The Shawn Ryan Show
#264 Hunter Biden - His Answer to the Laptop Claims, Burisma, White House Coke and Pardons
22 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
hunter biden welcome to the show man thanks man big fan i can't believe you're a fan why i don't know it's just it's just i just never it just it's wild to me that you're a fan yeah man i'm finding so i mean i pretty much interviewed almost everybody that's on the Trump admin now. And, uh, that kind of... I think people may... I don't know.
People got maybe the wrong impression of me that I agree with everything that that side of the aisle says, and I don't. But, um, but... You know, we did. I'm going to get you in trouble. I got the exact opposite impression. Right on. But yeah, I don't know. There's just some, you know who else? Elizabeth Warren's team listens to my show a lot. That really, really surprised me. Okay.
So here's why.
Is that you're a great listener. and i think that the uh the authentic way in which you listen and respond leads me to believe that um that you're just open like you're open to information and you're not judging it as it's coming over the transom unless it's just outrageous you know um or somebody's being uh
hateful or or lying and sincere and you know i say to those guys out there i watch you do the um i've watched everything not everything but i've watched a lot of really do i you know i i listen to you while i paint and um and uh
the the thing that always comes across to me with you is that fundamentally you have like a core set of beliefs of values and um and they're the same values i have i mean and maybe that's a shock or a surprise but you know i was saying to you guys out there like we all think that you know, if you're Republican or Democrat, you know, that we got nothing in common.
I will tell you what, I was raised with my, my, what, what, what I, what I try to, you know, I mean, obviously I, I try and I've failed in many, in many respects. Um, and, uh,
and and failed in in my addiction and um and sometimes fail in my sobriety and being the man that i i aspire to be but i care about my family i care about my friends i care about my community i care about my country and i care about my faith and I'm, you know, maybe being presumptuous. I think that's what you care about.
And I don't mean that as, like, some saccharine bullshit, but our prescription of how to make all those things better may be different. You know? And those are the things that we used to argue about.
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Chapter 2: How does Hunter Biden view his public image and political affiliations?
Every one of us. And we are... Why are we all so mad at each other? I don't understand. Politics never used to be like this. It didn't be like... I'll tell you why. Where's my phone? Pick up your phone, man. And then people are incentivized. People that we used to trust are incredibly incentivized in a very perverse way. to make me hate you, to label you, Sean. You're a vet, special ops.
You have an inside view of that. You have conservative values. And so therefore, you know, at one point or another, you supported, you know, some of the things that Donald Trump was saying and, you know, and the people that surrounded him. And so therefore, you know what you are? You're my fucking enemy. You're my enemy. I shouldn't be sitting here. You know what I mean? You're...
The one thing I've come to the conclusion of, because of my own experience, is to, oh, such a bunch of bullshit. Such a bunch of bullshit. I wish people would just wake up. I know, man. Wake up, man. Remember your neighbor. Remember your neighbor, who, by the way, may have voted for Donald Trump, but didn't vote for this. Didn't vote for this. Now I could have told him, maybe.
Do you know what I mean? But I am, I'm so, I saw one of your shows where you talked about like some days it feels like we're really on the verge of real violence. Not this, what do they call it, stochastic violence?
Not these kind of, the seemingly endless violence that we witness as it relates to what just happened to Rob Reiner, to his son, or what happened to Charlie Kirk, or what happened to the students of Brown University, or what happened to the people celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach. You know, and by the way, that was all what, except for Charlie Kirk, within the past day,
But beyond that violence, I saw you talking to somebody about it. Like, are we going to be picking up guns?
Well, I think what you're referring to is, you know, you see all this talk about revolution, you know, civil war, all this type of shit. And, I mean, if you think about, you know, how would you destroy the United States of America? I mean, I don't think that you destroy it by...
kinetic war i don't think you nuke it i don't think you send in troops i don't think you you know do a naval battle you divide them because i mean there are more guns in this country and i'm a gun order and i'm a fucking pro 2a guy don't ever try to take my damn guns but yeah
You know, but I mean, there are so many here that if there was an adversary that was successful in dividing us so much so that it actually ended up in kinetic war, nobody could come in. You can't even send a country to come in here to aid because there are so, I mean, there are so many fucking guns. And I spent 14 years in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, all over the Middle East.
