In his farewell address to the US nation on Wednesday, Joe Biden listed the accomplishments of his presidency but acknowledged "it will take time to feel the full impact of all we've done together".

The outgoing president opened his 17-minute speech by stressing that the new ceasefire deal in Gaza had been "developed and negotiated by my team". It remains to be seen if this tentative truce will be a lasting legacy of Biden's term but his administration's support for Israel "at every turn", despite its "relentless outpouring of violence", has left an "indelible moral stain", said Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy.

Presidential legacies are "complicated matters", said The Atlantic, but, as Biden leaves The White House, he seems "less a transformational figure than a historical parenthesis". His four years in office will be remembered for his failure both to "grasp the political moment" and to achieve "the essential mission of his presidency": to "preserve democracy by preventing Donald Trump's return to power".

Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Biden's "first misstep as president came half a world away", with the shambolic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, said the BBC's North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher. Backing the Trump-negotiated end to "the forever war", Biden promised there would be no "a hasty rush to the exit" but "we'll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely".

The reality was anything but, as "scenes of chaos at Kabul airport dominated world news", said The Guardian. Despite the majority of Americans backing the US exit plan, the chaotic and hurried withdrawal painted a picture of a great power in decline, and Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee claimed it "degraded" US national security.

For a president who prided himself on his foreign-policy experience, it was a particularly disastrous moment. Biden's Gallup approval rating dipped below 50% for the first time – a mark it would never reach again.

Inflation hitting hard

On the domestic front, Biden "has much to point to", said The Washington Post, perhaps most notably "an economic recovery out of the pandemic" that is "the envy of other countries".

Biden's landmark "American Rescue Plan" delivered nearly $2 trillion in new government spending, and was quickly followed by a trillion-dollar bi-partisan infrastructure investment bill. But rampant inflation – due, in some part, to these policies – proved stubborn to shift, and voters came to blame Biden's presidency for the high prices in stores.

The fault lay with Biden's focus on policies that took too long to translate into economic benefits for the average American worker. By the summer before the 2024 presidential election, the monthly inflation numbers had dropped below 3%, economic growth was steady, unemployment rates low, and "the US had outperformed the world's other industrialised nations" but "voters continued to have a pessimistic view of the economy," said the BBC's Zurcher. And "they did not forgot nor forgive" at the ballot box.

"The time horizon" associated with Biden's major pieces of legislation was "way out of sync with the exigencies of the presidential election," Brent Cebul, associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, told the BBC.

Support for Ukraine

The Biden administration was quick to support Ukraine following Russia's invasion in February 2022. And Biden's continued support, including $183 billion in military aid, "has been critical to Ukraine's effort to repel the Russian invasion, and has inspired Nato allies to do the same", said international security expert Dafydd Townley on The Conversation.

But fierce fighting "continues on the frontlines with no clear plan for a peace deal", said CBS News.

Biden also faced criticism early in the conflict "for holding back on sending the most lethal weapons", and then, later, Republicans attacked him for "spending too much money on Ukraine aid".

The White House was pursuing a "Goldilocks strategy," said Phillips Payson O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, in The Atlantic. Biden and his aides were "hoping to help Ukraine fight without provoking Putin too much".

What this meant in practice is that the Biden administration "has treated the Ukraine conflict like a crisis to be managed, not a war to be won".

Decision to run in 2024

Biden ran for president in 2020 as a transition candidate – an "implicit but clear pledge that he intended to serve a single term", said The New York Times. Yet, despite record low approval ratings, voters' concern about his age and clear signs of physical and mental decline, Biden made the decision to run again in 2024, claiming that he was the only person capable of beating Donald Trump.

A disastrous first presidential debate in June led to pressure from Democrat big-hitters for him to stand down but the damage to the party's re-election hopes had already been done. His replacement, Kamala Harris, had only 100 days to introduce herself to the electorate as presidential candidate, and distance herself from Biden's more unpopular policies.

While history may judge Biden's record more favourably with the passing of time – as it has fellow one-term president Jimmy Carter – the fact that he ran again in 2024 "in the face of voters' broad discontent and on top of the specific concerns they had about his age" will surely "be a part of" his legacy, said The Washington Post.

