World: Florida political group defends its ties with Russia after FBI alleges they teamed up with Kremlin agents in a 'brazen' attempt to interfere with US elections

Joe Biden was sworn into office for a Delaware Senate seat in a Wilmington, Delaware, hospital where his two young sons, Hunter and his brother Beau, were taken after being severely injured in a car accident that killed Biden's wife and baby daughter, Naomi, in 1972.

The senator's daily 90-minute train commute to Washington, DC, and back to Delaware to care for his sons earned him the nickname "Amtrak Joe."

Biden later married Jill Jacobs, Hunter and Beau's stepmother, in 1977. The brothers' half-sister, Ashley, was born on June 8, 1981.

Nikolai Patrushev — a longtime Putin ally — would 'almost certainly' replace Putin if he falls ill, predicts former British intelligence chief

Speculation over a possible Putin replacement has surged in recent months amid conflicting reports that the president's health could be in decline.Speculation over a possible Putin replacement has surged in recent months amid conflicting reports that the Russian leader's health could be in decline. Kremlin insiders have even quietly begun discussing potential successors in case Putin is forced out over the Ukrainian invasion or succumbs to a hypothetical illness, according to reports.

Hunter Biden studied at Georgetown University and graduated in 1992. It was while earning his undergraduate history degree that he began to differ from his teetotaler father as he began to ramp up his social drinking habit into smoking Marlboro Reds and occasionally using cocaine, according to a 2019 interview with The New Yorker.

After graduation, he spent a year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, working in Portland, Oregon, before graduating from Yale Law School in 1996.

Hunter Biden bought a historic estate in Wilmington in 1997, where he lived with his wife, young daughters, and brother Beau. He assumed a role as an executive vice president at MBNA bank but later said he disliked the stiff corporate culture.

Isolation complication? US finds it's hard to shun Russia

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration likes to say Russia has become isolated internationally because of its invasion of Ukraine. Yet Moscow's top officials have hardly been cloistered in the Kremlin. And now, even the U.S. wants to talk. President Vladimir Putin has been meeting with world leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country is a NATO member. Meanwhile, his top diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, is jetting around the world, smiling, shaking hands and posing for photos with foreign leaders — including some friends of the U.S. And on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he wants to end months of top-level U.S.

"If you forgot to wear your MBNA lapel pin, someone would stop you in the halls," he later told The New Yorker.

His role at the bank raised eyebrows as MBNA was known as a massive donor to several of Joe Biden's campaigns over the years, but he stayed with the company for nearly five years.

In 1998, he reached out to William Oldaker, a Washington, DC-based lawyer who had worked on Joe Biden's 1987 presidential campaign about getting a job in President Bill Clinton's administration, according to The New Yorker.

CNN reported that Hunter Biden resigned from the firm when then-Sen. Barack Obama, who said he would refuse donations from lobbyists, asked Joe Biden to join his presidential ticket.

Hunter Biden later told The New Yorker that no one from the Obama campaign had directly told him to break his lobbying ties but that he knew "the writing was on the wall," so he resigned from the firm and from an unpaid seat on the Amtrak board in preparation for the election.

"I wanted my father to have a clean slate," Hunter Biden told the outlet. "I didn't want to limit him in any way."

In September 2008, Hunter Biden launched a consulting firm, Seneca Global Advisors, and in June 2009, Hunter cofounded the private-equity firm Rosemont Seneca Partners. The New Yorker said that through his companies and his partners, Hunter Biden established various business connections to figures in China and Russia.

His blooming international business relationships came to a head when his father adopted policy priorities to crack down on corruption in Ukraine, but he was not accused of any formal wrongdoing.

Reality of Ukraine war hidden from Fortress Russia

In the medieval town of Pskov, many are happy to believe the Kremlin's false portrayal of the war.An Orthodox priest in a gold embroidered vestment chants a prayer for Russia: "For our blessed country, its rulers and its army.

Hunter Biden's tumultuous personal life became tabloid fodder during and after his father's time with the administration.

He sparked confusion when he, then 44 years old, enlisted in the Navy Reserves in 2012, less than two years before reports broke that the Reserve discharged him in 2014 after he tested positive for cocaine.

Hunter Biden eventually confirmed the news and said in a statement that 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. I respect the Navy's decision. With the love and support of my family, I'm moving forward."