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Chapter 3: What personal experiences shaped Hunter Biden's perspective on addiction and recovery?
Let me give you an example, and I know that we're not, like... The one thing I promised myself that I wouldn't do is, like... I think people are so sick, like, who gives a shit what Hunter Biden thinks about politics right now? And, um... But I can tell you just from my... I can only talk about it from my personal experience. And being witness to it in a very intimate way.
And being a victim of it in some ways. Not a victim of it, that's a pretty lame way to say it. Being trapped by it, caged by it in many ways. Not by any choice of my own. The president just put out that tweet, okay, or whatever they call it, about Robin Reiner, okay? And there's somebody trying to break down the... I don't know what the fuck that was.
They're storming the gates. They know I'm in here. They're going to rip you off air. Yeah.
Well, anyway... The president put out that true social thing. And everybody's like, God, it's just in such horrible taste. And beneath the president, you know, he's basically blaming Rob Reiner's murder and his wife Michelle's murder on the fact that he is a Trump derangement syndrome. Mm-hmm. Everybody says, you know, it's just like, has he lost his mind?
Does he have, you know, dementia and this and that? And, you know, he's... And I think he knows exactly what he's doing. What he's doing is this. What he's always done is he's given people permission structure. Rob Reiner died violently because he opposed me. And I wish his family well, rest in peace. That's what he's saying. And in so doing, I think what he's basically saying is, you know what?
Like, stand in my way, and this is what happens. And so 90% of people, I really believe 90% of people, even his supporters, 90% of his supporters goes like, oh, why did you say that? That's so cruel. 10%? What they hear is he got what he deserved. And I see him do that over and over again. And it really worries me. And by the way,
I'm not saying that there aren't people on the left that do the same goddamn thing. And it is, you know, it turns my stomach then. Yeah, it really is. The difference is the president. The president has a responsibility. I think the most important responsibility of a president is not the, you know, other than, you know, the question of, you know,
the deployment of force is the tone that he sets for the country. More than any law, more than anything, it's just the tone that he sets.
I'm with you. I mean, it's, you know, it's... It does, though, comes from, you know, it's not just him. It, you know, I mean, with the Charlie Kirk stuff and with the, you know, other assassination attempt on him and Butler, which actually they shut down the investigation on that for whatever reason. I don't know why you wouldn't want to know who tried to fucking kill you, but...
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Chapter 4: How did Hunter Biden's early experiences shape his path to addiction?
And I thought I was going to go into the Peace Corps. And another guy that I was friends with, Bill Watson, another Jesuit priest, this is a young, really brilliant guys, you know, PhDs in philosophy and just amazing, amazing individuals, really dynamic people that have lived all over the world.
And he suggested that I not go, there's no need to go outside of the United States, just that if I wanted to serve, there was plenty of communities to serve here. And so I did the Jesuit Domestic Volunteer Corps, the JVC, Northwest. I ended up in, I was supposed to go to Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington State. And I ended up going to Portland, Oregon and ran an emergency services center.
for people that basically, families that didn't have enough money to turn on their utilities, to turn on the lights or the gas or, you know, people with small, or groceries. And I was, you know, I sat in the basement of a, St. Vincent de Paul Church in, you know, off Martin Luther King Avenue in northwest Portland.
And people would come in and I'd figure out how to get them groceries or go advocate for them to get their, you know, their utilities turned back on or make sure their kids could get to somewhere with heat until we figured it out. and then I did that for a year, and that's where I met my first wife, and we had Naomi shortly after that.
How'd you meet her?
Yeah, she was also a volunteer. She was in there. Yeah, and then Naomi, and then I, kind of realized that we're about to have a baby, and $80 a month wasn't going to cut it. That's what you made as a volunteer. Now you got to live rent-free in a house with other volunteers, but you got $80 a month, and everybody pulled their money for groceries.
And even in 1992, $80 a month was pretty... Pretty rough, huh? Pretty rough. But it was amazing, it was an amazing experience. And, but then I went to, I decided I needed to go to law school, to go back to school. And so I went to, I applied to two places. My brother was at Syracuse and I applied to Syracuse because they had a famous program for, writing program at Syracuse.