"He'd like his legacy to be that he rescued us from Trump," Democratic strategist Susan Estrich told the BBC's Zurcher. "But sadly, for him, his legacy is Trump again. He is the bridge from Trump One to Trump Two."

The Hunter pardon

Having repeatedly vowed not to pardon his son Hunter, who was convicted of three felony gun charges, Biden did just that, only weeks after Trump was voted back in. His decision was widely criticised by both Republicans and Democrats, with The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait branding it the "hypocrisy of fatherly indulgence".

Biden said he would "abide by the results of the justice system as a matter of principle", Chait wrote, but "in breaking his promise" and "issuing a sweeping pardon of his son for any crimes he may have committed over an 11-year period", he has prioritised "his own feelings over the defence of his country".

The Hunter pardon put Democrats in the "almost impossible position of demanding equal treatment under the law for convicted felon Trump, while trying to excuse Biden's whitewashing of his son's own criminal record", said Time.

"A father’s love is admirable; a president's lie is not," said The New York Times, "In one of his last major political acts in office, Joe Biden forgot who he was." And the consequence? "History won't be kind."

What happened

Alexander Smirnov, a former FBI informant, pleaded guilty Monday to falsely claiming that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter were involved in a bribery scheme with Ukrainian energy company Burisma. His bogus 2020 allegation that the Bidens were each paid $5 million by Burisma formed the basis of stalled Republican efforts to impeach Biden. Smirnov also admitted to evading taxes on $2 million in income.

Who said what

Smirnoff, motivated by "bias" against Biden, spun his "routine and unextraordinary business contacts" with Burisma into "fabrications" about bribery, prosecutors said in their indictment. According to court documents, the BBC said, Smirnov "had ties with Russian intelligence" and used his "$2 million in unreported income to buy a Las Vegas condominium," lease a Bentley and spend heavily on clothes and jewelry.

Smirnov's indictment was brought by special counsel David Weiss, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney "who also prosecuted Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges," The Associated Press said.

What next?

Smirnov is scheduled to be sentenced next month. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed to recommend four to six years in prison.

What happened

Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges yesterday, surprising prosecutors and the judge overseeing the case in Los Angeles.

Who said what

"I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment," Biden said. He added that decisions by U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi meant the jury "would never had heard" how his former crack cocaine addiction contributed to his tax evasion "or that I had paid every penny of my back taxes including penalties."

"Tax evasion is common," The Washington Post said, "but criminal charges for tax evasion are rare" and sentences are typically light. Before pleading guilty, Biden offered an Alford plea — accepting the charges while maintaining his innocence — but prosecutors strongly objected. The "atmosphere in the courtroom" was "tense, clamorous and chaotic," The New York Times said, but "much of the legal drama" was "drained of its national significance" the moment Biden's father, President Joe Biden, "withdrew from the 2024 race in July."

What next?

Scarsi, a Donald Trump appointee, cautioned Biden that without a plea deal, he faces up to 17 years in prison and $1.35 million in fines when he is sentenced Dec. 16. A federal judge in Delaware will sentence Biden for his June gun conviction on Nov. 13. The White House affirmed that the president will not pardon his son or commute any sentence.

Hunter Biden is hardly the first presidential relation to have their personal struggles and legal challenges turned into national news and fodder for their family's political opposition. Nevertheless, the younger Biden's three felony convictions this week are a particularly notable entry in the long history of first family challenges. It comes after years of conservatives pointing to both Hunter's history of addiction and various business dealings as evidence of his father's alleged — and to date unsubstantiated — criminality. That Hunter now potentially faces hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fines and an extended prison sentence for having lied on federal firearm purchasing forms would presumably be occasion for celebration from the same Republicans who have long sought to prosecute the first family.

Hunter's conviction is a "step toward accountability" House Oversight and Accountability Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement. Still, until the Justice Department pursues "everyone involved in the Bidens' corrupt influence peddling schemes," Comer said, "it will be clear department officials continue to cover for the Big Guy, Joe Biden."

