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Hunter Biden arrived Wednesday morning in a black Chevy Suburban outside the U.S. Capitol, walking steely-faced toward a microphone set up not far from the Senate steps that his father had ascended countless times.

“For six years, I have been the target of the unrelenting Trump attack machine, shouting, ‘Where’s Hunter?’” he said, with an unmistakable tone of defiance. “Well, here’s my answer: I am here.”

It marked the most dramatic public appearance of a presidential son who for years has been the focus of attacks from Republicans using his business dealings as a basis for an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/12/biden-impeachment-inquiry-meaning/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">impeachment inquiry</a> into his father, and for federal investigators who have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/12/07/hunter-biden-indicted-taxes/" target=_blank>charged Hunter Biden with tax and gun crimes</a>.

And it was the clearest sign that Hunter Biden, who has largely left it to his lawyers and allies to respond to his attackers, is now attempting to wrest control of his own narrative.

“I am here today to acknowledge that I have made mistakes in my life and wasted opportunities and privileges I was afforded,” he said. “For that, I am responsible. For that, I am accountable. And for that, I am making amends.”

The appearance, which was kept under wraps until shortly beforehand and came as Hunter Biden defied a House subpoena, was by turns emotional, plaintive and contentious. It appeared to have two main aims: humanizing him after years of vilification, and emphasizing that his father had nothing to do with his business affairs despite the impeachment inquiry.

People close to Hunter say he views the current chapter of his life as one in which he attempts to make amends and answer for the wrongs that he committed in the throes of addiction. He tried to draw a clear line during his remarks, admitting that he did things he regrets but not those he is being accused of.

“I am also here today to correct how the MAGA right has portrayed me for their political purposes,” he said.

Several times he referenced his battles with drug and alcohol addiction, saying that it may have clouded his judgment at times but that those struggles should not be used against him, and certainly not against his father.

“They have ridiculed my struggle with addiction, they have belittled my recovery and they have tried to dehumanize me — all to embarrass and damage my father, who has devoted his life to public service,” he said.

hunter-timeline

To help make sense of how Hunter Biden’s tangled life and business dealings have sometimes intersected with his father’s political career, here’s a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/11/hunter-biden-life-indictments-charges/" target=_blank>timeline of key moments</a>.

Hunter’s portrait of his father as a loving, supportive parent contrasted sharply with Republicans’ charges that the “Biden crime family” has improperly mixed business and government, accusations for which they have provided no substantive evidence. His parents “literally saved my life,” Hunter said, stating in the clearest and most public way to date that his father had nothing financially to do with his business.

Not when he worked as a lawyer, he said, nor when he was on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company. His father was not involved in Hunter’s partnership with a Chinese businessman, he said, and had no part in his foreign or domestic investments. He also had no role in his latest efforts to make a career as an artist.

“In the depths of my addiction, I was extremely irresponsible with my finances,” Hunter Biden said. “But to suggest that is grounds for an impeachment inquiry is beyond the absurd — it is shameless. There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business, because it did not happen.”

Hunter Biden's career of benefiting from his father's name

Hunter’s decision to appear in front of the Capitol came a year after he shook up his legal team and began taking a more combative path in the legal, political and media arenas. He wrote a memoir in 2021 — accompanied by a round of television interviews — and traveled with his father to Ireland earlier this year. More recently, he sat for a lengthy podcast interview with the musician Moby and wrote a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2023/11/02/hunter-biden-addiction-substance-abuse-not-political-ploy/71332255007/" target=_blank>piece for USA Today</a> accusing Republicans of weaponizing his addiction.

But his appearance Wednesday put him in direct combat with his Republican antagonists. Many on his team have been upset that he has few defenders — he is viewed in some quarters as a political third rail, and<b> </b>rarely are Democrats on television willing to speak up for him. On Wednesday, he decided to do it himself.

