Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, has been accused of smoking an illegal drug in the VIP room of a Washington, D.C., strip club last year.
Hunter Biden, 49, frequented the Archibald’s Gentlemen’s Club in Washington, according to numerous workers at the establishment interviewed by the New York Post. Biden spent “thousands of dollars” at the club over numerous visits while he sat on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. They claim he used “credit cards that didn’t have his name on it.”
Biden would usually go to the club’s VIP room to drink, and Archibald’s staff never had an issue with him, according to security worker Ranko Petrovic.
Former Archibald’s managing partner James Ritter said that on one instance, employees suspected that Biden smoked crack in the VIP room.
“There was a smell of burning Styrofoam in the VIP room. We told him nothing illegal can go on here,” Ritter said. “We didn’t see anything illegal. After he was spoken to, the smell stopped.”
“VIP employees suspected it was crack,” Ritter said. If so, it would be his most recent known usage of an illegal substance.
Biden has a long, documented history of using illegal drugs, such as cocaine. He has also struggled with alcohol addiction, by his own admission. He detailed his history of problems with drugs and alcohol in July about a month after his 77-year-old father jumped into the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Biden said that his substance abuse problems played a factor in his failed marriage that ended in divorce in 2017 after 23 years. He had three children with his previous wife: Naomi, 25, Finnegan, 19, and Maisy, 18. His drug problems also factored into his discharge from the Navy and his notable absence from the campaign trail with his father.
He traced his drug use back to the 1990s when he drank and occasionally used cocaine while attending Georgetown University. From there, he made several attempts to sober up in the early 2000s, culminating in a stint in rehab in 2003. He stayed sober for seven years until he relapsed in 2010.
Biden admitted to using crack as late as fall 2016. Biden said he bought the drugs off sellers working out of a homeless camp in Los Angeles, California. He was staying in the city for a week and returned to the homeless camp several times to buy drugs.
Biden is currently married to Melissa Cohen, a 32-year-old South African filmmaker. Biden met Cohen in May and proposed to her a week later. Between marriages, Biden was romantically involved with his brother’s widow, Hallie Biden. Hunter’s brother Beau died in May 2015 after battling brain cancer.
Last week, a court-ordered DNA test showed that Biden fathered a child with an Arkansas woman.
