In the latest development in the Hunter Biden paternity scandal, the first son has been outed as a frequent user of a Democratic Party donor’s private jet while seeking to significantly decrease monthly child support payments to a former stripper with whom he fathered a child in 2018. 

The pricey plane ride to Arkansas, where his former partner is raising his fourth child, from Los Angeles, where Mr. Biden now lives, is raising new questions about the largesse the first son is receiving from donor Kevin Morris.

Mr. Morris has loaned his private plane to Mr. Biden multiple times since their meeting in 2019. On May 1, Mr. Biden used the craft to quickly visit a small town in Arkansas amid a child support payment dispute. 

According to flight records reviewed by the New York Post, the $6 million Dassault Falcon (the same kind of jet favored by Taylor Swift) left Los Angeles County early on the morning of April 30 and landed at Dulles airport at Washington, D.C. Within a few hours, it ferried Mr. Biden to Arkansas for his child support hearing and then returned to the nation’s capital later that morning. 

The total cost of the airfare — including the Secret Service protective detail to which members of the first family are entitled — could reach $117,000 for this one-day excursion, analysts told the Post. 

Mr. Biden says a “substantial material change” in his income has led him to request smaller payments to his former mistress, Lunden Roberts. His attorney, Abbe Lowell, disclosed during the hearing that the first son has been sending monthly child support payments of $20,000 since his paternity was confirmed by a court-ordered DNA test in 2020. In total, he has paid his child’s mother $750,000 over the course of three years.  

Mr. Morris, referred to by the press as Hunter Biden’s “sugar brother,” is a power player in the world of entertainment. As a lawyer, his client roster includes such generational talents as Chris Rock and Matthew McConughey. Recently, Mr. Morris helped Mr. Biden launch his lucrative career as an artist, and he previously loaned him $2 million to settle up a debt with the Internal Revenue Service. 

Mr. Biden’s ties to Mr. Morris is just the newest detail in a long string of relationships he has had with powerful influencers in the world of politics. 

The New York Times reports that President Biden’s “allies see [his relationship with] Mr. Morris as a potential liability. … And they are concerned that it could reflect badly on the administration for the president’s son to be receiving financial assistance from a wealthy benefactor — a dynamic that could evoke the payments, which are now under scrutiny from federal prosecutors, that Hunter Biden accepted from a Ukrainian oligarch’s company and other foreign interests.”

Indeed, Hunter Biden’s ties to Mr. Morris could be seen as not only a friendship, but also the latest example in a long career of using his family name to make money. A recent memorandum from the House Oversight Committee — which has made Mr. Biden a key focus of its new investigatory efforts — shows a lucrative web of wire transfers and shell companies that were used to pay millions of dollars to the president’s family, all at the behest of Mr. Biden. 

On May 11, the committee chairman, Congressman James Comer, gathered with his colleagues at a press conference to make these disclosures. 

“The bank records show the Biden family, their associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals and their companies,” Mr. Comer told reporters. The committee received “thousands of bank records of individuals and companies” as a result of four subpoenas sent to financial institutions over the course of the investigation. 

These payments, the chairman said, were sent to a wide variety of shell companies and limited liability companies that were set up by Mr. Biden and his associate, Rob Walker. 

The committee also explored further the first family’s relationship with Communist China. Through its memo, the committee ties the Biden family to two foreign nationals with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party — Ye Jianming and Gongwen Dong. 

Mr. Ye — who works in close affiliation with the People’s Liberation Army — allegedly tried to contact the younger Mr. Biden in order to create better relations between the American government and the Communist Chinese energy market.

The meeting — which never came about — was set up by a Serbian official, Vuk Jeremic, who himself has been accused of corruption in his native country. Messrs. Biden and Ye set up a partnership at Washington after President Biden’s time as vice president ended in 2017. Mr. Ye was then called back to Beijing, reportedly by President Xi, and his whereabouts are unknown. 

The other Communist Chinese official, Mr. Gongwen, identified himself as an “emissary” of Mr. Ye in an email obtained by the Washington Post. Mr. Gongwen and the younger Mr. Biden later co-owned a shell company called Hudson West III, which sent payments totaling $4 million to Mr. Biden and $75,000 to the president’s brother, James. 

The committee also disclosed new business ties between the Biden family and a corrupt Romanian official. Congressman Kelly Armstrong told reporters that a Romanian man who was convicted of obstruction while under investigation for corruption, Gabriel Popoviciu, helped send 17 payments totaling millions of dollars during the elder Mr. Biden’s time as vice president.