After tragedy struck the family through 46-year-old Beau Biden's death from cancer in 2015, Hunter Biden's personal life remained in the headlines.

After he divorced his first wife and the mother of his three daughters, Kathleen, the Biden family acknowledged he was dating Hallie Biden, Beau's widow.

Hunter Biden raised eyebrows with a candid New Yorker interview in which he said he spent the aftermath of his brother's death on a bender that included him buying crack from homeless people. He also said that he and Hallie Biden discovered they were "sharing a very specific grief" and spent a lot of time together in 2016 before they became a couple.

The couple apparently tried to keep the relationship secret, but the former vice president found out when Page Six called him for comment on a story on the relationship, after which he and Jill Biden issued a supportive statement.

"We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness," the statement said. "They have mine and Jill's full and complete support and we are happy for them."

Kremlin poker-faced on US swap offer to free Griner, Whelan

MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin warned Thursday that a possible prisoner swap with the United States involving American basketball star Brittney Griner needs to be negotiated quietly without fanfare. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that Washington had offered Russia a deal that would bring home Griner and another jailed American, Paul Whelan. A person familiar with the matter said the U.S. government proposed trading convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for Whelan and Griner.

It's unclear when Hunter and Hallie Biden stopped dating, but their breakup was reported in early May, shortly before TMZ reported the "secret" wedding between Hunter Biden and the South African model Melissa Cohen, which happened on May 16.

In May 2014, Hunter Biden signed on as a board member of Burisma Holdings, Ukraine's largest gas-production company. He found the company through his business contacts at a controversial time, and as part of the board's anti-corruption efforts, he recommended the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, where he was "a counsel."

A press release announced upon Hunter Biden's hiring said he was in charge of the company's international legal relations with different companies, but he later denied that characterization.

The appointment caused concerns as it came at a tense time between the White House and Russia over Ukraine and its energy dependence, sparking criticism that Hunter Biden's role with the energy giant was a blatant conflict of interest.

But the Bidens dismissed the controversy, telling media outlets that Hunter Biden is a private citizen and his business interests don't represent or affect the views of the government.

Within one month of his term on the board expiring, a bombshell New York Times story published on May 1 detailed Joe and Hunter Biden's ties to Ukraine and said the former vice president had successfully gotten a Ukrainian prosecutor removed from office.

The move raised questions about a possible conflict of interest and if Joe Biden was trying to shield his son from an investigation into the company, whose founder faced multiple investigations into allegations of tax evasion and money laundering.

The former vice president was reported to be just one part of a larger push coming from former President Obama's administration for the Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to be removed over concerns of corruption in his office. Joe Biden has since publicly detailed his threat to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees from the country if Shokin wasn't fired.

However, it's since been reported that there was not an active investigation into Hunter Biden when the former vice president made the push for Shokin's firing, and Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine's prosecutor general, later said that he had no evidence of wrongdoing against either Biden.

Despite the absence of proven wrongdoing by the Bidens, the back-and-forth has been used by the Trump administration to obscure Rudy Giuliani's communications with Ukraine that were made public earlier this year and the growing concern that Trump actively collaborated with a foreign power to gain political leverage.

Read more: The Joe and Hunter Biden Ukraine investigation, explained

On November 20, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported DNA tests had confirmed "with scientific certainty," that Biden was the father of a baby with a woman named Lunden Alexis Roberts.

Despite the timing of the news, Roberts told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in June that she didn't want to cause a media spectacle, nor for the news to interfere with Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

She filed for a paternity test and child support in May. In August, Biden denied the child was his, and asked the courts to dismiss Roberts' complaint, The Daily Beast Reported.

Since the baby's DNA has been confirmed, Biden hasn't commented publicly. But according to the court filing, he isn't expected to challenge the results or the process.

The court filing also pointed to the fact the Biden family is protected by the US Secret Service, indicating Biden's child might need the same protections.

Ashley and Hunter Biden delivered an emotional speech on the final night of the Democratic National Convention, where his father accepted the nomination for the Democratic presidential nominee.

"He's been a great father," Hunter Biden said. "And we think he'll be a great president," his sister followed. The two addressed the death of their older brother Beau, who introduced their father at the 2008 and 2012 conventions.