And two schools, one was University of Iowa, program and Syracuse's program. And so I got into that writing program. But then I also got into Georgetown Law School and Duke. And I didn't know how I would be able to have a baby. I was 23. I thought I got to be near family. And so we went to DC and I went to law school. And then I transferred because I didn't get into Yale.
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Chapter 5: What factors contributed to Hunter Biden's decision to enter rehab?
when I first applied, but the dean had told me that if I do really well in my first year, I would make it to I could I could apply to transfer. And so like I got in, I was one of ten people, I don't know, like 5000 to apply to transfer, but I did really well. And I had my I had Naomi
On the day of my last exam, December 21st, my civil procedure exam, and Professor Abernathy let me out of the exam to go have the baby. No kidding. Yeah. And I took it after Christmas. Right on. But I did well. And then I went to Yale, and we lived in a basement apartment on Court Street.
And I think we're the only, I'm the only person that got to cut the line at Sally's Pizza because Flo, who's the famous Flo who sat at this famous pizza place in New Haven, who has the best pizza in the world. I mean, I look like a kid. I mean, when I was 23 years old, walking around with Naomi, I mean, I went everywhere with her. And yeah, I mean, I looked like I was 16.
People used to stop us all the time and go, now, when you get home, tell your parents.
that your little sister needs to do this, that, or the other thing.
How old is she now? She's 31, and she just had my, not just 10 months ago, 11 months ago, she had Willie, my grandson. Congratulations. Yeah, man. How is it being a granddad? It's the best. It's incredible. Yeah. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: How does Hunter Biden view his relationship with his daughters after his struggles?
It's, uh, and she's the best. I mean, she's, um, she's an incredibly accomplished woman. Her husband is, uh, I love a lot. And, um, and, uh, he's a public defender. He served in, uh, he was an active duty JAG officer for, uh, for about two years when he got out of law school. And he's in the reserves now. And, um,
and he's now a public defender in LA, and Naomi's a fifth-year associate in a big law firm. Yeah. Where do we go from here? Well, after that, I had a decision to make. and I had a lot of debt. And so I had my law school debt and I had my college debt. And so, and at the time, I remember it was like $140,000, you know, between law school and college.
And Georgetown, because I'd taken out loans to go for both. My dad couldn't afford it. I remember my dad gave me the, for my first semester, he gave me the check. It was $7,500 for my first semester at Georgetown. And he said, this was more money than I think, than my entire college and law school combined. It was $7,500. And you think about it today. And that was my dad.
My dad had to, in order for us to do that, he, I remember distinctly, he bought an old property in Wilmington, in this little part of Wilmington called Greenville. And he beat up a house, a beautiful house, but he bought it for like $100,000, but it had like five acres. And so, like, he sold off pieces of property to pay for, you know, my first year of college. But then we took out loans.
And so then I was married, and then I had law school loans. And the only way I was living off of it was the money I would make as a summer associate. So when I was getting out of law school, what I thought I would do is to spend a few years and do what a lot of people that I was working with then, is instead of going to the public service directly, is go work in the banking world.
And I was gonna go work, I got an offer from Goldman Sachs and a bunch of other, and I couldn't see how I'd live in New York City with a baby. Just didn't, I mean, and I met somebody in Delaware that was running a big bank there, and they convinced me to go work in Delaware. And then I went to work for a bank in Delaware, and I was in their executive management program.
And after about two years of it, I was like, I couldn't do it. Not because it was a wonderful place to work, but it's just like my heart was in it. And so I went down and I served in the Clinton administration the last two years of it. And I was executive director of e-commerce policy for the Department of Commerce, when they used to call it e-commerce. How was that? It was a great experience.
I worked for Bill Daley for two years. And... And I traveled the world with them, and e-commerce at the time was a new thing, and there were real questions about privacy, a lot of stuff that still hasn't been resolved to this day. But it was a big job, and my title was a lot bigger than my ability to affect anything, but it was a great learning experience.
