Inside the life of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s scandal-plagued son
Hunter Biden made headlines again on Oct. 14, 2020, when The Post exclusively reported on emails between him and Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.
Hunter Biden made headlines again on Oct. 14 when The Post exclusively reported on emails between him and Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.
The emails reveal the possibility of a previously unreported meeting between the elder Biden and an official from Burisma, any involvement with which the Democratic presidential nominee has adamantly denied without going into detail.
Here’s what we know about Hunter Biden before he found himself swept up in yet another scandal.
Early life
Born on Feb. 4, 1970, Robert Hunter Biden and his older brother Beau’s lives were rocked when their mother, Neilia Biden, and sister, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in December 1972.
Just one month later, Hunter and Beau found themselves surrounded by reporters as their father was sworn in as the youngest-ever member of the US Senate.
The two boys continued growing up in Wilmington, Del., with their widowed father commuting back and forth each day by train to be with them at night.
The Biden brothers encouraged their father to date in the years after their mother’s passing, and he eventually did, meeting Dr. Jill Jacobs, who later became his wife and took his name.
They had a daughter, Ashley, born in 1981.
Love life
Hunter Biden met and married Kathleen Buhle in 1993. The two divorced in 2017 after a 22-year marriage that produced three daughters. In divorce papers, Kathleen accused her ex of blowing family funds on drugs and prostitutes.
The same year as the split — as was first reported by Page Six — Hunter began dating his widowed sister-in-law, Hallie Biden, who had lost her husband, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015.
The two began dating while he was recovering from a crack binge, which he explained in a New Yorker interview last July took place while grieving his brother’s death.
Hunter had been kicked out of his marital home with then-estranged wife Kathleen over his failure to stay sober, and began spending most nights at Hallie’s house “sharing a very specific grief” over Beau.
The former vice president did not initially know of the relationship, and found out after being reached for comment by Page Six.
After being made aware, the VP and second lady offered their blessing of the relationship in a statement.
“We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness. They have mine and Jill’s full and complete support and we are happy for them,” the two said at the time.
Hunter and Hallie released a similar statement at the same time, which read, “Hallie and I are incredibly lucky to have found the love and support we have for each other in such a difficult time, and that’s been obvious to the people who love us most. We’ve been so lucky to have family and friends who have supported us every step of the way.”
They dated for about two years before splitting in early 2019.
In late 2019, Hunter entered a court battle over unpaid child support for a baby he fathered with ex-stripper Lunden Alexis Roberts.
Roberts filed a suit against Hunter in November after he denied being the father of their child, born in August 2018, and subsequently declined to pay child support.
In January 2020, an Arkansas judge ruled that Biden was the “biological and legal father” of the baby, noting that a DNA test had showed “with near scientific certainty” that Hunter was the parent.
The two reached an out-of-court settlement in which Biden agreed to retroactively pay child support going back to November 2018.
Other child support payments to his unacknowledged daughter, Navy Joan Roberts, were finalized in June 2023, when Hunter agreed to share proceeds from an undisclosed number of his paintings for an undisclosed period of time.
In exchange, Lunden Roberts agreed to drop her demand for their daughter to take the Biden family name.
In 2019, Hunter Biden remarried, wedding South Africa-born Melissa Cohen just 10 days after meeting her.
They welcomed their first child, a boy named Beau, in March 2020.
Hunter has since gotten remarried to a South African woman named Melissa Cohen, whom he wed just 10 days after meeting her. They welcomed their first child, a boy, in April of this year.
Drug problems
Hunter Biden has long suffered from drug problems, and it even ended his brief attempt at a military career in his 40s. He was discharged from the Navy Reserve in February 2014 after he tested positive for cocaine.
He was serving as an ensign after being given two waivers, one for his age and one for his drug use as a younger man.
“It was the honor of my life to serve in the US Navy, and I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge,” he said after news of his discharge broke.
When President Trump brought the incident up at last month’s debate, Joe Biden defended his son.
“My son, like a lot of people at home, had a drug problem,” he said. “He’s overtaking it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son.”
Hunter discussed his drug use during his New Yorker interview last year, in which he admitted to almost having a brush with law enforcement after damaging a rental car in Arizona in 2016.
After the car was replaced by Hertz, the rental car company, a rental officer found a crack pipe in the car along with a white powder residue.
Police were called, but there was no evidence that Hunter had used the pipe, so narcotics charges weren’t pursued, the magazine reported.
The younger Biden’s drug problems date back far further than 2016, however.
Hunter was arrested in 1988 for drug possession, something he admitted to in a 2006 disclosure form after being nominated to serve on the Amtrak Reform Board.
“I was cited for possession of a controlled substance in Stone Harbor, NJ. There was a pre-trial intervention and the record was expunged,” he admitted.
In November 2019, Page Six exclusively reported that the former vice president’s son was suspected of smoking crack inside a Washington, DC, strip club where he dropped “thousands of dollars” during multiple visits.
The incident, which took place at Archibald’s Gentlemen’s Club late last year, represents the most recent alleged drug use by Biden, who has acknowledged six stints in rehab for alcoholism and addiction.
Security worker Ranko Petrovic said Biden would routinely hole up in a VIP room and drink during his visits.
Although Petrovic said the club “had no issue with him,” former Archibald’s managing partner James Ritter said one occasion in late 2018 was marred by a “suspicion of drug use.”
He checked into rehab at the Grace Grove Lifestyle Center in Sedona, Ariz., in October 2016, but left after one week and headed to the nearby Mii Amo resort spa.
