Oh god, I hate asking this but

February 8, 2023 11:50 AM

Do I need to know about Hunter Biden? If yes, what do I need to know, as a US citizen who wants to stay generally informed, but also has no stomach for Fox News bullshittery. (I have already checked but there is no Vox explainer for this one.) Honestly, I'll be stoked if you tell me I don't actually need to know about this, but if I do, where can I find the basic gist, please.
posted by BlahLaLa to Law & Government (33 answers total)

Best answer: You really don't need to know.

The short version is this:

He's kind of a screw-up failson. He definitely has some struggles with addictive drugs. He appears to do a fair amount of trading on Daddy's name to get access - not actually leveraging his Dad's connections for introductions, but hinting that he's got access, don't you want to talk to the President's son, wink wink.

Also, he's the son of a loving father who's had a tremendous amount of loss in his life and loves his kids, and who keeps in touch with and expresses that love despite his son's failings. Joe Biden probably is really disappointed in his son; he also loves Hunter deeply.

The GOP cannot or refuses to believe that this combination is possible, and so insists that Dad is obviously pulling strings and directing work or money to his son; there is no recognition of even the possibility that Hunter is trading on Dad's name without Dad actually being involved.
posted by Tomorrowful at 12:01 PM on February 8, 2023 [51 favorites]

You don’t need to know. There’s embarrassing stuff about Hunter, some true, some bullshit, but enough of it’s true to be very embarrassing for him. There’s nothing credible indicating any misconduct by Joe. Unless you’re interested in possible misbehavior by some guy who’s not in public office, you don’t need to care.
posted by LizardBreath at 12:02 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

Gretchen[1]. Stop trying to make Hunter Biden happen. It’s not going to happen.

[1] Republicans
posted by staggernation at 12:03 PM on February 8, 2023 [7 favorites]

There's a wikipedia article for Hunter's "laptop controversy" that's a pretty good non alarmist breakdown of what has happened.

The big thing is that a certain subset of the population absolutely fucking hates this and, basically, what Tomorrowful said.
posted by phunniemee at 12:05 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

It really depends on what your needs are, but no, according to me, you don't need to know. I got off twitter and off my news feed doom scroll and it turns out that most of what I thought I needed to know over the last years (since Trump was elected, really) … I didn't need to know. There's valuable stuff if you want to generally "know what's going on in the world" but most of that stuff is not actionable in my life and likely not in yours.

If you're looking for permission to get off the doomscroll/newsfeed train then I, an internet stranger, grant you that permission. It doesn't make you a bad person, or a bad [your political alignment], or incurious to not know All The Things That Are Happening.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:07 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: There's also the meme that everything a republican says is a mirror. The Hunter drama is so big and loud largely because Trump's kids have absolutely and without question profited financially from their dad's presidency. So surely Hunter. Right? Point at someone else so that people don't have time to look at you.
posted by phunniemee at 12:08 PM on February 8, 2023 [48 favorites]

Best answer: I don’t think you do. My impression is that he may have messed up his taxes but the Burisma/laptop saga seems to be a nothingburger.

On a personal level - and maybe I’m a sucker but - I feel empathy for him. He’s definitely made mistakes. He also suffered traumatic brain injuries before he turned 3 from the car accident that killed his mother and sister.

I read his book. He wrote that he felt like he never really got to mourn for his mother and sister, that the family focused on making sure that he and Beau were ok but in a let’s-move-forward way. He wrote about his dad feeling helpless in the face of his addiction but never giving up on him. It’s also clear that he adored Beau and was devastated to lose him.

I never got the impression that he blamed anyone for his mistakes. I recognize it’s a book and he likely had editors who may have softened the edges of his story. But all in all, I hope he’s doing ok and think he might be a decent person. And I haven’t seen any evidence to believe the stuff the Republicans have said about him.

(I know you didn’t ask if he’s a shitty guy and apologize but if you were wondering, that’s my take.)
posted by kat518 at 12:19 PM on February 8, 2023 [11 favorites]

Best answer: I, as a liberal Democrat, would be highly concerned about Hunter Biden working in a public office, and would probably oppose his election.

Hunter Biden is not working in a public office, and is not running for election.

For what it's worth, I would say exactly the same thing about my myself and others I know. It is not a very meaningful conclusion and demonstrates nothing about the people actually in power.
posted by saeculorum at 12:19 PM on February 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

No, why? If you don't like conspiracy theories, then it's not going to be any fun, especially if you like Biden and don't want to hear anything possibly bad about him. (I'm definitely more willing to believe that Biden did something, er, helpful for Hunter re: Burisma than I think most are here, but it's not like I'm going to switch my vote, you think the other guy isn't pulling the same thing?)
posted by kingdead at 12:26 PM on February 8, 2023

You don't need to know, but if you really want an explainer here's one from a rabidly progressive source disinclined to provide cover to the Biden admin that concludes that it's basically bullshit within the context of current laws and standard behavior from elected officials, but it sure would be nice if we as a society (and our respective legislative bodies) agreed to take a hard line on nepotism to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

If you don't want to watch the whole hour (and why would you, I don't recommend it) here's a direct timestamped link to ~3 minutes on the one instance where Hunter probably did break the law with some bonus United States Secret Service shadiness.
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 12:27 PM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

You probably don't need to know. That's not to say that there's nothing there; there might be. I don't think it would be surprising if he ended up facing some charges about the laptop thing. (Maybe not likely, but also not surprising. It could go either way, with "nothing" having better odds.) But even if he does, it seems unlikely to have the sort of impact the people saying you need to know think it'll have, not least because there are other, potentially more fruitful avenues of attack against the Biden presidency (remember "it's the economy, stupid"?).

