Who is Hunter Biden and could he impact his father’s campaign?

Former vice president's son at centre of Republican revival of Ukraine scandal amid Donald Trump's re-election campaign

Joe Biden's family history and the tragedies and losses that have shaped his politics and public persona have loomed large throughout his career, relying on a narrative of mourning, resilience and a dynamic with voters who also have emerged from the other side of their shared pain.

Grieving alongside him is Hunter Biden, the former vice president's last living son, whose private life has been mired in controversy as he struggled with sobriety and emerged as a central figure in Donald Trump's efforts to undermine his political rival as he seeks re-election.

While Hunter Biden's private life has made headlines, the president and his Republican allies have sharpened their focus on his connections to a Ukrainian energy firm amid the president's impeachment.

Hunter Biden has shared less of his father's spotlight through the years, next to his politically aspirational brother, but he is now scrutinised by a GOP seeking revenge following Democrats' months-long investigation into the president's attempts to extract politically damaging information about the former vice president from Ukraine's president.

In 1972, Joe Biden — then a 30-year-old senator-elect from Delaware — lost his first wife Nelia and 13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident.

In 2015, his son Joseph "Beau" Biden, an Iraq War veteran and Delaware attorney general, died following a brain cancer diagnosis.

His brother Robert "Hunter" Biden, Beau's younger brother, was just 2 years old when his mother died.

Hunter said his first memory "is of lying in a hospital bed next to my brother," he said during the 2015 memorial service for his brother Beau. "I remember my brother, who was one year and one day older than me, holding my hand, staring into my eyes, saying, 'I love you, I love you, I love you,' over and over again."

In a statement following Beau's death in 2015, his father wrote: "Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known."

He told MSNBC in January that he believed Beau "should be the one running for president, not me."

Sworn in at his son's hospital bedside, Joe Biden pledged to commute to and from Delaware to Washington DC to spend more time with his children, earning him the Beltway nickname Amtrak Joe.

He later married Jill Jacobs, who became Hunter and Beau's stepmother, in 1977. Their half-sister Ashley was born in 1981.

Hunter Biden graduated from Georgetown University in 1992, then spent a year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Oregon before he pursued a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.

Following his graduation in 1996, he moved to Wilmington, Delaware, working as a vice president at MBNA Bank, the state's largest employer.

He later sought a position in then-president Bill Clinton's administration, in which he was appointed as a director in the Department of Commerce, where he worked on e-commerce-policy.

Though he left the company in 2001, the Bidens came under fire after it was discovered Hunter Biden continued to receive consulting fees while Joe Biden had supported legislation that was opposed by consumer groups and promoted by credit card companies.

He was appointed to an unpaid seat on the Amtrak board and co-founded the lobbying firm Oldaker, Biden and Belair. He left the group and his board seat in 2008 in the run-up to that year's presidential election after his father was tapped as Barack Obama's running mate.

"I wanted my father to have a clean slate," Hunter Biden told The New Yorker in 2019. "I didn't want to limit him in any way."

He launched an international consulting firm, Seneca Global Advisors, then co-founded Rosemont Seneca Partners with Christopher Heinz, the stepson of former presidential candidate and, later, secretary of state John Kerry.

While his father was in office over two terms of the Obama administration, Hunter Biden frequently reappeared in gossip pages — he was discharged from the Navy Reserves for testing positive for cocaine use, he struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, he had divorced his now-ex-wife Kathleen, and he had a brief relationship with Beau's widow, Hallie, in the wake of his death.

In a statement following reports of their relationship, Joe Biden said: "We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness. ... They have mine and Jill's full and complete support and we are happy for them."

Hunter Biden also was sued for child support by Lunden Alexis Roberts, an Arkansas woman who named Mr Biden the father of her child in a lawsuit filed in May 2019 seeking paternity and health care support.

They reached a settlement in that case in January. Court documents show that Mr Biden has agreed to pay monthly child support instalments, including 13 months of missed instalments, following the child's birth in August 2018.

Court documents filed in Independence County also revealed DNA results showing that with "scientific certainty" Mr Biden is the biological father of Ms Roberts's child.

But his international business dealings drew criticism against his father, then the vice president, over potential conflicts of interest, as conservative lawmakers and right-wing media have revived allegations of corruption and self-enrichment as Joe Biden emerges as the Democratic nominee to face Mr Trump in November.

In May 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, Ukraine's largest gas producer, to take the lead on the company's efforts towards "transparency, corporate governance and responsibility". according to a press release announcing his role.

The announcement did not disclose that he is the son of the then-US vice president.

His appointment arrived amid tensions between the White House and Russia over Ukraine's energy independence. Vice President Biden was a key figure in those talks, and the US State Department dismissed concerns about his son's involvement within the country and potential conflicts of interest because he is a "private citizen" — though critics said that even the appearance of a conflict could invite scrutiny.

Five years after his departure from the board, a bombshell story in The New York Times revealed their ties to Ukraine and the removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin from office over corruption concerns, including Joe Biden's threat to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees unless Mr Shokin was fired.

Despite no evidence of legal wrongdoing, the controversy was leveraged by Rudy Giuliani as part of a conspiracy to deflect from his own interests in Ukraine as well as President Trump's attempt to extract damning information on his opponent through his own withholding of military aid to the country.

A whistle-blower's report of the president's phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in July 2019 — in which the president suggested withholding congressionally approved funds in exchange for information on the Bidens' ties to Burisma – prompted House Democrats to investigate.

In a White House memo partially transcription the call, Mr Trump urged Mr Zelensky to speak with Mr Giuliani and US Attorney General William Barr, while Mr Zelensky promised that "the next prosecutor general will be 100 per cent my person" and "will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue."

Months following the president's impeachment and subsequent acquittal on party lines for his abuses of power, the GOP-controlled Senate is getting closer to its own investigation into Hunter Biden, as lawmakers seek to subpoena a Democratic public relations firm that worked with Burisma.

Joe Biden's campaign has called the attempt — amid a public health crisis that has led to the deaths of more than 100,000 Americans within three months — a "craven, previously debunked smear" against the candidate.

The president has led chants of "lock him up" and yelled "where the hell is he?" in his unhinged campaign rallies, and he has called the Bidens "stone cold crooked" and a "disgrace" while his sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump have helped spin allegations into a campaign-trail issue.

"I don't really think about Donald Trump's kids that much," Hunter Biden told ABC in 2019. "They seem clownish, to me, when I see them. It's all noise."

He said he was "shocked" when he discovered he had been at the centre of the president's phone call.

Asked whether it was wise to be involved with Ukraine and invite scrutiny that has now loomed throughout his father's presidential campaign, he said he wasn't taking into account that "there would be a Rudy Giuliani and a president of the US that would be listening to this ridiculous conspiracy idea".

"Did I make a mistake? Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things," he told ABC. "But did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not."

After staying out of the limelight, he made a rare, high-profile public appearance at the 20202 Democratic National Convention, where he spoke with his sister Ashley to introduce their father as he accept the party's nomination on the event's final day.

They gave the "last word" to their brother Beau Biden, who introduced their father at the 2008 and 2012 conventions.

Of his father, Hunter Biden said "he'll listen" and "he'll be there when you need him."

"He'll never let you down," he said. "The strongest shoulder you can ever lean on ... He'll make your grandkids feel that what they've got to say matters."