Comer's heavily qualified approval offers a glimpse into how conservatives have responded to Hunter Biden's conviction — and highlights why this particular guilty verdict is not the political slam dunk many had hoped for. 

'Deep State's sacrificial lamb'

For many of the GOP's most vocal Biden critics, Hunter's conviction is merely a distraction — or worse, a deliberately engineered diversion — from his family's allegedly more serious crimes. "Don't be gaslit," former top Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller said on X. The younger Biden's gun-related charges are merely a "giant misdirection," and an "easy op for DOJ to sell to a pliant media that is all too willing to be duped." In being convicted, Hunter "became the Deep State’s sacrificial lamb to show that Justice is 'balanced' while the other Biden crimes remain ignored," agreed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

Republican arguments that the DOJ "treated President Joe Biden's son with kid gloves while zealously prosecuting Trump" have been "hurt by the Biden-led Justice Department prosecuting the president's son," U.S. News and World Report said. In making the argument that the Biden DOJ is targeting political opponents, those same Republicans "may be trying to deflect from Trump's own stated intentions to wield the criminal justice system against opponents if he returns to the White House." Given that "truth rarely matters" in the Trump-era, and "inconvenient facts never [penetrate] the echo chamber that dominates Republican politics and conservative media," the former president's allies have used Biden's conviction to "conjure a new round of falsehoods and conspiracy theories," CNN's Stephen Collinson said. 

'Backfire in the court of public opinion'

Republicans "can't agree on how" to prevent Hunter Biden's convictions from "undermining their argument that the judicial system is being weaponized against Donald Trump," Politico said. In part, that's a byproduct of the nature of Biden's crimes themselves and the role his well-publicized drug use played in his criminal actions. Addiction is a topic "both sensitive and salient for millions of American families," ABC News said. Attacks on that front "could backfire in the court of public opinion" where Americans are "looking for leaders who sympathize and have solutions."

Moreover, the political realities of Biden's conviction for illegally purchasing and owning a firearm presented a unique dilemma for Republicans who, as a whole, "favor far more relaxed laws than Democrats," The Guardian said. However bad the verdict is for Hunter Biden himself, it's similarly "bad news for the Second Amendment," said Fox News' Greg Gutfeld. 

That the "prevailing reaction among Republicans" after Biden's convictions was "not so much hailing the verdict as claiming that this case was a smokescreen" suggests that the GOP understands that most voters "aren't particularly concerned about this case," The Washington Post said. Fervent MAGA Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) offered a similar, if blunter, assessment: 

At the same time, the Post said, there is still a risk that some may see Biden as "having gotten off somewhat easy." While his three counts carry up to 25 years of prison time, Biden, as a first-time offender, likely wouldn't get "anywhere near the maximum sentence," The Associated Press said. 

Joe Biden faces a moment of "searing personal anguish" today when his son, Hunter, goes on trial for allegedly lying about illegal drug use while purchasing a handgun.

Four days after Donald Trump became the first president convicted in a court of law, Biden Junior will become the first child of a US president to face a criminal trial, a development that will further "deepen the election's legal entanglement", said CNN.

What is Hunter Biden accused of?

In September, prosecutors said they had indicted 54-year-old Biden on three gun charges related to his purchase of a Colt Cobra revolver handgun in October 2018, two months after a stay in rehab. 

Two of the counts relate to Biden allegedly lying about his drug use on a federal application form he filled in to buy the weapon, with a third charge of possessing an illegally obtained firearm for 11 days in October 2018. Biden has pleaded not guilty.

A plea deal, which had been expected to lead to Biden admitting to a series of tax and gun offences in order to avoid prison time, fell through last summer, after Republicans argued Biden was receiving a "sweetheart deal", and tax investigators said politics had hampered their probe.

The trial, which is expected to take between three and five days, will be held in Delaware "within walking distance" of his father's campaign headquarters in Wilmington, said The New York Times (NYT). 

Two of the charges each carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, while the third carries a maximum prison sentence of five years. But non-violent first-time offenders "rarely get serious prison time for the charges", said the NYT.

Does this relate to the laptop saga?

Hunter Biden's notorious laptop has "become a symbol of the legal and political controversy surrounding the president's son in recent years", said ABC News, and prosecutors hope to use its contents as evidence in the firearms trial.

The "seedy contents" of the laptop, left by Hunter at a Delaware repair shop, featured prominently in the 2020 presidential campaign, said the BBC. It has already "provided proof" of Hunter's considerable earnings from his work in China and Ukraine, which are "stoking the nascent impeachment inquiry" into President Biden.

And what about that tax case?

In December, federal prosecutors filed nine new tax charges against Biden, claiming that he avoided paying at least $1.4 million (£1.1 million) in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for between 2016 and 2019.

Announcing charges that include failure to file and pay taxes, false tax return and evasion of assessment, the prosecutors claimed that, instead of paying what he owed, Biden splashed his money on "drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature".

They said he "individually received more than $7m in total gross income" between 2016 and mid-October 2020, but "wilfully failed" to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 taxes on time. He belatedly paid all his taxes and fines in 2020.

What impact might the gun trial have on the election?

The hearing will "hand a political weapon" to Republicans "desperate for a distracting issue" in the wake of Donald Trump's 34-count conviction last week, said The Guardian.

But the Democrats could try and turn it to their favour, said CNN, as the trial could "blunt claims by the GOP" that the Justice Department targets only Republicans, particularly at a time when a Democratic senator, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, is also on trial in New York.

The White House has ruled out a pardon for Hunter, but the president insists his son did nothing wrong. In a "symbolic show of support", the president was seen with his son on a bike ride near his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, over the weekend.

As 2023 winds inexorably down, Republican lawmakers are wasting little time telegraphing plans to intensify their ongoing investigations into both President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in 2024 for alleged — and to date largely unsubstantiated — allegations of corruption, raising the prospect of an election-year impeachment proceeding against the incumbent president during his bid for a second term in office. 

On Thursday, North Dakota Rep. Kelly Armstrong introduced a 14-page resolution to codify the impeachment effort announced this past summer by then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy by bringing it forward for a full House vote in the coming days. In essence, the resolution is a parliamentary affirmation of what has already been happening across several congressional bodies, by directing the House Oversight, Ways and Means, and Judiciary committees to "continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry" into whether there are grounds for impeachment. 

Stressing during a press conference this week that the resolution and forthcoming vote is not, in and of itself, an impeachment of the president, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) argued that the move is necessary so that when any efforts to compel testimony or provide documents are "challenged in court, it will be at the apex of our constitutional authority."

Currently, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Hunter Biden are engaged in a contentious negotiation over whether the president's son will testify publicly, as Biden has offered, or behind closed doors according to Comer's demands. To date, House Republicans have held just one public impeachment hearing, which one GOP aide described as an "unmitigated disaster" for Comer and his fellow Republicans. 

'Sad, pathetic, and a waste of everyone's time'

The Biden administration brushed off the pending resolution vote, calling it a "baseless stunt" that's "not rooted in facts or reality" in a statement from spokesperson Ian Sams on Wednesday. The White House had previously argued against the inquiry's constitutionality thus far "because it had not been formalized with a vote of the whole House," The Hill reported. Sams later shared a link on X, formerly Twitter, to an article in the conservative Daily Caller highlighting Fox News host Brian Kilmeade's characterization of the impeachment inquiry as a "waste of time." In his statement, Sams agreed, describing the push as "sad, pathetic, and a waste of everyone's time." 

Earlier this week, Kilmeade's fellow Fox News reporter Chad Pergram similarly asserted that the renewed push for formalizing the impeachment inquiry was fueled in part by the Republicans' "need to put a GOP win on the table for the base."

The effort to formalize the impeachment inquiry also comes as moderate Republicans start "warming to the idea" where once they were skeptical, according to The New Republic. While McCarthy's unilateral declaration of an impeachment investigation may not have swayed them this summer, they can now "cite the Biden administration's recalcitrance as their reason to vote to open an inquiry next week."

