From President Biden Son Hunter deals face-to-face with the decisions that put him at the forefront of the 2020 presidential campaign in his new memoir, “Beautiful things.”
The book is a revealing look at his long battle with addiction and how he has behaved personal tragedies.
He spoke with CBS This Morning co-host Anthony Mason about whether his business relationship crossed the line, including working for a Ukrainian company that became a major problem in the president’s first removal. Trump and if he regrets putting his father’s political future at risk.
“The question of whether I would do it again is not,” he said.
In the brief, Biden defends his decision to serve on the board of directors of The Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father oversaw U.S. policy in the region as vice president.
“You grew up in politics. Don’t you think you could get a big bullsee?” Mason asked.
Biden said he did not “fully understand the level at which this former administration would go and the people around it.”
“The difference between the politics you’re talking about in terms of the last four years, you know … it’s a very different game,” he said. “And I don’t want (I never want to give a weapon back to people who use it illegitimately) to use my weapon against my father.”
Near the end of the 2020 campaign, another problem arose. President Trump’s allies and media supporters promoted possibly incriminating documents found on a laptop which may have belonged to Hunter Biden.
The laptop had been handed over to the FBI by the owner of a Delaware computer store.
Just Biden refers to the laptop in his book once.
Mason asked if the laptop was really his.
“You don’t need a laptop. You have a book. The book, it’s all in the book. And I don’t know,” he replied laughing.
Biden continued, “the serious answer is that I really don’t know the answer to that.”
He said he did not remember leaving a laptop with a repair shop in Delaware.
“But whether or not someone has my laptop, whether or not it was one … I was hacked, whether or not a laptop exists, I really don’t know,” he said.
Although he said he didn’t know if he was missing a laptop, Biden noted that “you read the book and you’ll realize that he wouldn’t be controlling possessions very well for about four years.”
In late 2020, Biden acknowledged an ongoing investigation by federal authorities into possible violations of tax law. When asked if his legal team worked on any kind of contract, Biden said no.
He told Anthony Mason he was committed to being “fully cooperative” with the competent authorities in case they needed anything from him.
Asked about whether President Biden benefited financially from his son’s business dealings or received money from him, Hunter Biden confidently said “no”.
“Nothing, ever,” he said. “Not a nickel … directly or indirectly, not a nickel, ever.”
In 2018, almost at the height of his battle against addiction, Biden lost a handgun, prompting an investigation by law enforcement.
In March new details emerged over which the secret service could have been improperly involved.
“It’s a concern that would hurt me or do something,” Biden said.
Mason asked, “Hallie, your brother’s widow, threw the gun. Was she trying to protect you?”
Biden thought so.
“I think she was just worried about me,” he said, adding that she was going through a difficult period of her life at the time.
He said Hallie’s intention had been to “make sure I didn’t do anything to hurt myself.”
According to reports, the Secret Service had at one point searched for the record of the sale.
Biden said he had no idea and was unaware at the time.
However, he acknowledged that authorities had been informed of the loss of a weapon.
“By the time we knew it, we knew the gun was lost. That Hallie had thrown it in the trash. And I said, ‘You can’t do this’ when I realized he was gone,” he said. “And so it came back, the police came to help retrieve the gun, which was recovered. Someone had gone through the rubbish and picked it up and found it, in a few hours I think. And so was the end of the history “.
Mason asked again if he was aware of the involvement of the secret service.
“I had no idea. I don’t know if the secret services were or what, why would they be? I don’t think that’s true. In my opinion,” Biden said.
The Secret Service told CBS News that there is no evidence that its agents were involved in the incident and President Joe Biden was not protected at the time.
“Beautiful Things” will be released on Tuesday, April 6 by Gallery Books, imprinted by Simon & Schuster, a division of ViacomCBS.
Watch more “CBS This Morning” interview with Hunter Biden: