Employees at a Washington DC strip club suspect Hunter Biden used their VIP room to smoke crack, Page Six, New York magazine's gossip page, has reported.
Biden was a regular at Archibald’s, located not far from the White House, and spent thousands of dollars there – and on at least one occasion in late 2018, used the opportunity to imbibe some crack cocaine, James Ritter, a former managing partner at the gentlemen’s club claims.
“There was a smell of burning styrofoam in the VIP room. We told him nothing illegal can go on here. We didn’t see anything illegal. After he was spoken to, the smell stopped. VIP employees suspected it was crack,” he recalled.
Ranko Petrovic, a security worker at Archibald’s, told magazine Page Six Biden was a regular visitor and would often “hole up” in the VIP room and drink while he was in town, although “no one at the club had any problem with him”.
Biden has admitted to a number of stints in rehab for addiction and alcoholism, including one in 2016 after a crack binge, during which he went without sleep for days. On that occasion, he was serendipitously joined there by former sister-in-law Hallie Biden, the widow of his older brother Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in May 2015 —they proceeded to enter into a romantic affair that lasted around a year.
Biden’s alleged crack smoking occurred at the same time he held a seat on the board of Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma, a role which reportedly earned him as much as US$50,000 a month, and has since become central to the ongoing impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, with Democrats alleging the President withheld nearly US$400 million in military aid to Kiev in a bid to force an investigation into corruption allegations against Hunter and his dad, which he denies.
Hunter joined the Burisma board in April 2014 but declined the company’s offer to serve another term in May due to the controversy surrounding his membership - in an interview with ABC News last month, Hunter denied a suggestion he wasn’t qualified because he didn’t have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine, but conceded that being the son of the then-vice president Joe Biden “of course” played a role in his selection.