bo. I don't know what's going on.

Bo drove from Delaware to meet Hunter at a hotel near the Naval Station. He got me ship's shape and drove me into the base. On the first day, Hunter had a urine sample taken. A few months later, Hunter received a little bit of a little bit of. letter saying that his urinalysis had detected cocaine in his system. He was going to use the excuse that something must have been in that cigarette he bummed from the South African guys at the hotel, but he decided not to appeal. Neighbor records show that he was discharged and took effect on February 18th in 2014.

Later in 2014, he went to a clinic in Tijuana that provided treatment using ibogaine, a psychoactive alkaloid derived from the roots. of a West African shrub, which is illegal in America. He then drove to Flagstaff, Arizona, where he met with this Tom Knowles, a practitioner of Vedic meditation, who said that he advised Hunter to meditate twice a day to help keep his cravings for alcohol at bay. Now, he was nearly clean, but to be honest, there's such a thing as dry drunk. Hunter told him how much he relied on Bo for support and confessed that his relationship with his other great deep partner in life, his wife, had been brutalized by him through loss of control.

In the summer of 2013, Hunter and Bo and their families took a vacation together on Lake Michigan, and during that trip, Bo became disoriented and was rushed to the hospital. Health scare in May 2010, when six months after he returned from Iraq, he suffered a stroke. he had appeared to recover quickly and continued to work as the Attorney General of Delaware, but he struggled to remember certain words and sometimes talked about hearing music playing when there was none. After his brother's death, Hunter moved by the outpouring of support for him and his family at the funeral, told his wife on the way home that he was thinking about running for public office. If you want to know how a wife stabs you in the heart with conversation, this is it. You know, honey, I'm thinking about running for public office.

You just were discharged from the Navy after testing positive for cocaine. They rode the rest of the way home in silence. In couples therapy, Hunter and Kathleen had reached an agreement. If Hunter started drinking again, he would have to move out of the house. A day after their 22nd anniversary, Hunter left a therapy session. drank a bottle of vodka, moved out. Later that month, he goes to Norway on a fishing trip. Every night, he and his colleagues on the trip

drank a single shot of liquor before going to bed. Kathleen found out she was very angry. That's when Hunter started to convide in Haley, Bo's wife. Now, you know, Bo has passed away now, so she's single, in quotation mark. In July 2015, I tried to show Kathleen I want back in. And she said, okay, but he began a program that required him to carry a breathalyzer with a built-in camera. Then that summer, Ashley Madison, the dating service for married people, life is short, having an affair have a fair people,

disclosed that hackers had breached its user data. Remember when the hackers broke into Ashley Madison? I mean, there were a lot of people freaking out. And Breitbart reported that it found a Robert Biden profile among the leaked files. Hunter denied that the account belonged to him. But the wife, Kathleen, was deeply embarrassed by the story. Two months later, they separated. On October in 2015, Joe Biden appeared in the White House Rose Garden,

flanked by Jill and Obama, and announced that he would not run for president in 2016, talking about the time that it had taken the family to recover from both. death. That was, I think, Joe Biden's downfall. It was, you know, I understand the reasoning, but I think he's still upset about that. Until mid-December, Hunter practiced his yoga daily, but then gave it. For weeks, he said he left the apartment only to buy bottles of Smyranoff vodka, Logan Circle, liquor. Several times a day, his father called him. He said, I'm fine, I'm fine. They'll finally Joe shows up at the apartment.

unannounced, said his father told him, I need you. What do we have to do? So in February 2016, Hunter goes back to the institute and spent a week skiing by himself in Lake Tahoe. When he returned to Washington, he enrolled in yet another addiction treatment program. On his way to the treatment program, he passed several homeless people. This is kind of a weird part of his life. He passes a middle-aged woman who went by the name of bicycles because of the bike she took everywhere. So whenever Bunter saw Hunter saw bicycles near his apartment,

he'll give her a $20 bill to buy him a pack of marlborough a reds and tell her to keep the change. Then he offers bicycle his spare bedroom and she stayed with him for several months. So now he's got a homeless lady living with him for several months at his apartment. He was later busy consulting, five or six major clients.

So in June of 2016, he's in Monte Carlo for a meeting. He goes to a hotel nightclub. used cocaine that a stranger offered him in a bathroom. I would like to go to that bathroom. Just kidding. He told his counselors about his relapse, but refused to take a drug test

because he didn't want the results to be used against him and published in the press. When the staff insisted that he took the test, he left the program. In August, Hunter and Hallie, Haley, Bo's wife, went to the Hamptons, with the children.

They texted constantly after getting back and Hunter started to spend most of his nights in Delaware at Haley's house, you know, watching television until very late. We were sharing specific grief. I started to think of Haley as the only person in my life who understood my loss. That fall, Hunter makes plans to go to

the Grace Grove Lifestyle Center in Arizona. During the layover in Los Angeles, at the airport, before his connecting flight to Phoenix, he goes to a nearby hotel bar, realizes he left his wallet on the plane, and it had belonged to Bo and still contained his attorney general identification badge and also Hunter's driver's license, without which he couldn't board his flight. But he did happen to have a credit card in his pocket.

