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CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s new Biden exposé may be dominating CNN’s airwaves, but behind the glossy roll-out of Original Sin reportedly lies a long-running bitter feud – one that Hunter Biden has decided to now break silence on.
The CNN anchor, who co-authored the book with Axios reporter Alex Thompson alleging a “cover-up” around the previous president’s decline, has denied allegations that he reached out to Hunter for a scoop as his brother Beau Biden lay dying in 2015. But in an exclusive on-the-record comment to Breaker on Wednesday, Hunter flatly contradicted him.
“It would be impossible to forget or misremember something that upsetting and out of line during one of the toughest moments of my life. It happened. I was furious,” Hunter Biden told the outlet.
Tapper repeatedly called Hunter during Beau’s final days at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, according to multiple sources close to the Biden family. When those went unanswered, he allegedly used a blocked number
The two reportedly came face to face at the 2018 Super Bowl. Tapper extended a hand; Hunter warned he’d knock him out if not for the public setting. Breaker reported that Tapper demanded an apology from Joe Biden for his son’s behavior.
Tapper disputes Hunter’s account, telling Breaker he suggested the confrontation was about unrelated CNN reporting on Hunter’s past: “Hunter did once confront me at a Super Bowl party, but it was over an unrelated issue – coverage he wrongly believed I had done regarding divorce allegations of drug use and using prostitutes, which I actually had never done.”
Breaker confirmed that Tapper did, in fact, cover Hunter’s alleged drug use.
A spokesperson for Tapper also told the outlet: “The idea that Jake could do something so heartless – and yet the Bidens would subsequently offer him multiple sit-down interviews as well as agree to him moderating the debate, all without anyone hearing about it until now – completely defies logic.”
Two sources close to the Biden family at the time told Breaker, however, that Hunter’s anger was clearly not about reporting on his personal conduct.
“It was obviously transparent niceties and then right to business as if the one thing Hunter is thinking about as Beau is dying is let me give Jake Tapper an exclusive,” one source
People close to the Biden team say Tapper’s long-running frustration over limited access to Joe Biden has been no secret. Ahead of Biden’s 2024 State of the Union, several network anchors were invited to the White House for a customary off-the-record briefing. With the address focused on the economy, CNN sent Erin Burnett — not Tapper.
That decision, according to two people familiar with the fallout, triggered what one source described to Breaker as a “meltdown.” Tapper reportedly bombarded White House contacts with angry calls, one recipient recalling him “raging, ‘I’m Jake Tapper and this is my network.'”
Pressed on the incident, a spokesperson for Tapper downplayed the behavior, telling Breaker: “Jake pushing the Biden White House for access isn’t noteworthy – in fact, it happened all the time.”
Meanwhile, while even Democrats eventually came to agree Biden was unfit to campaign in 2024, Tapper’s new book is making the pointed claim that there was a “cover-up” of Biden’s mental acuity and frailty by his team.
The brutal takedown, per Breaker’s new reporting, is the latest barrage in a long and tense relationship between Tapper and the Biden family, which comes just one day after the journalist unloaded on “sleazy” Hunter in an attack on Katie Couric’s Next Question podcast on Tuesday.