—ABC News (@ABC) August 21, 2020

The story claimed the Post had found a "smoking-gun email" detailing Hunter's contact with a Ukrainian official about meeting with his father. However, the article contained a number of red flags, including its sources behind these claims, and was immediately questioned by more reputable outlets.

But Republicans rallied behind the story as evidence of Biden's wrongdoing with his Ukrainian contacts. President Donald Trump used the story to claim discrimination against conservatives by Big Tech after Facebook and Twitter tamped down the story's spread.

Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani told The New York Times that he gave the New York Post a copy of a hard drive that led to its story on Hunter Biden because other news outlets would "spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out."

After the story was widely discredited, more than 50 former intelligence officials said in an open letter they were "deeply suspicious" that Russia could have been involved in the story, as the article's publishing had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."

NBC News reported shortly after the story was published that the FBI was investigating, but John Ratcliffe, Trump's director of National Intelligence, told Fox Business Network "there is no intelligence that supports" the claim that the laptop and emails are "part of a Russian disinformation campaign."

"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," he said in a statement.

The investigation into the younger Biden's tax affairs began in 2018 but was temporarily halted because of Justice Department rules barring prosecutors from taking actions that could influence the outcome of the election.

The federal probe is primarily related to his business dealings in China and is "looking at everything from taxes to potential violations of money laundering laws," CNN's Evan Perez told Jake Tapper.

In May, Hunter Biden had help from Hollywood entertainment attorney Kevin Morris to pay off $2 million in overdue taxes. The investigation into his tax affairs is still ongoing.

Hunter had his artwork displayed and auctioned at the gallery in the fall of 2021. Prices ranged from $75,000 to $500,000, according to a statement from Bergès, who represents him.

Some of Hunter's artwork is only display on his artist page on the Georges Bergès Gallery site.

Although the White House took steps to mitigate risks of ethical issues being raised over the sales, such as asking the gallery reject any suspicious offers and keeping the identities of bidders under wraps, some ethics officials expressed concern.

"Because we don't know who is paying for this art and we don't know for sure that [Hunter Biden] knows, we have no way of monitoring whether people are buying access to the White House," Walter Shaub, who headed the Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017, told The Washington Post.

Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush, told The Post: "The whole thing is a really bad idea.

"The initial reaction a lot of people are going to have is that he's capitalizing on being the son of a president and wants people to give him a lot of money. I mean, those are awfully high prices."

When asked in a podcast interview how he responds to critics who say his art is overpriced, Hunter responded, "Other than 'f--- 'em'?" Later in the interview, he told hosts Nate Freeman and Benjamin Godsill that he may be "the most famous artist in the MAGA world."

The conservative media outlet claimed that a password-protected iPhone XS backup was found on a copy of his abandoned laptop, and that the iPhone was saved to Hunter Biden's computer on Feb. 6, 2019. According to the Examiner, Konstantinos "Gus" Dimitrelos, a commissioned cyber forensics expert, located the password to the iPhone backup during his examination of the hard drive.

The story contains screeshots of Hunter's text-exchange with someone named "Eva," his primary point of contact for the Russian-linked escort agency UberGFE, and Cash App wires from "Joseph R Biden Jr."

In response to this recent development, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Ranking Member Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) called on federal law enforcement authorities to investigate potential criminal behavior by Hunter Biden, citing the story by the Washington Examiner.

"These findings of potentially criminal behavior must be thoroughly investigated by law enforcement entities according to the highest ethical standards. Yet, due to your agencies' continued failure to provide Congress with answers to its legitimate oversight questions, we have serious concerns about your review of this matter as well as the ongoing Hunter Biden criminal case," they state in the letter.

A user on 4chan, an anonymous imageboard website, claimed to have hacked into the iCloud of Hunter's latest iPhone.

The Daily Dot reported that the user said they gained access to "voice mails, videos, voice recordings, pictures etc of Joe," and that they'd compromised an iPad belonging to him as well.

Users went through the data in an attempt to find whatever they could, which some allege include additional photos of Hunter using drugs, having sex with women, and contucting lurid searches on porn sites, according to the Daily Dot's story.

The Secret Service said it is aware of the potential hack.

"At this time we are not in a position to make public comments on potential investigative actions but I can assure you the Secret Service along with other federal law enforcement partners are aware of the social media posts and claims referencing Mr. Biden," spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement to NBC News.