The Ups And Downs Of Hunter Biden's Career Throughout The Years

Hunter Biden is perhaps the most famous of all the modern political kids. Move aside, Chelsea Clinton. Talk to the hand, Eric Trump. Hunter's top of the bill. He was, at least, in the late 2010s and early 2020s. As a kind of Pavlovian response, the words "laptop" and "hard drive" became intrinsically linked with Hunter's name throughout the 2020 U.S. election and beyond, after he allegedly left a laptop containing incriminating information at a Delaware repair shop. It was such big news that Hunter Biden himself has opened up about one of his biggest controversies.

Naturally, these headline-grabbing stories, as well as the tragic details in Hunter Biden's family life, hindered his career. From finding high-paying work to family bereavements to being fired (more than once), his life and career have been a rollercoaster to say the least. But in his 2021 memoir "Beautiful Things," the Wilmington native said such ups and downs are as inevitable as death or taxes. "Pain is our universal condition," he wrote. "People can go through life without finding love, but no one lives for long without experiencing real hurt. It can connect us or it can isolate us. I vacillated between the two."

There have been many frustrating, controversial, and occasionally, happy events in Hunter's career. But one thing's for sure, he's come a long way from his first job shoveling llama feces at Wilmington's Brandywine Zoo. So, let's take a look at his highs and lows.

When you think of college, you'll likely think of frat parties, sororities, and sports teams. But that wasn't quite the experience of Hunter Biden or his brother, Beau Biden, when they enrolled at Georgetown University in 1988. At Georgetown, Hunter worked jobs in events and meat-packing to pay for his stay while studying history. There's no rest (or gap year) for the wicked either, and after graduating in 1992, he moved straight to Portland to work in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Here, he met his first wife, Kathleen Buhle, whom he married in July 1993 and their firstborn arrived within the year. It's the stuff of a parent's dream, a hard worker who marries young, and the perfect start to adulting ... almost too perfect. Something had to be wrong somewhere, didn't it? Where's the catch?

Well, although Hunter Biden made a strong start to his adult life, he was beginning to suffer from addiction. While Joe Biden is famously a teetotaler, his son had begun drinking in his teens. During Hunter's time at Georgetown, he hit the bottle hard, and picked up smoking too. He even, on occasion, dabbled in cocaine and once even used crack. It's the stuff of a parent's nightmare, and these substances would go on to plague Hunter throughout his career.

"Unfortunately, no matter where I went to work, some people would make an issue of it," said Hunter Biden in 1996, as per Politico. Indeed, a family name can carry weight, and not least when you're a Biden. While to some joining the family business means running a convenience store or becoming a Hollywood A-Lister, to Hunter, it was laced with suggestions of political meddling because he got a gig at MBNA America. That bank was a major funder of his father's political campaigns. Cue the queries.

"Certainly lots of children of influential parents end up in very good jobs. But the Biden case is troubling," wrote Byron York in 1998, as per The New Yorker, while Hunter was a senior vice president at MBNA. "After all, this is a senator who for years has sermonized against what he says is the corrupting influence of money in politics." It was the first time, but not the last, in his career that Hunter's credentials would be brought into question. In much the same way every action has an equal and opposite reaction; every politician's child that gets a high-paying job is put under scrutiny. 

Before joining MBNA, he was due to move with his wife, Kathleen Buhle, to Chicago and strike out on his own. But those plans changed once he got an eye-watering, lucrative offer from the bank. In turn, they settled in the Biden stronghold of Delaware. Hunter's decision to join MBNA set a precedent for him to use his family name to earn money throughout his career.

After leaving MBNA America with two years as a senior vice president, Hunter Biden briefly worked in Washington. Then, in 2001, he co-founded the lobbying firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair. It was a stratospheric rise, from a broke 25-year-old saddled with debts to having an eponymous and influential business in a matter of five years.

However, the new millennium was also when his addiction issues began to affect his career. Biden was known for going over the limit after his 9-5, but he'd also began to hit the bottle at work parties and dinners. "When I found myself making the decision to have another drink or get on a train, I knew I had a problem," Biden told The New Yorker retrospectively in 2019. Encouraged by his wife, Biden attempted to kick the bottle in the early aughts. "I wouldn't drink for 30 days, but, on day 31, I'd be right back to it," he added. In September 2003, Biden admitted himself to rehab.