'This is not a political decision'

Predicting that the impeachment inquiry resolution will get "every vote that we have" from Republicans, Johnson has also "toiled in recent weeks to ingratiate himself" with his party's rightmost flank, particularly after he worked with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown in mid-November, The New York Times reported. But despite Johnson's assurances, as well as the apparent softening of some moderate Republicans, the inquiry vote will ultimately be a "major test of party unity, given the GOP's narrow 221-213 majority," according to PBS News Hour. That narrow majority is set to grow even smaller in the coming year, thanks to several high-profile early GOP retirements, including former speaker McCarthy.

Johnson himself worked to diffuse the situation this week, explaining that at this stage of the process "whether someone is for or against impeachment is of no import right now," and that "moderates in our conference understand this is not a political decision." Still, moderate Republicans currently "ready to vote for an impeachment inquiry now may be more hesitant to back actually impeaching Biden" if and when that becomes a reality, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Hunter Biden made history last week by becoming the first child of a sitting US president to be indicted on federal criminal charges. 

The indictment is brief, said Andrew Prokop on Vox, because the facts are quite simple. When Hunter bought a handgun in 2018, he filled in a form stating that he wasn't a user of illegal drugs. In reality, he was hooked on crack cocaine at the time. It was "a seemingly clear case of an open-and-shut crime", yet prosecutors initially had no plans to charge him for it. 

Under a deal agreed in June, Hunter was set to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanours, while the gun case would be dropped provided he kept his nose clean for two years. But a judge dismissed that plea deal on technical grounds, and talks to revive it collapsed. Whether because they belatedly concluded that the initial deal was too generous, or whether they were pressured by Republicans, prosecutors "have now decided to go after Hunter more aggressively".

'Trust in the rule of law'

Hunter's legal team has had the nerve to complain that he's the victim of political meddling, said The Wall Street Journal. That's a joke. The prosecutors' mistake "was not treating his case like any other from the start". Maybe America can now "begin to regain trust in the rule of law", said The New York Post.

But it's an added problem for Joe Biden, who is now also facing an impeachment inquiry into whether he illegally profited from business deals involving his son. The president "routinely crusades on the need for tough gun laws like the ones that could now send his son away for a decade or more".

'If he wasn't a Biden he wouldn't be charged'

It's not true to claim that Hunter is finally being treated like anyone else would be, said Harry Litman in the Los Angeles Times. These sorts of gun felony charges are only ever pursued in cases where the firearms are used to commit other crimes, or where defendants are known to be particularly dangerous. "This indictment over an isolated lie by a relatively harmless firearm applicant seems to be without precedent."

If Hunter's surname weren't Biden, he probably wouldn't be facing these charges, agreed David A. Graham in The Atlantic. Then again, without his famous name, he also wouldn't have made a fortune as a board member of a Ukrainian gas company – a job he was singularly unqualified for – or subsequently "sold his novice paintings for six-figure prices". Hunter has done very well from his proximity to his father, but "the bill is coming due now".

The launch of an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden over his son Hunter's foreign business dealings has raised questions about Republican political prowess.

The House of Representatives has previously voted to impeach just three presidents: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, who was impeached twice. But the move by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to impeach the current president is "a risky political gamble", said the Financial Times (FT), that "may be as much about preservation of his own political power as the merits of the case".

A tax and firearms case against Hunter Biden does exist and federal prosecutors are reportedly confident they have enough evidence to indict him. However, said the Los Angeles Times, "despite their best efforts", congressional Republicans have "failed to develop credible evidence" that Biden as vice president profited from his son's business dealings. The Biden impeachment inquiry is "so thin you can see right through it", the paper's editorial board added.

The true motivation is personal, a top former Republican congressional and White House staffer told the FT. "Speaker McCarthy had to do this for his conference – and to keep his job." 

What did the papers say?

McCarthy's decision to unilaterally announce an impeachment investigation with no formal House vote "appeared to be a bid to quell a brewing rebellion among ultraconservative critics", said The New York Times (NYT).

