The Key Is Hunter

Here's another intriguing data point: in the midst of a current news story that's presumably unrelated to the classified document issue, the emergence of Jeff Zients as Ron Klain's replascement as White House Chief of Staff, we find this:

With his expected return to the highest echelon of the White House as chief of staff, Zients is now taking fire from all ideological directions for his meetings with Hunter Biden, scapegoating of people who resist COVID vaccination and history with healthcare companies accused of billing fraud.

. . . Zients met with the younger Biden at least three times in the first half of 2016 as his father prepared to leave the vice presidency, according to emails from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop verified by Fox News. The first two meetings took place at the vice presidential residence and included the elder Biden.

The meetings also variously included former lobbyist and current White House counselor Steve Richetti; then-Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Eric Lander; billionaire World Economic Forum member and Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein, the recurring host for Joe Biden's Nantucket vacations; biotech investor Richard Klausner; and Atlantic Media Chairman David Bradley, publisher of the 166-year-old magazine.

Timelines for Hunter's activites are remarkably sketchy, but during this period of his life, Hunter had separated from his first wife, Kathleen Buhle, in 2015, and their divorce was pending over the following year. During 2016, he was also closely involved in setting up what would become the Penn Biden Center:

On April 25, 2016, Creative Artists Agency (CAA) agent Craig Gering emailed Hunter with "confidential notes from our meeting," in which Gering listed apparent plans that were discussed for the vice president upon leaving office.

One of those plans included "wealth creation," with no further explanation, and another included an apparent reference to the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., with a possible job opportunity for Hunter.

. . . Hunter then confirmed Gering's notes but emphasized that they needed to be "very confidential" because they were not set in stone.

In 2014, he joined the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which he continued until 2019. According to Wikipedia,

Because Joe Biden played a major role in U.S. policy towards Ukraine, some Ukrainian anti-corruption advocates and Obama administration officials expressed concern that Hunter Biden having joined the board could create the appearance of a conflict of interest and undermine Joe Biden's anti-corruption work in Ukraine.

During 2016, Hunter also began an affair with Beau's widow, Hallie, that lasted through 2019. As I noted in yesterday's post, by 2018, Hallie had some role in sending Hunter to California to get him out of the spotlight. As I noted last Friday, during his 2016 divorce proceedings, his ex-wife noted,

[S]he said she began to understand the extent of their financial woes once she initiated their divorce in 2016. She found they had no savings, double mortgage and no equity in their two homes, credit card debt and medical bills.

“The sheer amount of our debt overwhelmed me," she wrote. "We were underwater.”

. . . Buhle started to notice Biden's substance abuse problem "spiral from social to problematic" about eight years into their marriage, according to People's excerpts of the book.

She described a number of stints Biden spent in rehab, including in November 2012 after he showed up drunk to a fundraising event following the reelection of his father and President Barack Obama.

As of 2016, Hunter appears to have been essentially the same guy we've come to know through his laptop and other episodes like his paternity case. According to the Wikipedia link above,

Over the past two decades, Biden has been in and out of rehabilitation, with long periods of sobriety followed by relapses. Following the [2015] death of his brother Beau, his addiction escalated, and he claims to have been "smoking crack every 15 minutes." A detailed analysis of Hunter Biden's hard drive by NBC News showed that Biden and his firm were paid $11 million from 2013 to 2018, and the funds fueled his addiction. In his autobiography Beautiful Things, he said that the money from Burisma "turned into a major enabler during my steepest skid into addiction" and "hounded me to spend recklessly, dangerously, destructively. Humiliatingly. So I did."

In the fall of 2016, he was in rehab in Sedona, AZ:

In the fall of 2016, Hunter arranged to go to rehab in Sedona, Arizona. During a layover in Los Angeles, he realized he left his wallet on the plane. While waiting for his wallet in LA, he went to Pershing Square and asked a homeless man where he could buy crack.

He bought crack several times that week, The New Yorker reported. After days of not sleeping, on Oct. 28, Hunter was driving on Interstate 10 near Palm Springs and eventually lost control of the car.

The story continues,

Hunter Biden began dating his brother’s widow while recovering from a week spent buying crack from a homeless encampment in Los Angeles, according to a new report.

. . . He made plans to head to a detox center in Arizona, but got sidetracked during a stopover in Los Angeles, where he soon asked a vagrant where he could buy crack, according to the mag.

. . . Hunter took his rental car to Arizona, where Hertz workers called the cops after finding a crack pipe and a baggie containing a “white powdery substance,” along with a Secret Service business card, Hunter’s driver’s license and a badge from Beau’s time as Delaware attorney general inside.

Local prosecutors declined to pursue the case, citing a lack of evidence that he actually used the pipe, according to the New Yorker.

Hunter, meanwhile, finally spent a week at Grace Grove Lifestyle Center — a local “detox, rejuvenation and healing retreat” — before checking into a resort spa, where Hallie flew to meet him and they decided to become a couple.

The picture that emerges is that during 2016, Biden, set to leave the vice presidency at age 74, was busily planning an active future career during a time when most people are already retired, and indeed, when most former vice presidents leave public life. But Hunter, despite his dire financial straits, his tangled personal life, and his desperate addiction, was closely involved in the whole process. In fact, 2016 seems to be the year when Hunter's pattern of life over the next several years would be established, leaving Delaware for California to minimize publicity but continuing a drug-addled lifestyle enabled by Burisma, but also with financial injections from Joe, as well as visits from Joe's former contacts in the Secret Service.

I've got to think that Jeff Zients has emerged as a choice for Chief of Staff because he's been fully aware of Hunter's position in the Biden universe and will be expected to deal with it. I would also surmise that Joe expects things to continue more or less as they have been -- Zients isn't there to clean house, not least because the problem has long since metastasized. I would guess that this is what Biden's personal attorneys are also discovering.