In addition to his addiction issues, in the mid-2000s, lawmakers were becoming increasingly suspicious of lobbying. In turn, some of his multi-million dollar business deals fell through and he was even sued by a former partner. With things taking a turn for the worse, the then-lobbyist needed something new.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

In September 2008, Barack Obama, who was then running for president with Joe Biden as his vice, announced that Hunter Biden had quit his job as a lobbyist. It's not every day a major politician becomes your de facto HR manager. But with Hunter's clients including online gambling websites, which were a major political football at the time, it's easy to see why Obama's campaign wanted to put a pin in the controversy.

"[Hunter] worked on the House side to encourage introduction of a bill that would clarify that online gaming sites like those operated by PartyGaming would not have liability for operating," said the Obama campaign spokesman David Wade in light of the announcement (via The New York Times). "End of story." But this time, the Biden name had caused him to lose a job rather than gain one.

It wasn't a surprise for Hunter, however. "I wanted my father to have a clean slate," he told The New Yorker. "I didn't want to limit him in any way." Subsequently, he turned his attentions further afield.

Although he required two waivers (one for his age and another for a historic drug incident), at age 40, in front of his then vice-president father, Hunter Biden joined the U.S. Navy in May 2013. But despite pledging his allegiance to the flag in front of his dad, it only took Hunter a matter of months to get kicked out.

While some on social media suggested Hunter was handed a dishonorable discharge, that wasn't quite the case. Instead, it was an administrative one. In June, Hunter turned up to his Virginia-based job like it was any other day. However, he was drug tested. The results came back positive for cocaine, according to a report from The New York Times. He was subsequently dismissed. Dishonorable or not, it was a black mark against the Biden name, so much so that Donald Trump used the event against Joe Biden in a 2020 presidential debate. 

"It was the honor of my life to serve in the U.S. Navy, and I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge," Hunter said in a statement from his lawyer after getting discharged (via ABC News). "I respect the Navy's decision. With the love and support of my family, I'm moving forward." This career low would cause Hunter to turn his attentions to even further fields.

In 2013, even prior to joining the Navy, Hunter Biden was already making moves in foreign lands. He set up a fund, known as BHR, which would make investments in all sorts of foreign businesses, from Congolese cobalt mines to Chinese car batteries, and turn them into money-makers. Then, after being released by the American armada, Biden turned his attentions to Europe and became a member of the board of directors at Ukraine's biggest private gas producer, Burisma Holdings. Biden was in his Pitbull-era, his Mr. Worldwide-era. 

These career moves provided a boon for Biden. In 2016, his firm's investment in electric vehicles proved prophetic, with the aforementioned company becoming the world's biggest car battery manufacturer. Another Chinese revenue stream, as reported by the New York Post, saw Biden earn $10 million annually over three years just for networking. In Ukraine, his work was similarly lucrative, earning him $1.2 million in 2014. Not bad gigs at all. However, given his political name, this business abroad garnered a lot of scrutiny.

The late 2010s were as messy personally as they were professionally for Hunter Biden. Personally, there were the soap opera-esque stories of Hunter Biden's secret daughter, Navy, and her mother, and the red flags in Hunter Biden and Melissa Cohen's marriage. But professionally, it was more of a political conspiracy thriller à la "The Parallax View." While Joe Biden was on the presidential campaign trail in 2019, he faced many questions about his son's business abroad. Although Joe suggested that any allegations of wrongdoing were false, his presidential election opponent, Donald Trump, didn't see it the same way.

"Joe Biden promised Ukraine a billion dollars if they fired the prosecutor investigating his son's company," claimed a Trump campaign video on YouTube posted in 2019. But it wasn't only Trump; suspicions about Hunter were also growing online. "Why isn't the media camped outside of Biden HQ demanding answers?" asked the late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk on X in 2019 regarding Hunter's business in China. "Hunter Biden is a corruption magnet," wrote another on X in the same year. What began as a serious overseas money-maker for Hunter had turned into an unwanted media circus, and it didn't end there.

In October 2019, Hunter Biden left BHR after there was no uptick in scrutiny from Joe Biden's political opponents. In fact, Hunter, via his lawyer George Mesires, said he'd stop his overseas dealings completely if his old man took office. "Under a Biden Administration, Hunter will readily comply with any and all guidelines or standards a President Biden may issue to address purported conflicts of interest," said the statement, as per ABC News. "Hunter will agree not to serve on boards of, or work on behalf of, foreign-owned companies." Spoiler alert: Joe won the election.

