Hunter Biden, in his first interview since the 2024 election, denied there was a “grand conspiracy” to cover up issues with his father’s health and said Democrats only lost the race because they abandoned President Joe Biden.
“We lost the last election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party,” Hunter Biden said on a new podcast hosted by Jaime Harrison, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “That’s my position. We had the advantage of incumbency, we had the advantage of an incredibly successful administration, and the Democratic Party literally melted down.”
Hunter Biden has long been known as fiercely protective of his father — and vice versa. During his final weeks in office, Joe Biden issued a sweeping pardon of his son, who was found guilty of gun-related charges in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax evasion in California.
Harrison’s podcast, “At Our Table,” is set to debut Thursday and feature weekly episodes in which he interviews Democratic leaders. Excerpts from his interview with Hunter Biden were released Wednesday morning.
Harrison’s first guests also include Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who became Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate after Biden withdrew from the race, as well as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina
Joe Biden, now 82, dropped out of the presidential contest last summer after a widely criticized debate performance that caused a collapse of support inside his party. Even before the debate, he was behind former president Donald Trump (R) in polls, and some Democrats were privately worried. Harris took over as the effective Democratic nominee in July and lost to Trump.
A number of books have since been released that detail the 2024 campaign and the president’s decision to end his reelection campaign. One of them — “Original Sin,” by the journalists Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper — has proved the most provocative, alleging an effort by Biden confidants to conceal his declining health.
Hunter Biden disputed the premise.
“What sells, Jaime? What sells is the idea of a conspiracy,” he told Harrison, arguing that the “ability to keep a secret in Washington is zero” and that his father operated in such a “fish bowl” that it would have been impossible to cover up health problems.
“Every single day, hundreds of people,” Hunter Biden said, “and you can’t get one of them to go on the record and say, ‘I saw the president do X?’”
Hunter Biden also denied reports that he played an outsize role behind the scenes in his father’s administration. He said he “stayed as far away as I possibly could — which, by the way, broke my heart.”