Lucky him. So he checked into the hotel in Marina Del Rey, where he waited for the airline to return the wallet. And then he decided, you know what? Instead of going to Grace Grove, I'm going to stay in Los Angeles for a week or so. He needed a way to forget. Soon after his arrival in L.A., he asked a homeless man if he could buy crack. He said the man took him to a homeless encampment where in a narrow passageway between tents,

someone puts a gun to his head before he realized he was a buyer. And then once he realized he was a buyer, everything was fine. So he just kept going back to the homeless encampment to buy crack that way. week. One night outside a club in Hollywood Boulevard, Hunter and another man got into an argument and a group of bouncers intervened. A friend of one of the bouncers, a Samoan man who went by the nickname Baby Down, felt sorry for Hunter.

Took him to Mel's drive-in to get some food, got him to his hotel to pick up his belongings, and then dropped him off at the Hertz rental office at L.A. International. Hunter said that at that point, he had not slept for several days. So driving east on I-10, just beyond Palm Springs, he loses control of his car, which jumps the median and skidded to a stop on the shoulder of the westbound side. He calls Hertz. They came and collected the damaged car, gave him a second rental. Later, a sharp bend on a mountainous row.

Hunter recalled a large owl flew over the hood of the car and then seemed to follow him, dropping in front of the headlights. He said he had no idea whether the owl was real or a hallucination. He dropped off the car in Prescott, Arizona, and Grace Grove sent a van to pick him up. The man who worked at the Hertz office in Prescott tells the author of this article that they found a crack pipe in the car. And on one of the consoles, a line of white powder residue. Bow's Attorney General badge was on the dashboard, and Hertz calls the Prescott Police Department. Officers there filed a narcotics offense report, listing the items seized from the car,

including a plastic baggie containing a white powdery substance, a Secret Service business card, credit cards, and Hunter's driver's license. Secret service agents informed Prescott police that Hunter was secure and well. Subsequent test results indicated that the glass pipe contained cocaine residue, but they didn't have any fingerprints on it. So the public prosecutors in the county said, eh, they don't need to bring a case against Hunter. There's no evidence that the pipe had been used by him.

The city attorney says, I don't think political favors would have even worked necessarily had they been requested because of the area that they were in. Okay. After a week at Grace Grove, Hunter checks into a resort spa, calls Haley, who flew to meet him. During her stay, Hunter said they decided to become a couple. When they returned to Delaware, they tried to keep their relationships secret. That was unsuccessful. On December 9, 2016, Kathleen filed for divorce. And on February 23rd of 2017, she filed a motion in D.C. Superior Court, seeking to freeze

Hunter's assets alleging he had created financial concerns for the family by spending extravagantly on his own interests, including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has had sexual relations. While leaving the family with no funds to pay legitimate, legitimate bills. The motion was leaked to the New York Post, along with the revelation that Hunter and Haley were dating. Kathleen told friends she felt ostracized by the Biden family, and Hunter denied hiring prostitutes, said he hadn't even been to a strip club in years.

But after the story was published, I went directly to a strip club. I said, F them. I haven't been to a strip club in years, but they said I was going to go there, so darn it I'm going there. F them. Hunter issues a statement saying that he and Haley were incredibly lucky to have found the love and support we have for each other

in such a difficult time. And he appealed to his father to make a statement too. And Joe gave in. We're all lucky that Hunter and Haley found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness. They have mine and Jill's full and complete support

and we're happy for them. But the post ran the statement under the headline, Bo Biden, widow having a fair with his married brother. In August, Hunter rents a house in Maryland, where he and Haley and her two children hoped to have some privacy. But several months later, they split up. All we got was crap from everybody all the time.

It was really hard. And I realized that I'm not helping anybody by sticking around. Haley did even comment. In early 2018, he moves to Los Angeles. He wanted to completely disappear. Hunter said that in divorce proceedings he offered to give Kathleen everything, including monthly payment of $37,000 for alimony, tuition, and child care costs for a decade.

He told me that he was living on about $4,000 a month. That's tough. That's tough to live on $4,000 a month. I don't know how he did it. He said on occasion transactions on his credit cards were declined. See, I don't even know how he got by it, only $4,000 a month. In early May, he meets 32-year-old South African woman named Melissa Cohen, a filmmaker who was working on a series of documentaries about indigenous tribes in southern Africa.

And a few days later, Hunter had the word Shalom tattooed in Hebrew letters on the inside of his left bicep to match her tattoo. Less than a week after they met, he proposes. The next morning, she accepts. he bought the simplest gold wedding bands because I mean that's all he could afford he's living on only $4,000 a month and called a marriage service they send over an official

they're now married in a recent evening he had seen reports on Twitter that Trump was calling for him to be investigated by the Justice Department Trump wasn't the only one asking for him to be investigated by the way then he noticed a helicopter overhead

I said I hope they're taking pictures of us right now. I hope it's a live feed to the president so he can see just how much I care about the tweets. I told Melissa I don't care. F you, Mr. President. Here I am living my life. It's an article by Adam Enanis for the New Yorker. There's so much more to this article. It is fascinating. But you can see what kind of tough life he's had. So when you listen to Hunter and his I'm okay Trump is hateful

Orange Man bad Joe Biden great My dad is wonderful On his speech Making the rounds of interviews From Los Angeles While at the same time Stepping down

From his board of trustees That he has no knowledge Of how to run those businesses I guess he I guess he kind of does His last name is Biden You realize What a

remarkable life and what a sad life at the same time this man has had and yet i mean everything that happened that appeared to be wrong was just a coincidence just a coincidence okay someone believes you hunter