You know, when you were growing up, especially, I don't know, maybe from teenage years on, I mean, your dad's a senator, you know, and I would imagine that a lot of people would try to use your dad's kids to get to him? For example, the bank that you worked out, I know I have that they were a major donor to your dad's campaigns.
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Chapter 7: What personal experiences does Hunter Biden share about addiction and recovery?
uh respect for um in reverence for the the plant medicine time i tried to ayahuasca um in a different environment for the same purpose and had a very very very horrible dark experience but i came to it with a very um uh
the insincere intentions intentions um uh and both ostensibly in an attempt to um find sobriety i think that there is so much incredible promise in uh in some of these um plant medicines as it relates to people that suffer from ptsd particularly in the studies that they've done in the communities. I know that you talked to Governor Newsom about that, and they're making some real inroads. But...
But just all I can talk about it is from the personal experience and how it informs me as like, you know, what was the thing that made me ready? I don't know. The combination of attempts that I made that all led up to me being open and willing to like look in Melissa's eyes and when she said, this ends now, to say okay to a stranger.
and put myself at the mercy of someone to trust that they are going to help me do the hard work. But anyway, I think people are desperate to be connected. And I think that that is both a beautiful thing and one of the things that has exposed people to and made them very easy targets, including myself, to the algorithms that I use.
you know bent to the to the need to be a part of something easiest thing to be a part of is um is uh is hate you know it's the easiest thing it's really easy to get um people to to band together to uh to blame somebody else, whether it's a group or an individual. You know? And that's why I give people a real break, and I kind of understand.
Like, I can imagine I don't read the comments anymore, but... I was in... I'll give you an example. Bowie was about... Not about... He was a year and a couple months old, or a few months old, and it was Halloween of 2021. And so he's like this big, and he's in one of those zip-up Chewbacca costumes. He was the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life. And we went with Melissa
Beau and my father-in-law, who was visiting from South Africa, and my mother-in-law had just passed three months earlier to glioblastoma, like my brother did, almost exactly five years apart from my brother, six. And, um... And Lee, my father-in-law, we went to this little place in Cornell, which is like in the mountains behind Malibu. And I mean, you know, it's rural.
I mean, it's as rural as out here, that part of California. And there's this little place, the outdoor seating. And it was like that, you know, the in-between time with COVID. And I put Bowie on my shoulders and it's one of those beautiful, it's Halloween day. And it's like around four o'clock. It's a magnificently beautiful fall day. And we're walking to the car.
and this couple comes bursting around the side of the restaurant because all the tables were outside. And the woman has a phone out, she's filming me, with just rays in her eyes. And the guy, who's about my size, gets this far from me, which means he's this far from a one and a half year old. It's like the most peaceful thing you've ever seen in your life.
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Chapter 8: How does Hunter Biden address the accusations surrounding the laptop and its implications?
out in California right now in a federal penitentiary. They blow the whole thing up. But that's what they do. Anyway, I guess my whole point, and I'm now talking too much and losing the train of thought, is that... people are desperate for connection and when they find connection in a cause of a common enemy they feel a part of something.
And what we've given each other, not you and me, but this country that we live in right now, all we've given each other is people to think of as enemies. And it makes me really, and I don't mean this in any saccharine way, it is probably the most
devastating, emotionally devastating thing other than the death of a family that I've experienced in my life is a feeling that this thing that my family has given 50 years of our life to is... I'm about to lose it. I really feel that and I don't think that that's kind of, you know, melodrama.
know i listen to you and i listen to other people that are on the other side of this that that say the same thing and i kind of look at them and i think like god can you not see that we're trying to figure out the same thing can you not see the humanity in me because i'm not the person that high school that eighth grade teacher
informed by Alex Jones and You know Jesse waters would have you believe that I am promise you I'm not Spend a minute Because those motherfuckers they got one thing that they're doing they're making money as We all suffer They are just laughing all the way to the bank.
Yeah.
That's a damn shame.
You know, driving with a friend of mine. He's a really close friend. He's had some real health problems. And I came back in Delaware and I took him out to lunch. And we drove by one of those like huge American flags. And they used to fill me with an enormous sense of pride. And driving by it, and he goes, he goes, Jesus Christ. And I don't know of anybody that's more patriotic than this person.
He's like, makes me cry.
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