McCarthy claims he has unearthed a "culture of corruption" surrounding the president. The inquiry will focus on whether Biden benefited from the charges of improper business dealings levelled against his son Hunter.

Months of investigations by Republicans, however, "have yet to unearth any concrete evidence of misconduct by Mr Biden, and the allegations have been widely panned by Democrats", said the BBC.

The true motivation for the inquiry, according to the NYT, appears to be that McCarthy is "working to appease far-right lawmakers who have threatened to oust him if he fails to accede to their demands for deep spending cuts that would force a government shutdown at the end of the month".

The apparent lack of evidence is problematic for both the case and the nation, according to two impeachment experts who spoke to Time magazine.

"This is very disturbing for people who study past impeachments, because impeachment is really a very extreme measure," said constitutional scholar Philip Bobbitt, a professor at Columbia Law School and expert on the history of impeachment. "I honestly don't know that there is any evidence tying the president to corrupt activities when he was vice president or now."

Frank Bowman, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri school of law and author of a book about impeachment, agreed, adding "Biden's Republican pursuers have got exactly zero, zip, bupkis, on any matter that might be impeachable."

What next?

Some Republicans have expressed doubts about the wisdom of bringing impeachment proceedings against the president. 

Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor running for president in 2024 who managed Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings in 1998, said that despite a "lot of smoke" the impeachment inquiry "seems premature". Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor also running in the Republican primary, said he didn't "see evidence yet that would support impeaching Joe Biden". He added: "I think we're cheapening impeachment by doing that kind of thing."

Talking to Time, impeachment experts Bowman and Bobbitt echoed this sentiment.

"This is supposed to be the most extreme sanction in American politics, and if you reach for it every time you think it'll help you in the polls, I fear it will become degraded," Bobbitt said. "It just becomes one more very divisive, poisonous event in a Congress that is already deeply divided and alienated."

Brendan Buck, a former Republican congressional aide, said it could have even worse impacts for Republicans, given Democrats could weaponise the matter against their political rivals.

"Certainly it will rile up the base," Buck said in the FT, “but absent some bombshell… this is something of a gift to the president politically."

Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich, who launched Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings 25 years ago, said that if Republicans "go too fast, it could backfire".

Clinton was "widely seen to have benefited politically, including with a better than expected performance in that year's midterm election", the FT said.

After a four-year probe, federal agents investigating President Biden's son Hunter believe they have gathered enough evidence to charge him with tax crimes and making a false statement related to a gun purchase, people familiar with the case told The Washington Post.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss, a Trump appointee, will now have to decide whether to charge Hunter Biden, the people said. The investigation began with agents looking into Biden's finances in relation to his consulting work overseas, and over time began focusing on whether he reported all of his income and lied about his drug use on gun purchase paperwork in 2018, people familiar with the matter told the Post.

In a statement to the Post, Hunter Biden's lawyer, Chris Clark, said it is "a federal felony for a federal agent to leak information about a grand jury investigation such as this one. Any agent you cite as a source in your article apparently has committed such a felony. We expect the Department of Justice will diligently investigate and prosecute such bad actors." Clark also said Biden's legal team believes "the prosecutors in this case are diligently and thoroughly weighing not just evidence provided by agents, but also all the other witnesses in this case, including witnesses for the defense."

Former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have long questioned Hunter Biden's business ventures, particularly those overseas, and Trump's first impeachment was tied to his July 2019 phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he pressured him to investigate both Joe and Hunter Biden.

Jimmy Kimmel introduced Hunter Biden as "probably the most famous board member of a Ukrainian energy company of all time," but they spent most of their conversation on Thursday's Kimmel Live discussing addiction, as described in Biden's new book, Beautiful Things. "I have to tell you, after reading the book, I'm impressed that you're alive," Kimmel said. "I feel like I learned a lot about crack."

