Hunter Biden opens up about family intervention and addresses laptop reports
President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden is opening up in his first TV interviews since his father took office. In separate interviews with "CBS Sunday Morning" and "CBS This Morning," he answered questions about a Department of Justice investigation, whether a computer reportedly containing confidential information was his, his battle with substance abuse, his new memoir and more.
Correspondent Tracy Smith's interview with Hunter Biden will be broadcast on "CBS Sunday Morning" on Sunday at 9 a.m. ET on CBS and CBSN. "CBS This Morning" co-host Anthony Mason's sit down with Biden will air Monday at 7 a.m. ET on CBS and 8 a.m. ET on CBSN.
In his interview with Mason, Biden described an emotional intervention his family staged at his father's home in Wilmington during the 2020 presidential campaign. After a tense confrontation, Biden stormed out of the house, only to be chased down the driveway by the future president.
"I tried to go to my car, and my girls literally blocked the door to my car, and said: 'Dad, Dad, please. You can't. No, no.' This was the hardest part of the book to write," he recalled.
Then his father embraced him.
Hunter Biden said his dad "grabbed me — gave a bear hug, and he said — and just cried, and said — 'I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Please'"
Mason asked what he thought when he heard his father's pleas.
"I thought: 'I need to figure out a way to tell him that I'm gonna do something, so that I can go take another hit.' It's the only thing I could think. Literally. That's how powerful. I don't know of a force more powerful than my family's love," Hunter Biden said, "except addiction."
Hunter Biden also discussed a report before the 2020 election that alleged a laptop he purportedly left at a Delaware repair shop revealed Biden's business dealings in Ukraine. For the interview on "CBS Sunday Morning" he told Tracy Smith he didn't know if it was his laptop but that it could have been.
"There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me. It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was the — that it was Russian intelligence."
Hunter Biden's memoir, "Beautiful Things" is published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, a division of ViacomCBS.