Despite his son losing work, Joe was full of praise for Hunter and his words. "The statement my son put out today, which I saw when he put it out — I was told it was going to be put out, I did not consult with him about what's being put out — in fact represents the kind of man of integrity he is," said the 46th President (via The New York Times). "No one in my family or associated with me will be involved in any foreign operation whatsoever. Period, end of story." Oh, Icarus.

But it wasn't quite a period, more of an ellipsis. Hunter's alleged wrongdoing remained a stick with which Donald Trump used to beat the then-new Democratic president. All the while, at the time, there was no evidence proving Hunter's business abroad was illegitimate. It was a case of silver linings for Hunter: he was out of work, but his dad won the election.

In December 2020, shortly after Joe Biden won the presidency, Hunter was put under federal investigation and the powers that be were looking deeply into his foreign business dealings. So yeah, less a period and more an ellipsis. The investigation, which was finally released in 2025, ended up being an ellipsis so long it was like someone had their period key jammed.

"I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel ... that they are investigating my tax affairs," Hunter said in a 2020 statement (via CNN). "I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately." It was an investigation that went right to the very top, with the FBI believing that Hunter's foreign business dealings had flaunted money laundering laws and even raised the counterintelligence alarm. 

Things didn't look good for Hunter. Indeed, the investigation found that Hunter dodged tax payments and, in no uncertain terms, broke the law. Ironically, despite the spotlight Joe's presidential campaign put on his son's money-making endeavors, Hunter got off easy because his father won. In 2025, a month before handing the White House keys over to Donald Trump, Joe gave Hunter a presidential pardon and kicked his son's prison time to the curb.

While the aforementioned investigation was ongoing, Hunter Biden was still able to diversify his income streams, this time, as an author. To say his memoir, "Beautiful Things," was tell-all would be an understatement. Hunter waxed poetic about everything from buying crack cocaine on the streets of Washington to the heartbreaking story of Joe Biden's first wife. Everything, except, his work life came up. Regarding the thorny issue of his work in foreign lands, Hunter remained pretty tight-lipped, or should we say keyboard shy?

"The episode that led to the impeachment of a president and landed me in the heart of the decade's biggest political fable is most remarkable for its epic banality," he wrote. Before adding, matter-a-factly, that he stayed within the bounds of the law. "I did nothing unethical, and have never been charged with wrongdoing."

More interestingly, however, he shed light on how the Biden name had affected his career. "I've worked for someone other than my father, rose and fell on my own," he claimed in the book. "There's no question my last name was a coveted credential." How did this coveted surname affect Hunter? "My response has always been to work harder so that my accomplishments stand on their own." While the book may not have given many new details on the hoo-hah surrounding his career, it was still a success. The tome landed at fourth in The New York Times bestseller charts upon its release and continued to shift units years after it hit shelves. Heck, even horror genre hall-of-famer Stephen King praised Hunter's writing. So, he found some success in his tragedy.

Despite denying legal wrongdoing, Hunter Biden's time in law came to an end in December 2025. A judge disbarred him in Connecticut, in part, due to complaints made about the tax furor that saw him pardoned. But also for a conviction he earned when lying on a form while purchasing a firearm. Here's what a lawyer told us about the maximum sentence Hunter Biden could face for his gun conviction.

Biden consented to being disbarred in Connecticut (yet refused to admit to any criminality) and voluntarily surrendered his law license in Washington D.C. It was a sorry end to his law career, which had begun decades earlier after graduating from Yale Law School in 1997. But many online still questioned his credentials upon his disbarment, just as others had in the '90s. "The bigger question is how do people like Hunter and Kamala [Harris] to [sic] pass the bar to begin with?" asked one user on X. "No one is going to hire this guy as a lawyer anyway," said another on X. In 2025, even Joe Biden's former press secretary threw Hunter under the bus in a tell-all book.

It's like a storyline straight out of "Better Call Saul," but with slightly less guns. So, if you're looking for a lawyer in Connecticut or D.C., you'd better not call Hunter. His disbarment marked the end of a tragic chapter in his career.