The setting was significant: He spoke in the same place where he came often as a child when his dad was an up-and-coming senator. It was near the spot where his father received a phone call almost exactly 51 years ago, on Dec. 18, 1972, telling him that his wife and daughter had been killed and that his two sons — Beau and Hunter — were in the hospital.

It was not far from Union Station, where his father went every night after Senate business to take the train home to Wilmington, Del. And it was within a few miles of locations where, as he recounts in his memoir, he would buy drugs.

In speaking outside the Capitol instead of inside it, the president’s son was defying a summons from House Republicans that he appear at a closed-door deposition. Hunter Biden’s team argued that a private session would let GOP lawmakers selectively leak his comments, and they offered to have him testify publicly instead — an idea rejected by Republican leaders.

“He does not get to dictate the terms of the subpoena,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the House Oversight Committee, told reporters outside an empty hearing room where Hunter Biden had been scheduled to appear. Republicans now say they may seek a contempt-of-Congress charge against him.

Hunter has testified before Congress at least once, when he was appointed to the Amtrak board in 2006. This time he was being called for a far different reason, to answer questions about his foreign business deals, his tax problems and — at least on the part of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — his alleged payments to prostitutes.

Hunter Biden is not the only president’s son to be summoned for congressional testimony in recent years. Donald Trump Jr. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/donald-trump-jr-to-appear-for-second-senate-intelligence-interview-wednesday/2019/06/11/1e690444-8c77-11e9-adf3-f70f78c156e8_story.html" target=_blank>spoke to the Senate Intelligence Committee</a> during his father’s presidency about allegations of Russian influence on the 2016 election.

White House officials said that Hunter Biden made his father aware of what he was going to say, but press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would not say what advice the president gave his son and if he had urged him to comply with a congressional subpoena.

“The president was certainly familiar with what his son was going to say,” she said. “And I think what you saw was from the heart. … When it comes to the president, the first lady, they are proud of him continuing to rebuild his life. They are proud of their son.”

Asked whether the president would remove some of the legal threats looming over his son, she responded: “I’ve been very clear. The president’s not going to pardon his son.”

One offshoot of his struggles, and the legal and political scrutiny he faces, is that he is held at arm’s length by many of President Biden’s advisers. While father and son speak on a near-daily basis, he has not been the kind of high-profile political adviser that he was during much of Joe Biden’s career.

In recent months, he has stepped up his public role, showcasing a willingness to get into the arena and personally battle his Republican opponents. The event Wednesday morning was executed with a bit of showmanship and surprise in an attempt to upstage and outmaneuver House Republicans.

Reporters were told to gather outside the Senate side of the Capitol around 9:30 a.m. Several dozen journalists were there, going through security in one sign that Hunter Biden, who has Secret Service protection, would be arriving. Some networks scrambled to leave the House hearing — where Hunter would clearly not be appearing — and get to the Capitol steps instead.

The president’s son said House Republicans continue to focus on “a nonexistent bribe.” He noted that Greene displayed naked photos of him during committee hearings. “They have taken the light of my dad’s love for me and presented it as darkness,” Hunter Biden said. “They have no shame.”

Hunter Biden reiterated that he was willing to answer questions anytime as long as it is in a public session — although he ignored the questions reporters shouted at him after he gave his statement.

“I am here to testify at a public hearing, today, to answer any of the committees’ legitimate questions,” he said. “Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry or hear what I have to say. What are they afraid of? I’m here. I’m ready.”

White House Correspondents' Association's Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage, 2023

Gerald R. Ford Journalism Award for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency, 2021

White House Correspondents' Association's Merriman Smith Award, recognizing presidential news coverage under deadline pressure, 2016

Finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists for national reporting, 2014

Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress, 2013, "Broken City" series

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Matt Viser is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He joined The Post in October 2018, covering the midterms and the 2020 presidential election before moving over to the White House to cover President Biden's administration. He was previously deputy chief of the Washington bureau for the Boston Globe.

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