Hunter Biden
Robert Hunter Biden (born February 4, 1970) is an American attorney and businessman. He is the second son of U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Biden was a founding board member of BHR Partners, a Chinese investment company, in 2013, and later served on the board of Burisma Holdings, one of the largest private natural gas producers in Ukraine, from 2014 until his term expired in April 2019. He has worked as a lobbyist and legal representative for lobbying firms, a hedge fund principal, and a venture capital and private equity fund investor.
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Hunter Biden
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Robert Hunter Biden
February 4, 1970 Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.
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| Children | 5 |
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| Relatives | Biden family |
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United States Navy |
| Years of service | 2013–2014 |
| Rank | Ensign |
| Unit | United States Navy Reserve |
Since early 2019, Hunter and his father have been the targets of false allegations of corrupt activities concerning Ukraine, which intensified after the New York Post published an article in October 2020 about a laptop computer that had belonged to Hunter Biden. Biden was convicted of three federal firearms-related felony charges in June 2024 after he had admitted to “illegally owning a gun while a drug user”. Biden’s tax affairs have been under federal criminal investigation since late 2018, and in September 2024, Biden pled guilty to all of the tax charges. In December 2024, Biden was pardoned by his father, who said that the charges were “selective” and “political” and reneged on earlier promises to not pardon Hunter.
Early life and education
Hunter Biden was born on February 4, 1970, in Wilmington, Delaware. He is the second son of Neilia Biden (née Hunter) and Joe Biden. Hunter Biden’s mother and younger sister Naomi were killed in an automobile crash on December 18, 1972. Biden and his older brother Beau were also seriously injured but survived. Beau suffered multiple broken bones while Hunter sustained a fractured skull and severe traumatic brain injuries. Both spent several months in the hospital, during which time their father was sworn into the U.S. Senate in January 1973. Hunter and Beau later encouraged their father to marry again, and Jill Jacobs Stevenson became their stepmother in 1977. Biden’s half-sister Ashley was born in 1981.
Like his father and brother, Biden attended the Catholic high school Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Georgetown University in 1992. During the year after he graduated from college, he served as a Jesuit volunteer at a church in Portland, Oregon, and met Kathleen Buhle, whom he married in 1993. After attending the Georgetown University Law Center for one year, he transferred to Yale Law School and graduated in 1996.
Personal life
Relationships
In 1993, Biden married Kathleen Buhle. They have three daughters: Naomi (named after Biden’s sister), Finnegan, and Maisey. The couple formally separated in October 2015, and divorced in 2017. Buhle’s 2022 memoir If We Break documents her account of the relationship.
Biden began a relationship with his brother’s widow Hallie Olivere Biden in 2016. The relationship ended in 2019.
Between 2017 and 2018, Biden also had a romantic relationship with Zoe Kestan.
Biden has a fourth daughter, born in August 2018 in Arkansas, to Lunden Alexis Roberts. Biden initially denied paternity of the child, but a DNA test, conducted as part of a paternity suit filed in May 2019 by Roberts, confirmed paternity. The lawsuit was settled in March 2020 after Biden agreed to pay Roberts $20,000 a month in child support. Biden filed a motion in September 2022 to reduce his child support payments, on the basis of reduced income; Roberts opposed this request and also petitioned the Arkansas court to change the child’s surname to Biden, so that his daughter might benefit from associations with Biden’s family. In June 2023, Biden and Roberts settled the dispute. As part of the settlement, Biden agreed to give several of his paintings to his daughter and pay an undisclosed monthly amount in child support until the daughter turns 18. Biden also agreed to assist with college tuition. Roberts agreed to drop her petition to change their daughter’s surname. The matter received significant attention in the media.
Biden married South African filmmaker Melissa Cohen in May 2019, within a week of first meeting her. Their son, named Beau in honor of Biden’s brother, was born in March 2020 in Los Angeles.
Drug and alcohol abuse
Biden has abused drugs and alcohol throughout his adult life, which he has detailed in his memoir Beautiful Things. He believes his addiction issues are linked to episodes of family loss he suffered, beginning with the 1972 motor vehicle accident that killed his mother and sister. Biden said that his family never talked much with him about the accident, and this allowed the emotional trauma he felt to remain unresolved; it worsened following the death of his brother, Beau. Over the past two decades, Biden has been in multiple substance abuse rehabilitation programs, each followed by an interval of sobriety followed by relapse. At his worst, Biden stated that he was “smoking crack every 15 minutes”.
The $11 million Biden and his firm were paid from 2013 to 2018 fueled his addiction. In his autobiography Beautiful Things, he said that the money “turned into a major enabler during my steepest skid into addiction” and “hounded me to spend recklessly, dangerously, destructively. Humiliatingly. So I did.” He had an intervention in early 2019.
Memoir
Biden released Beautiful Things, a memoir of the trauma of the accident that claimed his mother and sister, and his later addiction struggles, on April 6, 2021. The New York Times described the book as “equal parts family saga, grief narrative and addict’s howl”.
