Hunter Biden: I wasn’t on Ashley Madison

by Katie Bo Williams - 08/25/15 3:39 PM ET

Vice President Biden’s son Hunter Biden says the account using his email address on the infidelity website Ashley Madison did not belong to him.

“I am certain that the account in question is not mine,” Hunter Biden said in a statement. “This account was clearly set up by someone else without my knowledge.”

{mosads}Biden, a married father of three, is one of many political personalities whose email information was included in the massive cache of Ashley Madison user data released by hackers last week.

But the appearance of a given email address or account name in the database is not a smoking gun, experts say. Ashley Madison doesn’t authenticate email addresses when users sign up, deliberately giving users the “plausible deniability” of membership.

Biden alluded to the lack of authentication in his statement, indicating that he had been targeted in this kind of scam before.

“From my understanding through press accounts, it is very easy to set up an account without someone’s knowledge as there is no requirement that an email address be verified and I am certain that is what happened in this case,” Biden said. “This is, unfortunately, not the first time that someone has used my name and identity to try to discredit me.”

Representatives for Biden told Breitbart News that the lawyer and businessman’s international enemies have made a targeted effort to acquire his personal information. Biden said he no longer uses the email address connected to the Ashley Madison account because it had been hacked.

The Ashley Madison account shows a 2014 credit card charge to a card in the name of “Robert Biden.” Biden’s full name is Robert Hunter Biden, although he typically goes by Hunter.

Unconfirmed reports gleaned from the released data have linked the card to Biden’s D.C. address.

Matching credit card data is still not firm proof of membership, experts say, noting that it is possible for someone to have registered under an email address and credit card account that was either stolen or purchased illegally on the dark Web.

Whoever did create Biden’s account got one important detail wrong: his birthday. Biden’s Ashley Madison profile lists his birth date as Feb. 4, 1980. The real Hunter Biden was born Feb. 4, 1970.

Tags Ashley Madison Hunter Biden