President Joe Biden’s son Hunter maintains his role on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma wasn’t unethical and didn’t represent a lack of judgment on his part.
AP reports the younger Biden however would reject the chance to do it again, he says in a memoir due for release Tuesday, citing partisan politics for his change of heart.
“I did nothing unethical, and have never been charged with wrongdoing,” Hunter Biden writes in “Beautiful Things,” a memoir. “In our current political environment, I don’t believe it would make any difference if I took that seat or not. I’d be attacked anyway.”
“What I do believe, in this current climate, is that it wouldn’t matter what I did or didn’t do,” he wrote. “The attacks weren’t intended for me. They were meant to wound my dad.”
President Biden has always rejected any criticism of his son and his financial dealings, maintaining there is “no basis” for the accusation Hunter profited from foreign business partners by selling access to his father during his tenure in office.
More recently Biden Snr. has sought to appease his critics by saying members of his family would not be involved with government or foreign policy decisions.
As Breitbart News reported, the forthcoming tome will center on the younger Biden’s well publicized struggles with substance abuse, according to Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
It comes as controversy continues to swirl around his former business dealings.
Acquired in the fall of 2019, “Beautiful Things” was kept under wraps even as Biden’s business dealings became public before, during and after the 2020 election and his finances a matter of investigation by the Justice Department.
Drug use and abuse was also highlighted during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Hunter Biden writes his descent into darkness followed the death of his older brother, Beau, of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.
He ends the book where he currently is in life: sober, living in California with his second wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and their baby son, Beau. Hunter Biden also has three daughters from his previous marriage.
“Beautiful Things” was circulated for appraisal among several authors with advance praise from Stephen King, Dave Eggers and Anne Lamott. King writes:
In his harrowing and compulsively readable memoir, Hunter Biden proves again that anybody — even the son of a United States President — can take a ride on the pink horse down nightmare alley
Biden remembers it all and tells it all with a bravery that is both heartbreaking and quite gorgeous. He starts with a question: Where’s Hunter? The answer is he’s in this book, the good, the bad, and the beautiful.
In a snippet released by Gallery, Biden writes, “I come from a family forged by tragedies and bound by a remarkable, unbreakable love.”
Hunter Biden is the oldest surviving child of the president, who lost his first wife and one-year-old daughter, Naomi, in a 1972 car accident, and son Beau Biden to brain cancer in 2015.
The title of Hunter’s book refers to an expression he and his brother would use with each other after Beau’s diagnosis, meant to emphasize what was important in life.
Financial terms for “Beautiful Things,” which was written in collaboration with the author and journalist Drew Jubera, have not been disclosed.
AP contributed to this report