Beautiful Things A Memoir

I felt like it's sort of like two separate books that are inextricably connected, right? There's the part about, you know, the loss of your brother, Bo and the stories about, you know, like the love and resiliency of your family. And then there's an account of battles with addiction and a journey to sobriety.

The book is really a love story. It's a love letter to those, to the people that never gave up on me.

I knew that the book that I wanted to write was the whole, the, the, the full story of the depths of my addiction, because I don't, I didn't, I think that the, the value of the story, uh, and the reason I'm so vivid about it was to let people know that they're suffering sick in the same way that I was.

I think that more than anything, um, it carries such a, uh, it's such a loaded, um, word and it, it, it conjures things that are, uh, are, uh, are not necessarily true, but it really kind of shocks the conscious, um, uh, a little bit.

It's rare to read it on its account of addiction and of recovery and of a human story about a family and love. And I think just very much worth your time.

I felt like it's sort of like two separate books that are inextricably connected, right? There's the part about, you know, the loss of your brother, Bo and the stories about, you know, like the love and resiliency of your family. And then there's an account of battles with addiction and a journey to sobriety.

It's really a love story. It's a love letter to those, to the people that never gave up on me.

The book is really a love story about your family.

The addicts I know who hit bottom are dead.

It's a great book. The book is beautiful things. I think everyone should read it because I don't know, it's rare to read it on its account of addiction and of recovery and of a human story about a family and love.

Author of the bestselling memoir, Beautiful Things, happily married to Melissa, and you're a father of five children.

I wrote a book about it and then paid my taxes with penalties and interest.

Hunter Biden's memoir Beautiful Things seeks to tell just where he's been. After these pictures I don't want to know where he's been and you should neither.

He was actively in and out of inpatient rehab, failing, snorting cocaine off of everything he could get his hands on, smoking crack.

He wrote to his family about dad and how I have to carry the family and dad makes me take 50 percent and give it to him.

This is, I guess, Fox News as left wing host Brian Stelter gushed. It was extraordinary and breathtaking.

Stelter teased the segment about Biden's new memoir, Beautiful Things, by claiming the real human being who differs from the caricature of the president's son would be revealed in the book.

Real, real human, beautiful things. Extraordinary. Just breathtaking. Just the name alone. What a bunch of hippie crap. All this stuff is.

It was fall of 2018, he applied for a gun. You got a permit and you don't give the guns to the drug addicts. That's one of the good policies here in the United States.

He writes, 'I had returned to the East Coast that fall of 2018 after my most recent relapse in California with the hope of getting clean through a new therapy and reconciling with Hallie.'

Neither happened. Okay, so he's saying he had the hope of getting clean. So he wasn't clean. He was using and he did not get clean.

Just like in California, like practically anywhere else I'd landed since this long bad dream began, each new day looked exactly like the one before it. Nothing occurred on a traditional wake up, go to sleep continuum.

If I knew my crack connection, I would start making arrangements to buy from him as soon as I neared the end of my stash, he wrote.

Hunter Biden, you may forget he dropped a book not long after this. He dropped a book and went on a book tour after the suppression of a laptop stories and people knew it was bubbling.

It's not like they're hiding him and he's been it's incredible.

He finally came out. He finally came out of the basement where his other base, all the Biden's have been in a basement.

And he finally comes out. And can you imagine as a reporter how you'd be salivating over the opportunity to finally get to ask him?

And this instead.

Hunter Biden wrote a book and is doing interviews everywhere.

Hunter's own book described this 7-Eleven as a regular haunt for crack dealers.

So Hunter Biden has now put out a book. Okay, his book is an attempt to cash in on the fact that he is a garbage human.

And the media are like, whoa, same media saying it was a non-story. Now they're like, he has a new book out and you know it's a moving and wonderful book.

Not that Hunter Biden is a scuzz bucket who just picked up $2 million advance from Simon and Schuster for basically lying about his own history.

I bought crack cocaine on the streets of Washington, D.C. and cooked up my own inside a hotel bungalow in Los Angeles. I've been so desperate for a drink that I couldn't make the one block walk between a liquor store in my apartment without uncapping the bottle to take a swig.

He's dealt with drug addiction Publicly, he's written about that in a book.

smoking drugs and making arrangements to buy drugs at the exact time that he was buying the gun.

It felt like a lie so brazen that it wasn't a lie. It's like we have photos of him doing things wrong all the time. It's in his book. He wrote about it in his book.

And Lowell, his defense attorney was like, well, because the book came out 21. His his mindset at that state is not the same as his his his mindset 2018.

So he really didn't think of himself as an addict. And so when they asked him on this forum or you would take.

During opening statements, they have sorry, guys, I spent a lot of time reading about this this week. They have you know, the prosecutors played clips from his autobiography, which he narrated describing his life and drug addiction.

Traction's 2021 memoir beautiful things He admitted to crashing a Buick Verrano while speeding through Palm Springs During another drug bender in October 2016 wait and don't speed in the book Hunter wrote that he was high for 12 consecutive days Before entering an Arizona rehab

President Biden's son Hunter is out with a new memoir. It's called Beautiful Things and largely recounts his life in the most recent years and his battles with addiction.

Ron, you read the book, you reviewed it for NPR. And one of the things you note in your review is just how severe Hunter Biden's addiction was and how it's almost kind of a miracle that he's even still alive to write this book.