"I wrote about it in vivid detail because, you know, I think the question that most addicts have a really hard time answering, and what everybody that's a non-addict wants the answer to, is why?" Biden said "There's a simple answer, and that's because it works — at first, until it doesn't." With every drug, you're always trying to chase that first high, he explained. Alcohol is actually "the most insidious drug for me," but "crack brought me to place that I'd never been to before," both high and low, Biden said. "It was an absolutely awful experience at the end, and it was an awful experience throughout. After that first time, all you do is live in a lot of guilt and a lot of shame."

Biden said he wrote the book "to humanize people suffering from addiction," but "more than anything it's a love letter to the people that are loving someone that's struggling with addiction. Because it's so hard for them to understand why it is that their love just can't get through. ... I hope that this provides some people some real hope that if they're just persistent, and they continue, that when that person's ready to reach for that love, maybe they'll be able to find their way out of that deep, dark hole." "Yeah, boy was your dad persistent," Kimmel said.

Biden said he was well-qualified for the Burisma board position, bad optics notwithstanding. "Does it make you crazy when you hear someone like Donald Trump Jr. saying that the only reason he does is because he's a Biden, and because of his last name? And how just wildly comical that is?" Kimmel asked. "It is wildly comical, that's putting it lightly," Biden laughed. But "what I've learned is this, is that I don't spend too much time thinking about them." "I do, I think about it all the time," Kimmel said. Watch the full interview, including Biden's thoughts on "sad" Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), below. Peter Weber

Twitter has reversed its decision to block users from sharing an unsubstantiated article from the New York Post about former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter, The New York Times reports.

The company had previously stopped users from being able to post the story about alleged emails between a Ukrainian energy executive and Hunter Biden, citing its policy against sharing private information and against distributing "content obtained without authorization." But after facing backlash especially among Republicans including President Trump, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Friday that blocking links to the story "was wrong," and the company altered its policies so that it "will no longer remove hacked content unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them," per BuzzFeed News.

When Twitter announced changes to its policy on hacked materials on Thursday, the Hunter Biden article was still being blocked because Twitter said it violated its policies against sharing personal information, as The Washington Post reported. But as of Friday, users can now share the article again, with the Times reporting the company made this decision "because the information had spread across the internet and could no longer be considered private."

When Twitter previously changed its hacked materials policy in response to the criticism, The Washington Post had already dubbed this a "stunning policy reversal."

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) considers himself "a straight shooter" who "calls them as I see them." That's why he says he's leading an investigation into former Obama officials for allegedly unfairly targeting President Trump and his associates during the presidential transition period in 2016, as well as a probe into Hunter Biden's time on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which faces corruption allegations.

Unsurprisingly, Johnson's Democratic colleagues aren't buying the idea that the investigations are nonpartisan, instead viewing them as efforts to boost Trump's re-election bid against Hunter Biden's father, former Vice President Joe Biden. But several Republicans are also privately concerned about Johnson's efforts, Politico reports, including Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

Romney, who sits on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs which Johnson leads, did vote for his fellow senator's subpoena authorizations targeting former Obama officials. But he declined to say if he thinks Johnson is doing a good job leading the investigation, and added that it's "apparent on its face" that the Biden probe is politically motivated, considering the elder Biden is the Democratic nominee, Politico reports. Read more at Politico.

Former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko might be a bit closer with Rudy Giuliani than President Trump's team might like.

In an interview with NBC News aired Friday, Lutsenko, who left his position late last month, addressed his now-recanted skepticism of the Biden family over the dismissal of previous prosecutor Viktor Shokin. "I don't know any possible violation of Ukrainian law" by either Joe Biden or his son Hunter Biden, Lutsenko said — though it seems Giuliani did push him to find one.

Lutsenko served as Ukraine's top prosecutor after Shokin, who then-Vice President Biden and other western officials accused of letting corruption slide. But Shokin had previously investigated Burisma, an energy company Hunter Biden worked for, leading Lutsenko to speculate Joe Biden's dislike of Shokin had something to do with that. Both Giuliani and Trump seemed to agree, and Giuliani had made investigating the Bidens his near-singular focus for the past year. Lutsenko told NBC News he was not in "regular contact" with Giuliani, but he did speak to him "maybe 10 times" about the Bidens and "other political issues."

