Last week, Hunter Biden won a $1.7 million defamation judgment against Patrick Byrne, a former Trump supporter who spread false claims about him. It was his first real legal win in years. He is not letting it go to waste.
The media blitz that followed is anything but spontaneous. He's appearing on podcasts. He's tweeting obsessively. He took the stage for a live performance in Phoenix. He launched a Substack called "Where's Hunter?" loaded with long screeds about himself. He sat down with Candace Owens. He told Wired he's writing a book, starting this month in serial form.
His first tweet in a decade, posted May 19, set the tone: "I'm Hunter Biden. You've never actually heard from me."
He wrote a whole book about himself in 2021. But details.
As the New York Post reported, the timing isn't accidental. Garrett Ziegler — former Trump adviser turned Hunter nemesis and founder of watchdog nonprofit Marco Polo — says the real driver is a documentary. Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris, who bankrolled Hunter's lifestyle for years, hired filmmaker Robb Bindler to follow him around. Bindler's website now confirms he is "completing a verite feature documentary featuring Hunter Biden." The publicity blitz is the runway for the film.
What's the film about? The same thing the Substack is about. The same thing Hunter told Wired his upcoming book is about: "The plot against me, the conspiracy that was led by figures like Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon... assembling all of my digital life through phones and laptops and iCloud hacks."
He's innocent. The laptop isn't real. The whole thing was a manufactured smear.
There's one problem with that theory. The laptop was held aloft in a Delaware courtroom — physically, by prosecutors — and shown to the jury that convicted Hunter on federal gun charges. FBI forensic analysts had already determined the device belonged to Hunter, that it hadn't been altered in any way, and that it was fit for use as legal evidence. It was used as legal evidence.
There's a second problem. IRS investigators Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler geolocated Hunter via his iPhone to a cigar bar around the corner from John Paul Mac Isaac's laptop repair shop on the night Hunter dropped the computer off. Mac Isaac — who lost his business over this — has since written a book documenting exactly what happened, with receipts. Ziegler's forensic analysis of the laptop runs 644 pages and catalogs what he calls 459 violations of state and federal laws. "Hunter lies every time he opens his mouth," Ziegler told the Post.
And then there's the medium Hunter chose for his truth-telling campaign. Internet sleuths ran his Substack through an AI content detector and got back a result of "100 percent AI." Whether that's accurate, or just a very aggressive PR firm polishing his prose, the effect is the same: a man claiming to finally tell his own story may be having a chatbot tell it for him.
While Hunter narrates his innocence, the people he owes money to are losing patience. His lawyer Abbe Lowell has filed suit against him for unpaid legal fees, believed to be well over $50,000. Lunden Roberts, the mother of his seven-year-old daughter Navy, is suing him for unpaid child support. Hunter has refused to meet Navy. The Biden grandparents didn't acknowledge her existence until The New York Times shamed them into issuing a statement.
Kevin Morris — dubbed Hunter's "sugar brother" by his ex-partners for paying his tax debts, his legal fees, and $30,000-a-month Malibu rentals — has since closed his wallet.
Meanwhile, Hunter is leaning hard on the addiction angle. Same as "Beautiful Things," his 2021 memoir. Same playbook: lean into the crack years, generate sympathy, hope nobody looks too closely at the international influence-peddling operation he and his uncle Jim Biden ran while Joe was vice president. It didn't work in 2021.
The plan for what comes next isn't subtle. Hunter told Wired he'd be "so honored to be of service" — in response to a question about whether he'd consider working in a future Gavin Newsom presidential administration. Perhaps as vice president.
A convicted felon. Pardoned by his father. Writing what may be an AI memoir. Being sued by his own lawyer. Refusing to meet his daughter. With aspirations for the second-highest office in the country.
The facts haven't changed. They're still in 644 pages of forensic analysis, in FBI lab reports, in courtroom transcripts, and on a geolocation log that puts Hunter around the corner from the shop the night he left the laptop.
The story keeps getting longer. The laptop isn't going anywhere.