Hunter Biden Is America’s Prince Andrew

Elle ReynoldsAugust 2, 2022

He’s the son of political royalty, brought up in luxury, and used to having access to anything he pleases. That licentious attitude has led him into disturbing sexual dalliances, making an embarrassment of himself and his family across global headlines, only to be insulated, protected, made excuses for, and continually welcomed at public events by his doting parent and the law enforcement of his country.

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’m talking about Britain’s Prince Andrew, who was friends with sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and has been accused of rape by one of Epstein’s victims. But the above descriptions also mark the wayward son of our own potentate: Hunter Biden.

Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, experienced a PR disaster in 2011 when the Daily Mail published claims from Virginia Roberts Giuffre that Epstein had forced her, only a 17-year-old at the time in 2001, to engage in sexual trysts with Andrew. Giuffre claimed to have had three such interactions with Andrew, in London, New York, and on Epstein’s island, and her story was backed up by flight logs and a photo of her with Andrew with his arm around her bare waist. Additionally, “according to a sworn deposition by Juan Alessi, a former employee at Epstein’s Palm Beach estate, Andrew attended naked pool parties and was treated to massages by a harem of adolescent girls,” Vanity Fair’s Edward Klein reported.

While Hunter Biden’s sexual promiscuities don’t involve alleged child sex abuse or rape (as far as we know), his potentially criminal debauchery has been extensively captured on camera, thanks to explicit videos leaked from a laptop he abandoned. He blew through tens of thousands of dollars in matters of months — some funded by his now-president father — on prostitutes. In videos that have been discovered on his infamous laptop, Hunter recorded compromising and graphic videos of himself with women tied to Russian sex rings, sometimes with drugs involved. He could also potentially be prosecuted for violating sex trafficking laws for transporting prostitutes over state lines.

Hunter Biden’s marital life, predictably, was also problematic. In 2017, Hunter divorced his wife of 24 years and started a fling with his dead brother’s wife Hallie, before they broke it off two years later and Hunter married a third woman, Melissa Cohen, a month after ending things with Hallie. Meanwhile, Hunter was busy fathering a baby born in Arkansas in 2018 but denied the baby was his until the woman sued him for paternity.

Both Andrew and Hunter have been doted on and historically excused by their powerful parents, and appear to have been insulated by the law enforcement agencies of their countries. Andrew didn’t withdraw from public life until 2019, eight years after the Giuffre accusations broke. And the queen didn’t strip him of his royal titles until earlier this year, before allowing him to escort her to a conspicuous public event two months later. Likewise, Joe Biden has repeatedly come to Hunter’s defense, saying he’s “proud of him,” insisting “my son did nothing wrong” regarding his suspicious business dealings in Ukraine, and keeping Hunter close at presidential events.

Law enforcement has appeared to turn a blind eye to both Hunter and Andrew’s behavior. London’s Metropolitan Police have “examined Giuffre’s allegations against the Prince at least twice since 2015 but never opened an investigation,” according to Forbes. And a whistleblower report last week alleged that FBI officials had opened a sham investigation into damning evidence against Hunter, including evidence on his infamous laptop, in order to brand it as “disinformation” and then scuttled further investigation of it.

Meanwhile, Hunter, who was discharged from the Navy Reserves for a positive cocaine test, may have lied on a federal background check form in order to purchase a gun — a gun which was later trashed behind a grocery store in a bizarre incident that the Secret Service reportedly interfered in to cover up.

Despite all of their concerning behavior, both men have lived cushy lives off of their powerful parents’ success. Andrew has lived lavishly on his mother’s royal dime, receiving a yearly income of more than $300,000 from the queen while he performed official duties but lived a lifestyle far beyond it. The queen also reportedly contributed to his multimillion-dollar settlement with Giuffre and allegedly interfered to preserve Andrew’s $368,000-a-year security detail after he stepped down from royal responsibilities.

As for Hunter, his first prominent job after law school was as an executive vice president at a bank that was a big campaign donor of his dad’s. In 2014 he joined the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma, earning $50,000 per month despite no experience in the energy industry. It was while he served on Burisma’s board that his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, coerced the Ukrainian president to fire the country’s top prosecutor who was eying a probe into Hunter’s company. Burisma and its founder have been accused of money laundering and tax evasion. Joe Biden has also reportedly financed, perhaps unwittingly, some of Hunter’s dalliances with prostitutes, wiring his son $100,000 over a two-month period with some of the money reportedly going to Hunter’s escorts. Politically, one of Hunter’s most significant offenses might be his habit of selling access to his father in an apparent pay-for-play in foreign business deals.

Although the two wayward sons differ in the details of their alleged misconduct as well as their reactions to it — Andrew has denied Giuffre’s allegations while Hunter can’t refute the videos he filmed himself, and Hunter has been implicated in more extensive political corruption — both have tarnished the reputations of their parents, their countries’ law enforcement agencies, and anyone else who excuses them. They both show that a double standard still remains for favorites of the politically powerful and that the people protecting them don’t care who knows it.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.