The closest analog would be Benghazi. Remember that? Did you care? I mean, maybe a little, but not much. They held all these hearings, and nobody outside of National Review subscribers paid attention.
posted by kevinbelt at 12:30 PM on February 8, 2023

Best answer: I am someone whose job it is to know something about Hunter Biden and all of these conspiracy theories and you have my permission to not pay any attention to it at all.
posted by fancypants at 12:30 PM on February 8, 2023 [14 favorites]

Rationalwiki is a good source for overviews without bullshittery:
Hunter Biden
posted by cmcmcm at 12:31 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: One useful way to think about Hunter is this: it's really a pretty rare situation for someone's family to be hugely hugely well-known, hugely hugely powerful, but not, at all, wealthy. Hunter hasn't done a good job navigating that set of circumstances, but it's also probably a genuinely confounding and difficult place to be.
posted by kickingtheground at 12:56 PM on February 8, 2023 [7 favorites]

Disagree you probably should know, but just about as much as has been outlined here. I do find it tremendously funny that the infamous, seemingly absurdly made up, fake laptop story, turns out to be somewhat accurate.

Re: reference previous presidential embarrassing family: Billy
posted by sammyo at 1:07 PM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Somewhat accurate is a stretch. As far as I know there’s no reliable physical chain of custody for any part of the laptop. What there is is images of the hard drive that have definitely been altered after the date when Hunter could have last had it. So, some of what’s in those images is real, because it can be authenticated against other sources. But for anything where the laptop is the only source, it’s not reliable.
posted by LizardBreath at 1:19 PM on February 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I think the main thing to know about the whole saga is that if Republicans cared about the family members of officeholders trading improperly on their connections, then we would be seeing tens or hundreds of investigations on family members of officeholders from both parties; and more than that, we'd be seeing attempts at passing legal restrictions on what family members of officeholders - as a general class - can do. In other words, we would see behavior aimed at enforcing rules and closing loopholes for everybody, not for some specific political enemy. We'd see serious attempts to define a code of ethics that is clearly just to the public at large.

We're not seeing Republicans doing any of that. That's the scandal.
posted by trig at 1:33 PM on February 8, 2023 [8 favorites]

I mean, you might miss out on the context for some pretty good snark where folks point out that the notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ male members of the right wing appear to be panting to put pictures of Hunter's male member all over social media and into the Congressional Record.
posted by soundguy99 at 2:08 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I would go so far as to say that you don't need to know much about Joe Biden to be reasonably well-informed about US current events. Most of what's happening in this country right now has little to do with who's president (not an indictment of Biden, just a "there are systemic forces at work bigger than any one old white dude" thing).
posted by toastedcheese at 2:55 PM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

The nerdy smartasses at Electoral-Vote.com did a nice rundown a couple months back, which is the last I’ve bothered to read on this topic.

If, like me, you enjoy analysis, painfully dated web design, AND dry potshots at the expense of Republicans, you might enjoy it.
posted by armeowda at 2:59 PM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Hunter Biden is an extremely typical mediocre son of a public person, with all the crippling self-esteem problems* that come with it. Like a lot of people in his position, he's wasted his energy, had substance-abuse problems, and traded on his family connections to get pointless sinecures which keep him comfortably wealthy but ultimately unfulfilled. If it weren't for the fact that a lot of people have it worse, I'd feel sorry for him.

Does he do dumb, sketchy, and occasionally possibly illegal things? Yeah. Do those things actually constitute harm to others? Mostly not. Is his being the son of the President a remotely dangerous situation? No, because he has no access to anything actually important.

*It doesn't help that he knows he's not his father's favorite son. I'm sure Joe Biden has never, ever said that in so many words, but every time he talks about Beau it's got to be a knife in Hunter's belly. The worst part is that Beau, being dead, can now never ever do anything to destroy his perfect image.
posted by jackbishop at 3:20 PM on February 8, 2023 [8 favorites]

Asha Rangappa has an excellent rundown of the unbearable nothingburgerness of the HB laptop: Framing Hunter Biden. Just another fake scandal like Benghazi to foment outrage and distract from the infinitely worse things perpetrated by Trump et al.
posted by sapere aude at 3:32 PM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty moderate and read/watch a lot from both sides of the aisle. I'm also frequently a minority voice on askme because I don't lean Left, for what that's worth.