Yet even after Lutsenko reversed his Biden speculation in a May interview with Bloomberg, Trump still seemed to praise him in a July phone call with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump did not mention the name of the "very good prosecutor" who was looking into Biden, so it could've been Lutsenko or Shokin. A whistleblower complaint about the call specifically said Trump was asking Zelensky to keep Lutsenko on as a prosecutor.

Like he said in the NBC News interview, "from the perspective of Ukrainian legislation," Hunter Biden "did not violate anything," Yutsenko told The Washington Post on Thursday.

Joe Biden's 2020 campaign is severely underreacting to what should be a Democratic home run.

The White House on Wednesday released a memorandum from a call between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, which shows Trump pushed Zelensky to investigate Biden's son Hunter Biden, likely aiming to use the information for campaign attacks. Even though Trump admitted to much of what the transcript shows earlier on Tuesday, a Biden fundraising email suggests the former vice president's campaign didn't seem to think it was such a big deal.

The email starts out with some "bad news:" that "Trump is using the Oval Office to pressure a foreign power into interfering in the 2020 election." But there's something "even worse," it continues: recent polls show him losing his frontrunner status. A Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday morning shows Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has pulled ahead in Iowa.

The poll simply displays an ongoing trend: Warren is on the rise, while Biden is slightly slumping. What is new is the fact that the House is officially pursuing an impeachment inquiry into Trump, and that it has a whole lot to do with Biden himself.

Ukraine is expected to re-open the corruption case against the Burisma gas company, where former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, was a board member, The Daily Beast reports. But it's not because President Trump allegedly pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into doing so, or because Ukraine wants to meddle with the elder Biden's presidential election chances.

Instead, it's part of Zelensky's plan to root out corruption, one of the key components of his presidential campaign. Valentin Nalyvaichenko, the former head of Ukraine's domestic intelligence agency and now a member of the country's parliament, told The Daily Beast that Ukraine wants to discover the truth about corruption in the country, which in the case of Burisma, means investigating whether its founder paid off investigators who were looking into the way he acquired gas licenses.

In recent years, many corruption cases in Ukraine sputtered after prosecutors were allegedly paid off, The Daily Beast reports. Zelensky and his government want to reverse that and speed up the country's reform process by reinvigorating the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine. Now, a new team of independent prosecutors will reportedly dive back into the Burisma investigation, as well as other cases.

The phone call scandal may continue to wreak havoc in the U.S., but Ukraine, lo and behold, is its own country with its own priorities, and Kyiv will seemingly move forward as it sees fit. Read more at The Daily Beast.

The reports that President Trump pushed his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodomyr Zelensky, to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son are not a great look for the commander-in-chief. But some people have pointed out that it's not the best news for Biden's presidential campaign, either.

Biden, who has maintained a steady lead in the Democratic primaries, now has to face the fact that his son, Hunter Biden, is "inextricably linked" to the story. That means the elder Biden will likely have to find a balance between trying to use Trump's potential folly to his political advantage and avoiding becoming part of a family scandal, The Washington Post reports.

He's already been going back and forth between attacking Trump and defending his son, the Post reports. None of this is really new — Hunter Biden's foreign business ties, which include a gas company in Ukraine that's been at the center of this situation, and personal exploits raised some eyebrows when his father first entered the presidential race. The threat of the story derailing Biden's bid seemed like it had subsided after a while, but now with Democrats likely to zero in on Trump's latest adventure as the House considers launching impeachment proceedings, it's back on the front page.

It also means that some of Biden's competitors in the primaries could question whether he's the right person to challenge Trump, the Post reports. "We're out there every day criticizing Trump and saying it's the most corrupt administration in the history of America," said Grant Woodard, a longtime Iowa Democratic consultant unaligned with a candidate. "It's going to be problematic for Biden to have to answer those questions about himself."

Others have similarly pointed out that they think ignoring the Biden family's role in the story — even if it's ultimately about Trump's interaction with Zelensky — is hypocritical. Read more at The Washington Post. Tim O'Donnell