Ben Schreckinger - The Bidens

In the summer of 2019 I set out with a vague notion of profiling Hunter Biden, who was then beginning to attract media attention. My initial research quickly led me instead to a more investigative story for Politico Magazine about Hunters business ventures, those of his uncle Jim Biden, and the ways in which they intersected with Joe Bidens political career and public office.

There are more fun ways to spend a summer than digging through documents and piecing together old newspaper clippings in order to assemble a story about a sensitive, contentious topic, and I assumed this first piece on the Biden family would also be my last.

But between the time I started working on that piece and the time it was published, new allegations from Jims former business partners had emerged in a lawsuit in Tennessee that fit the pattern I had documented. From there, I received a steady trickle of new tips and leads related, primarily, to the business ventures and finances of Biden relatives.

Soon, Donald Trumps ham-handed efforts to pressure Ukrainian authorities into investigating the Bidens came to light and the topic of the familys business dealings suddenly became central to a presidential impeachment. Then, Joe staged a dramatic comeback in the Democratic primary and won the presidency, even as Trump sought to make Hunter an issue in the race.

The Bidens, and the efforts of Trumps allies to sully them, became my de facto beat.

We live in an age of distrust and of coordinated campaigns to manipulate public opinion. Readers have every right to wonder whether an extended inquiry into the Biden family, emphasizing its finances, is just some instrument of a broader effort to create a political narrative. After all, as this book covers, there really was a conspiracy against the Bidens, or several loosely aligned conspiracies.

When I started to publish articles about the Bidens, I received a fair number of offers of professional opposition research. Mostly, the research I was offered amounted to compilations of old, unflattering news articles. These could provide useful context but were hardly the stuff of a masterful information campaign.

Instead, almost all my reporting resulted from my own research or tips from regular people. One article did result primarily from a piece of professional opposition research, though even that required weeks worth of additional reporting.

At times, I struggled to reconcile the folksy image of the Bidens that had become familiar to me as a news consumer and young journalist during the Obama era with the messier portrait that emerged from my recent reporting for Politico.

This book, which grows out of that reporting, represents my attempt to grapple with the Bidens storyan epic saga of an American political familyin its entirety. To understand any world leader it is helpful to understand their family, but I believe that in Joe Bidens case it is more crucial than in most.

Because both the campaign controversies and my own reporting dealt with the Bidens finances, this telling of their story includes a special emphasis on that subject and the ethical questions raised by it. Journalists have produced reams of excellent reporting about the ethical problems posed by the Trumps finances, which in many cases were more direct, more clear-cut, and on a grander scale than the issues raised here. This book does not deal with that subject in any depth other than to note it undermined Trumps ability to make a convincing case against his opponent.

At the highest levels, even the appearance of a conflict of interest or of special treatment threatens to undermine public faith in government. Did any of the Bidens activities go further and create undue influence, allow hostile actors to compromise a member of the first family, or otherwise cross ethical lines? Joe has maintained that he has never discussed his relatives business dealings with them, and several of those relatives have repeatedly denied allegations that they used their family connections for profit.

I believe that reasonable people may reach different conclusions about the motives of the people depicted in this book and about the significance of the episodes described.

I also believe that the best way to understand people in power, and subjects of international controversy, is to attempt a thorough, timely examination, provide context, and lay out the available evidence, though it may often be inconclusive and in places seem contradictory.

Too often people interpret the news of the day through the lens of their own political sympathies, and a more nuanced understanding of our leaders emerges only much later, when political pressures have eased.

This phenomenon seems to have gotten worse during the Trump era. In response to destabilizing social forces, a president who frequently spouted falsehoods, and a deluge of online information, Americans retreated into competing, inconsistent versions of reality (some more unhinged than others). As subjects like Donald Trumps relationship to Russia and the origins of COVID-19 illustrate, our understanding of complex stories often evolves with time, and many questions may not be definitively settled for years, if ever.

The Bidens story isnt over, but I hope that this early attempt at a holistic telling of that story will help people understand events from a common set of facts, even if it inevitably remains incomplete and open to multiple interpretations.