Work as an artist
In February 2020, The New York Times reported that Biden had been painting as an “undiscovered artist” in his Hollywood Hills home. The report also displayed some of his paintings, including “Untitled #4 (a study in ink)” and “Untitled #3 (a signed work)”.
Biden’s art dealer, Georges Bergès, hosted a private viewing for Biden in Los Angeles in fall 2021, followed by an exhibition in New York. Biden’s paintings were put up for sale for as much as $500,000 per painting, with Kevin Morris purchasing $875,000 worth of his art.
One of the buyers was Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, who is currently on the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. This provoked conflict-of-interest concerns as well as concerns about a lack of transparency.
Career
Hunter Biden and his family returned to Wilmington, Delaware, where he had begun working as a lawyer and consultant with MBNA America, a bank holding company, and he quickly rose to the rank of executive vice president. Like most financial service firms, MBNA donated heavily to politicians of both major political parties, including Sen. Joe Biden.
Hunter Biden’s position with MBNA attracted accusations of impropriety and conflict of interest as Joe Biden backed controversial credit card legislation that was opposed by consumer groups but supported by MBNA during Hunter’s time with the company. Hunter Biden left MBNA in 1998 to serve in the Commerce Department under Pres. Bill Clinton, handling e-commerce policy. In 2001 he cofounded the lobbying firm of Oldaker, Biden & Belair. The firm lobbied on a variety of issues, including online gambling. Hunter Biden stopped lobbying when his father became Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate in 2008.
In 2006 Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden purchased a hedge fund group called Paradigm Global Advisors. During the four years that the Bidens owned the fund, it was connected to several allegations of fraud, including a Texas businessman convicted of running an enormous Ponzi scheme. The Bidens denied wrongdoing, never faced charges, and liquidated the fund in 2010.
Hunter Biden’s business dealings, however, continued to raise questions about the extent to which he used his family name to secure deals. Devon Archer, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s, testified in 2023 before a congressional committee that the younger Biden used “the illusion of access to his father” to attract potential partners.
In 2013 Hunter Biden accompanied his father, then the vice president, on an official trip to China, where he met with the chief executive of BHR, a Chinese private equity firm. Biden received an unpaid seat on the company’s board of directors shortly after the meeting. He would ultimately take a 10 percent ownership stake in the firm.
Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine were even more complex and made problematic by his father’s role in leading the Obama administration’s relationship with Ukraine. In 2014 Hunter Biden accepted a seat on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, for which he was paid as much as $1.2 million a year. During this period, Vice Pres. Biden was pressuring the Ukrainian government to replace the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was widely viewed as corrupt.
The Ukrainian parliament ultimately removed Shokin from power in 2016, but members of the Republican Party have said that Shokin’s ouster was the result of pressure from the senior Biden because Shokin had been investigating Burisma. Some critics have alleged that both Bidens received multimillion-dollar payouts from Burisma executives in exchange for actions resulting in Shokin’s removal. No proof of criminal wrongdoing by either Biden has ever surfaced pertaining to the Burisma matter. Hunter Biden left the Burisma board in 2019.
In 2019 Pres. Donald Trump tried to withhold aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into the debunked allegation against Joe Biden. In a phone call with newly elected Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump insinuated that he would release the funds he was withholding as soon as Zelensky announced an investigation into the Bidens. President Trump was later impeached for this conduct.
Legal troubles
In 2020 Hunter Biden disclosed that the Justice Department has been investigating him since late 2018. The investigation was led by David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, and involved potential criminal violations of tax and money-laundering laws. In June 2023 Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his 2016 and 2017 taxes on time. He also accepted conditions that would avoid his being prosecuted on a felony charge that he lied when he said he was sober when buying a handgun in 2018. But the plea deal collapsed when the judge in the case refused to be what she called “a rubber stamp” on the agreement that some said reflected preferential treatment of the first son.
In August 2023 U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that Weiss had been named the special counsel in charge of the investigation, and prosecutors filed court documents saying that they expected the Biden case to go to trial. In June 2024 Biden went on trial for the gun-related charges, and he was found guilty on all three counts later that month. He thus became the first child of a sitting U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. In September 2024 Biden pleaded guilty to three felony counts and six misdemeanors in his federal tax case.
In addition, in September 2023 Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy announced that committees of the House of Representatives would begin impeachment hearings into Joe Biden. The committees would investigate, among other issues, whether the president benefited from Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
Pardon by father, U.S. President Joe Biden
On December 1, 2024, Joe Biden issued a “full and unconditional” pardon for his son. Critics called out the action for its implicit corruption and family self-serving appearance. In the months leading up to Hunter’s scheduled sentencing, Joe had made numerous clear promises not to pardon his son.
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He and his staff continued to state that there would be no pardon for Hunter as late as November, although internal staff discussions affirmed that the option for a pardon would remain on the table even as Biden promised otherwise. Joe said in an official statement from the White House that he believed his son was, “…selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.”
The pardon cannot be rescinded by President-elect Donald Trump. President Biden also said, “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.” Hunter issued the following statement in response to the pardon:
I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction — mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport, I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.