I've seen credible reporting that it was Hunter's laptop - that the emails, photos, videos, etc., are actually of Hunter, and that some of it reflects on Joe (for example: saving 10% of questionable income for "the big guy"). Plus Hunter's lawyers are currently suing over the release of the laptop material and it makes no sense to do so if it isn't actually his stuff.

If the laptop is real, the contents mostly involve drug use, frequenting prostitutes, making money for jobs that he isn't qualified for (getting paid $50,000 a month from Burisma Holdings in Ukraine is a good example), etc. Plus there's salacious stuff about him dating his brother's widow and the like. We all have embarrassing family members, I think, and I do believe Hunter went through a lot in his life that left him where he's at. Being the son of a senator/vice president/president probably exacerbated his problems.

I'm not saying you need to know the details, but I am saying I disagree with other voices here and I believe the news stories about the laptop and its contents are credible.
posted by tacodave at 3:59 PM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm sure Joe Biden has never, ever said that in so many words, but every time he talks about Beau it's got to be a knife in Hunter's belly.

I don’t know about that. Hunter adored Beau and they were super close. Having read Hunter’s book, I didn’t pick up any sibling rivalry, and I think I’m sensitive to that.
posted by kat518 at 4:04 PM on February 8, 2023

Best answer: Hunter Biden is not part of the government, because Joe Biden didn't appoint every single member of his family to a government position, like a mobster surrounding himself with people of unquestioned loyalty, the better to hide his crimes. Like Antifa, socialism, and secret microchips in vaccines, Hunter Biden is an attempt to change the subject.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 4:26 PM on February 8, 2023 [17 favorites]

No.
posted by Dashy at 5:55 PM on February 8, 2023

The slightly sketchy thing is that when Biden was VP he was in Ukraine doing a deal re gas, corruption, etc and not long after that Hunter was appointed to that board. There's no proof, it's just the timing is a bit funny, and the reason why the Republicans are sore is it's the phone call to Zelensky where Trump asked for a favour (investigate the Bidens), and that lead to the impeachment. (Source: Podcast "Russia if you're Listening" Season 3 episode 8: RUSSIA | S03 08 - How Russia's rotten gas got Trump into trouble; ABC Radio, Matt Bevan)
posted by freethefeet at 6:00 PM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

If it weren't for the fact that a lot of people have it worse,

I don't actually personally know anyone who has had it worse. he had a specific massive childhood trauma that most people haven't had, and another specific adulthood trauma that many people never have. I've also heard that some rare people have private experiences that never even make it onto their wikipedia pages, but who knows whether that's really true.
I dare say he's a douchebag, but that's none of my business.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:27 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

There is no reason to care about or pay attention to Hunter Biden. This thread is already more interesting than anything else one can say about him.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:41 PM on February 8, 2023

The GOP folks think they have the way to Impeach and convict Joe Biden. Except well then why haven't they? Because what does the dog do once it catches the car?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:56 PM on February 8, 2023

Nthing the others, and adding that if you want to get a quick "why you don't need to care" about the "Twitter Files" where he has been most recently dragged, I wrote a pretty long version of that too because I figured people might ask.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 8:31 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

There's also the meme that everything a republican says is a mirror. The Hunter drama is so big and loud largely because Trump's kids have absolutely and without question profited financially from their dad's presidency.

This, 1000% this, is a big part of this. It's not just a republican playbook option, it's damn near a defensive reflex now. They can't help themselves. If you have a flaw, always go on offense, accuse your enemy of having your specific failings, redirect.

I'm convinced that all the recent talk of pedophiles is driven by the fact that the longest serving republican Speaker of the House (8 Years) was a literal pedophile (who pled guilty to a host of other crimes).
posted by ishmael at 8:43 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/10/hunter-biden-laptop-why-i-do-not-care/

By now it’s clear that Hunter traded on his father’s power to win lucrative deals with Ukrainian and Chinese businessmen, for which he provided pretty much no service of value.

But there’s really no evidence to suggest that President Biden had any hand in the schemes of his son, and it doesn’t ring true. Biden has spent an astounding half-century in public office, with only a four-year hiatus before becoming president, and for all the flaws that have made themselves manifest in that time (verbosity, handsiness, the occasional falsehood), greed and venality are nowhere among them.
To the extent that the president has any culpability in enabling his son’s shenanigans, it probably stems more from guilt and wishfulness than from any criminal impulse.

It must gall Biden to know that his predecessor, who never served a day in public service before becoming president, not only shrugged while his already-rich children enriched themselves further, but actually installed his dilettante daughter and-son-in-law at the highest level of policymaking. (Jared Kushner is still profiting mightily from his favors to the Saudis, which none of the Republicans savaging Hunter Biden seem to mind very much.)

Biden didn’t let his son anywhere near the center of power and decision-making. Instead, it seems he looked the other way while Hunter spun himself into an ever stickier web, using his father’s good name.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:39 AM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]