Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, arrives at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, July 4, 2023.
Ting Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, on Thursday denounced congressional Republicans and right-wing media figures for utilizing his well-known historical past of drug abuse to attack his father and launch “fruitless” investigations.
“Over 4 years in the past, I selected life over the sluggish strangle-death grip of habit, which in my case consisted every day of a bottle of vodka and as many hits on a crack pipe as potential,” Hunter Biden wrote in an op-ed in USAToday.
Biden, 53, wrote that in a rustic the place tens of hundreds of thousands of individuals are grappling with substance abuse problems, his scenario is exclusive solely as a result of his father is the president.
“My struggles and my errors have been fodder for a vile and sustained disinformation marketing campaign in opposition to him, and an all-out annihilation of my status by high-pitched however fruitless congressional investigations,” the youthful Biden wrote.
He additionally struck a disgruntled tone as he referenced an ongoing federal criminal case associated to his allegedly unlawful acquisition of a handgun whereas being a drug person.
The charges stem from him “possessing an unloaded gun for 11 days 5 years in the past,” Biden wrote, including that they “look like the first-ever of their type introduced within the historical past of Delaware.”
Biden pleaded not guilty final month to a three-count indictment within the case in a U.S. district court docket in Wilmington, Delaware.
The charges adopted the collapse of a deal with prosecutors that will have allowed him to keep away from prosecution on the gun charges whereas pleading responsible to misdemeanor counts of failing to pay federal earnings taxes.
The case has come below intense scrutiny in conservative media retailers and amongst Republican politicians, who’ve investigated Hunter Biden’s abroad enterprise dealings and prosecutors’ therapy of him as they allege a sweeping corruption conspiracy involving the entire Biden household.
House Republicans have launched an impeachment inquiry into the president, a transfer that has drawn fiery condemnations from Democrats and different critics who accuse them of charging forward with out enough proof.
“I’m not a sufferer,” Hunter Biden wrote in Thursday’s op-ed. “By any commonplace, I grew up with privilege and alternative, and totally settle for that the alternatives and errors I made are mine, and I’m accountable for them and can proceed to be.”
“What troubles me is the demonization of habit, of human frailty, utilizing me as its avatar and the devastating penalties it has for the hundreds of thousands battling habit,” he wrote.
Those individuals are being “bombarded by the denigrating and near-constant protection of me and my habit” in retailers similar to Fox News and The New York Post, Biden wrote. He cited data displaying that Fox has lined him twice as a lot because it has lined Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a high-profile Republican presidential candidate.
“The weaponization of my habit by partisan and craven factions represents an actual risk to these determined to get sober however are afraid of what might await them in the event that they do,” Hunter Biden wrote.
“The effort of restoration is one thing that must be celebrated, and I hope that regardless of my function because the punchline and punching bag for some, others can even take some time I’ve made, sooner or later at a time, and get trustworthy with themselves and the individuals who love and rely on them,” he wrote.