It was there that Hunter and Hallie launched their affair, he told the New Yorker.
Page Six has also spotted Biden on multiple occasions at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club NYC in Hell’s Kitchen. He was seen on each occasion with a woman who was not a dancer at the club. The two spent thousands each night on pricey booze and were joined by several strippers.
At one point, a stripper was scrambling to buy a sex toy so others could use it on him.
Hunter stated in Delaware federal court in July 2023 that he had been sober since June 2019 — the same month he married his wife Melissa and began making plans for his memoir, “Beautiful Things.”
The 2021 book recounts his struggles with alcohol and descent into crack cocaine addiction following the death of his older brother Beau.
His ex-wife’s memoir, released the following year, covered the same period and relayed the many deceptions and infidelities that led to their split.
Months before he became sober, however, Hunter left his laptop at a Delaware computer repair shop and never returned to claim it — despite attempts by the shop’s owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, to contact him.
Mac Isaac later alerted the FBI after viewing some of the laptop’s contents, which included emails revealing an influence-peddling scheme involving former Vice President Joe Biden and pictures and videos of Hunter smoking crack and having sex with prostitutes.
The repair shop owner also made a copy of the hard drive, which he delivered to Rudy Giuliani’s personal lawyer, Robert Costello.
Its contents later formed the basis of The Post’s bombshell reports in October 2020 on the president’s son’s shady foreign business dealings.
Ukraine
Hunter did not become a mainstay in the news until his role with Burisma during his father’s tenure as vice president became a primary focus of the Ukraine scandal surrounding Trump, an issue that led to the president’s eventual impeachment trial along party lines in the House and acquittal by the Senate.
During the hearings and subsequent trial, Democrats accused Trump of offering a quid pro quo by requesting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky launch an investigation into the Bidens while Trump was withholding nearly $400 million in aid to the country.
Republicans, meanwhile, argued that allegations against the Bidens were damning enough to merit the president asking for a probe, regardless of Joe’s candidacy for president.
Hunter has been accused of profiting off his father’s vice presidential status by earning tens of thousands of dollars per month to sit on a board for a corrupt company in an industry in which he had no prior experience.
At the time, the elder Biden led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
Hunter’s role with Burisma raised red flags for some in the Obama administration’s State Department, which a recent Senate Homeland Security Committee report found were raised to Biden and those in his orbit.
The 87-page report published late last month noted that two American officials — George Kent, former acting deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Kiev, and senior State Department official Amos Hochstein — “raised concerns” to Biden’s staff and directly to Biden, respectively.
“Despite the efforts of these individuals, their concerns appear to have fallen on deaf ears,” the report says.
“Moreover, this investigation has illustrated the extent to which officials within the Obama administration ignored the glaring warning signs when the vice president’s son joined the board of a company owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch.”
Joe Biden said last year of Hunter, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” including his reported $83,000 monthly pay on Burisma’s board.
Both he and Hunter have denied any wrongdoing with respect to Ukraine, and spokespeople for Joe Biden’s campaign have repeatedly slammed the Senate probe as biased and political.
That Senate report also found that in 2014, the younger Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the richest woman in Russia and the widow of Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow.
“Baturina became Russia’s only female billionaire when her plastics company, Inteko, received a series of Moscow municipal contracts while her husband was mayor,” it said in providing background on the businesswoman.
The report described her involvement with Biden as “a financial relationship,” but declined to delve deeper into why the wire transfer was made.
Other foreign deals and investigations
Hunter’s lucrative overseas business dealings became a primary focus of congressional Republicans after his father ascended to the presidency in 2021.
Reports from The Post and others based on the first son’s abandoned laptop have corroborated that Joe Biden also met with business associates of his son and brother James from Mexico, Kazakhstan and China.
An FBI informant file released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also detailed a $10 million bribe the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, allegedly paid to Hunter and Joe Biden in order to quash an investigation into the Ukrainian gas company.
House Republicans later authorized an impeachment inquiry based on seized bank records, testimony from Hunter’s longtime business partner, Devon Archer, and two IRS investigators who were tasked with a five-year investigation into the first son’s alleged financial misdeeds.
The IRS whistleblowers — Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joseph Ziegler — appeared before Congress in July 2023 and alleged that the Justice Department had impeded their investigation.
The pair claim that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss and his team of prosecutors blocked them from taking certain investigative steps and from pursuing lines of inquiry that could implicate President Biden.
Weiss initially negotiated a probation-only plea agreement in June 2023, which was decried by Republicans as a “sweetheart” deal, but it blew up in federal court one month later.
Federal prosecutors and Hunter’s defense team disagreed over the scope of a provision in it called out by US District Judge Maryellen Noreika and would have given the first son broad immunity from future charges.
Indictments
Hunter is currently facing two criminal indictments — in Delaware and in Los Angeles — for gun and tax crimes.
In September 2023, Weiss, who had been elevated to special counsel a month earlier, slapped the first son with three counts for lying on a federal gun purchase form about his drug use when purchasing a Colt Cobra revolver in 2018.
He was hit again three months later with a nine-count indictment from Weiss’ office for refusing to pay more than $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019.
During that period, Hunter splurged on “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes,” the indictment states.
He will be arraigned on Jan. 11, 2024, for the tax fraud charges and is set to head to trial for the gun charges sometime in the following months.
He faces 42 years in prison upon conviction on all counts.
The White House has said the president, who is running for re-election to a second term next year, will not pardon his son if he is convicted.