There's one point in the book where he describes how he woke up while he had been binging and woke up in midair behind the wheel of a car he had been driving. And he realizes that he has left the road and that he is airborne.

In Hunter Biden's memoir, it does give us at least his view of his family and specifically his father. It is hard to imagine a more admiring portrait.

One thing I thought about as I read part of the book is just maybe it speaks to how common addiction is as a problem in American family life, because Joe Biden is certainly not the first president to deal very publicly with an immediate family member with a drug dependency issue.

It's called Beautiful Things and largely recounts his life in the most recent years and his battles with addiction.

One of the things you note in your review is just how severe Hunter Biden's addiction was and how it's almost kind of a miracle that he's even still alive to write this book.

There's one point in the book where he describes how he woke up while he had been binging and woke up in midair behind the wheel of a car. He had been driving and he realizes that he has left the road and that he is airborne and he lands and rolls to a stop in the median strip of a freeway.

So there's a lot in the book about the depths of this addiction. First to alcohol, then to cocaine.

And in Hunter Biden's memoir, it does give us at least his view of his family and specifically his father, Joe Biden. It is hard to imagine a more admiring portrait.

That came out as kind of like, hey, if you think that he was living in this house, that's the same residence of the president of the United States of America, you know, in Delaware, you're wrong.

The plea agreement said during the time, and it also came out afterwards, Senator, that in his own book that Hunter Biden wrote, he also said in his book that he was living in California at the time that wire transfer would have come through.

He wrote a book talking about feeling as if you're above the law.

He wrote a book laying out in explicit detail all of his drug addictions.

They played his audio book at the trial, Buck.

You tell on yourself to such an extent that they play your own recording of your audio book as evidence against you to confirm that you committed multiple felonies.

He wrote a book talking about feeling as if you're above the law.

He wrote a book laying out in explicit detail all of his drug addictions.

They played his audio book at the trial, Buck.

He wrote about it in a 2021 memoir and excerpts from the audio book were even used as evidence against him during the trial.

Hunter Biden in his own book talked about, you know, going and dealing drugs at the 7-11 or purchasing drugs at that local 7-11.

And there's no actual proof that he was, you know, buying drugs at that 7-11.

They believed that he was essentially doing a drug deal because Hunter said so in his book.

And so it's really prosecution is really driving home this picture of Hunter Biden, which, quite frankly, he paints himself publicly in the book that he wrote.

I've never read a memoir like this one before. This is Hunter Biden's book, Beautiful Things. It's breathtaking.

And who has written a book about his struggles, who has been open about it.

And they used his texts, dozens of his texts around the time he purchased the gun. Texts that prosecutors said suggested he was out buying drugs. For example, I'm at the 7-11. Prosecutors said it was consistent with his practice of going to this particular 7-11 to buy drugs. So they really had a very buttoned down closing argument. All the corners neatly folded in.

And he certainly relapsed as he admitted in his memoir.

But like a lot of addicts, when they go to rehab, when they get clean for a while. They're ecstatic and they feel, that's it, I've done it. It's behind me. And that's their case, that he was in that moment and sincerely believed he was not addicted to drugs.

And from his own audio book recording of his memoir, "Beautiful Things." In all of this evidence which came in through this FBI agent, Hunter Biden, because this is part of his recovery, comes clean about his addiction, that he was wildly addicted to crack cocaine. It really is so intense to hear it.

Some of that comes from his own book.

Hunter Biden's lawyer, Abby Lowell, who's a very accomplished defense lawyer, makes that argument explicit in his closing argument saying, you know, what he is talking about in his book is his psychology, his personal journey.

And that's very different from the elements of a crime that the government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

I mean, it's part of the language and the rhetoric of therapy that you use in Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous.

I mean, people will say years after they have been dry, right? It's part of the method of treatment and rehabilitation.

I think it's fair to say that because it's unusual it is something that could have some political undertones.

rarely do you have a situation where a defendant has written a book that anyone has read about his drug use during this particular time or you know has created his own evidence in the form of photographs or well text messages and photographs on social media that's something that the government and police mine all the time with a lot of success I can't tell you how many defendants get themselves convicted because of what they post on social media or text message or even from a prison phone call I've often said I can barely remember the old days I don't know how we convicted anyone before text messages you're so right and you know it's interesting because I first started noticing it in my juvenile cases you know many many years ago that's when that evidence started coming in because they were the early users of things like social media and text messaging and pretty quickly it spread to everybody but emails have been convicting people for a long time so I guess you could say that the government has been aided by some unusual evidence here which would be Hunter's book and a whole lot of evidence of his crack cocaine use but yes I mean I think just the real awkwardness for lack of a better word of this prosecution in that it's just rare to see someone with some the government put on evidence that someone is just addicted as opposed to possession of drugs the existence of drugs the existence of a firearm the operability of a firearm so that has been unusual and I think it's fair to say that because it's unusual it is something that could have some political undertones.

but the testimony has been both from Hunter Biden's own book and from various people with whom he had relationships that he was basically non-stop smoking crack at one point he was buying powder cocaine and he didn't trust his dealer so he was he was cooking it into crack himself and and we're not talking about marijuana we're not talking about you know some other lesser substance we're talking about literally crack cocaine on a regular basis in and around the time that the gun was purchased if not on that particular day fair fair