Hunter Biden privately compared himself to the grieving families of Sandy Hook massacre victims, a new book has claimed.
Author Ken Vogel made the claim in Devils’ Advocates: The Hidden Story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden, and the Washington Insiders on the Payrolls of Corrupt Foreign Interests, which the Daily Mail obtained an early copy of.
Vogel wrote: ‘The comparison was meant to highlight the right-wing conspiracies that swirled around him and the families, who have been harassed for years by conspiracists claiming that the shooting was staged to create a pretext for gun restrictions.’
The explosive revelation that shows just how besieged Joe Biden’s son felt as his legal troubles mounted and threatened to tank his father’s presidency.
Vogel quoted a source who had overheard the grievance, which was expressed in the aftermath of Hunter’s defiant press conference on the Capitol steps in December 2023.
But, as the book lays bare, Hunter’s legal troubles – stemming from unpaid taxes from his foreign influence clients from Ukraine, Romania and China, and a gun charge, when he was at the height of his crack cocaine addiction – were of his own making.
‘Hunter endured some tough times, to be sure, but the comparison seemed to demonstrate an extreme lack of self-awareness and empathy,’ Vogel added.
Those personality flaws were fully on display throughout the book.
Hunter Biden, the son of then-president Joe Biden, gave a defiant press conference in front of the Capitol on December 13, 2023, amid his legal troubles
Hunter Biden (left) holds hands with his wife Melissa Cohen Biden (right) as they enter federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, last year as he was on trial on criminal gun charges
When then-senator Joe Biden was being considered by the Obama campaign in 2008 to be the Democratic vice presidential pick, he was instructed by closer advisers that Hunter, the younger of his two sons, could no longer work as a lobbyist.
Biden agreed to the deal.
‘Hunter told people he resented being told to drop his clients. And Joe Biden didn’t much care for what he interpreted as the holier-than-thou posture of the Obama folks,’ Vogel explained. ‘In the Biden family, there was nothing inherently wrong with trying to make a buck in the government-industrial complex.’
The book even notes how Biden had once joked to a Vanity Fair reporter in November 2017, ‘I should have raised one Republican kid’ – interpreted to mean that he hoped one of his three children would make some real money.
Despite being the politician for the everyman, Biden appreciated the finer things in life, buying a former DuPont family mansion in Wilmington in 1974, just two years after being elected to the US Senate to represent Delaware at age 29.
After 2012, with Barack Obama and vice-president Biden firmly in place for four more years, Hunter became more open to taking on foreign clients, where he could amass millions.
Hunter’s relationship with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma is well-documented.
In his 40s, without any experience in the energy sector and freshly discharged from the Navy Reserve over cocaine use, Hunter was courted on the banks of Italy’s Lake Como in 2014 by Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky to serve on Burisma’s board.
When then-senator Joe Biden (right) joined Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s (left) 2008 presidential ticket, he had to agree to have his younger son Hunter drop his lobbying clients, which Hunter ‘resented’
Hunter (left) with Biden and his late brother Beau Biden (right) at President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration
The oligarch had served under the ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and made money by doling out oil and gas permits to companies that he secretly controlled.
Zlochevsky would offer Hunter $1 million a year and perks that included ‘a hefty gold commemorative Burisma coin, a fishing expedition to the Arctic Circle, and birthday gifts from Zlochevsky, including an expensive watch.’
‘The gig would not be particularly taxing,’ Vogel wrote. ‘The biggest commitment was attending board meetings or industry confabs twice a year in exotic locales like Dubai and Monaco.’
In May 2014, Hunter was officially announced as a Burisma board member – defiantly pushing back that he was profiting off his last name.
In an email to one of the multiple public relations consultants hired to spin his new position, Hunter expressed that it was ‘very frustrating’ that they were forced to respond to this ‘simply b/c some reporter wants to somehow draw a link btw my father and the president and my role at Burisma.’
The company, he continued, ‘may not have a perfect record – but what corporation does?’
‘What if I had joined the board of Haliburton, or Walmart or Apple for that matter. They all have serious corporate image issues. What if I went to work for Goldman Sachs (like half this administration did). Would I be held to a different standard than any other private citizen?’ Hunter asked.
For Vogel, ‘the lack of self-awareness was striking.’
Hunter and Beau (right) at an event held for Obama’s 2013 inauguration. After his father was reelected as vice-president, Hunter felt more open to working with foreign clients
Hunter was recruited by Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky to serve on Burisma’s board in 2014. Zlochevsky had worked under the ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and made money by doling out oil and gas permits to companies that he secretly controlled
‘Not only was he the vice-president’s son but media outlets routinely scrutinized political relatives and aides who went to work for companies that intersected with the government,’ Vogel noted. ‘In hindsight, Hunter’s foreign work should have been more intensely scrutinized – not less – during the Obama administration.’
A Burisma Group Facebook post from November 2014 shows the Ukrainian energy company touting Hunter’s involvement
When President Donald Trump came into power in 2017, Hunter’s paycheck from Burisma dwindled, leading him to pursue even riskier business ventures with CEFC China Energy, China’s largest energy company.
‘Even at the time – but certainly with the benefit of hindsight – it was easy to detect many of the earmarks of a Chinese government influence operation in the targeting of Hunter and other prominent Americans on both sides of the political aisle,’ Vogel wrote.
In one unreported scheme, Hunter attempted to help Romanian oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu get out of legal hot water by inking a real estate deal with CEFC.
Popoviciu had been convicted and was facing nine years in prison over charges related to acquiring land for way under value in Bucharest’s Băneasa district – where the US embassy is located.
Under the proposed deal, a Chinese-funded venture would buy a significant stake in Popoviciu’s contested property and spend more than $1 billion on development. Some Western partners believed Popoviciu would be shown leniency if he no longer owned a controlling share.
‘The proposal presented the incredible specter of the son of a former US vice-president – and possible future president – working with a team trying to sell an ownership stake in a development that included the US embassy, or at least the land around it, to a hostile foreign-government-linked entity,’ Vogel wrote.
Ironically, the late Beau Biden had dedicated the embassy in Bucharest as a ‘bulwark against corruption.’ Now Hunter’s team was ‘pushing a deal that would make them rich while minimizing the legal exposure of a client who was a top target of the anti-corruption crusaders that Beau had extolled.’
Former vice-president Joe Biden and his wife Dr Jill Biden appear at a campaign kickoff rally in May 2019. JoeBiden would go on to earn the Democratic nomination and a term in the White House, but was plagued by stories about Hunter’s business deals
Hunter, speaking to ABC News in October 2019, said he had never spoken to his father about his role at Burisma and discussed not attending his father’s campaign rallies
Hunter and his wife Melissa Cohen leave court after he pleaded guilty of tax evasion in Los Angeles in September last year. Joe Biden pardoned Hunter in December, one of his final acts as president
While Hunter and his uncle Jim Biden made millions from CEFC, the Băneasa project never got off the ground.
In the book, Vogel wrote about being targeted by Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign for his reporting.
Campaign spokesman Kate Bedingfield told his editors they were ‘deeply troubled’ by his coverage and accused him of spreading Russian propaganda in a letter to The New York Times’s executive editor.
The author caught the campaign muddling its story: Bedingfield claimed Biden never discussed Burisma-related matters with Hunter, though Hunter wrote in his own memoir that he briefly discussed his board seat with his father.
In one of his closing acts as president, Joe Biden pardoned Hunter on December 1, allowing him to escape prison time.
The pardon covered any crimes he ‘may have committed or taken part in’ starting from January 1, 2014 – a date roughly coinciding with his first interactions with Burisma.
