Hunter was selected for a Navy Reserve commission in 2012 and assigned to a public-affairs unit in Norfolk in May 2013. A month later he tested positive for cocaine, and in February 2014 he was discharged. When the Wall Street Journal reported it in October 2014, he said: “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.” [1]
He has written and testified that he was addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine for years, most intensely from 2015, after Beau’s death, until 2019. In his 2024 deposition he described that period repeatedly to explain messages and payments he said he did not remember. The years of his heaviest addiction are also the years of the China deals, the laptop and the gun purchase. [2]
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