Joe Biden’s granddaughter, Naomi Biden, published a statement on Twitter defending her father, Hunter Biden, following a report from Senate Republicans about his business dealings and their impact on U.S. policy.
The 26-year-old Columbia Law student, who appeared in a video introducing the former vice president during the Democratic National Convention, tweeted, “Despite the best efforts of an cruel few to destroy a private man, he is sober, happy, and as at peace as ever today because as long his family needs him, he has not lost his purpose.”
She described her father as a man who “never sought the spotlight” and said, “He found his purpose in doing everything in his power to help Beau,” Joe Biden’s other son, who was Delaware’s attorney general and died in 2015 from brain cancer, “achieve his dream.”
Hunter Biden, she said, was able to transfer from Georgetown Law to Yale Law because of a poem he wrote as his personal statement. Writing a poem as a personal statement is “something they encourage you strongly against doing,” she said, but “the poem, unlike anything else they had ever received, earned him a spot at Yale Law.”
She wrote that her dad supported she and her mom as he went through law school in a modest living situation with student loans and summer jobs. Eventually, Hunter Biden was able to pay off not only his own loans, but Beau Biden’s loans, she said.
Senate Republicans released an 87-page report on Wednesday that said the Obama administration ignored “glaring warning signs” about Hunter Biden’s board position on Ukrainian energy company Burisma and said that he and his business partner “received millions of dollars from foreign nationals with questionable backgrounds.”
Naomi Biden, taking an apparent swipe at Republicans for spending public time and resources to create the report, offered her thoughts about her father “free of charge to the taxpayers and free of the corrosive influence of power-at-all-costs politics.”
Though the whole world knows his name, no one knows who he is.
Here’s a thread on my dad, Hunter Biden – free of charge to the taxpayers and free of the corrosive influence of power-at-all-costs politics. The truth of a man filled with love, integrity, and human struggles: pic.twitter.com/GGeOexmtTV
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
He and Beau were one. One heart, one soul, one mind.
They grew up with the weight of knowing that each day they lived was a day that their sister, my namesake, and their mother lost. But they had each other and that would be enough. They would make sure it was enough.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
He received a letter from Yale saying that the dedication and hard work he had devoted to his study of the law at Georgetown made him more than qualified, but that the poem, unlike anything else they had ever received, earned him a spot at Yale Law.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
After graduation, he put his dreams on hold to take a job that would ensure that anything was possible for me and my sisters. He used that money to pay off not only his own student loans, but my uncle Beau’s college and law school loans so that he could pursue his dreams too.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
The pain he has endured would be enough to make a lesser man give up on life all together. But despite the best efforts of an cruel few to destroy a private man, he is sober, happy, and as at peace as ever today because as long his family needs him, he has not lost his purpose.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
Republican interest in Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the potential to use them as a political attack against the Democratic presidential nominee were at the center of a phone call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president that sparked impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens, which Democrats argue Trump did for personal political interests rather than legitimate policy reasons. Trump and his allies suggest that Joe Biden acted in Hunter Biden’s interest when he conditioned $1 billion in aid to Ukraine on firing an official who was investing Burisma, but international organizations at the time wanted the prosecutor removed for other reasons, and there is no evidence that Biden acted with the intention of helping his son.
Hunter Biden’s personal life and past history with drug abuse has also been a potential liability for his father’s presidential campaign. A police report showed that a cocaine pipe and a “white powdery substance” was found in his rental car in 2016. Earlier this year, he was involved in a paternity and child support legal battle over a child he fathered with an Arkansas woman.
Hunter Biden has since openly talked about his struggles with addiction and recovery. He welcomed another child with his second wife, Melissa Cohen, earlier this year.
