Hunter Biden

Robert Hunter Biden (born February 4, 1970) is an American artist, disbarred former attorney, and businessman. He is the second son of former president Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Hunter 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.

Since early 2019, Hunter and his father have been the targets of false allegations that Joe pressured Ukraine to fire their Prosecutor General to protect Hunter, 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. His tax affairs came under federal criminal investigation in late 2018, and in September 2024, he pleaded guilty to all of the tax charges.

In December 2024, Biden's father pardoned him for all federal offenses committed between 2014 and 2024, including any potential offenses not yet discovered. In 2025, he was disbarred in both Washington, D.C. and by the Connecticut bar, which he had entered soon after graduating from law school. In 2025, he began working as the development director for a nonprofit tenants' rights organization.

Robert Hunter Biden was born on February 4, 1970, in Wilmington, Delaware, the second son of Neilia Biden (née Hunter) and Joe Biden. His mother and younger sister Naomi died 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.

After graduating from law school in 1996, Biden accepted a consultant position at the bank holding company MBNA, whose employees donated more than $200,000 (equivalent to $410,567 in 2025) to his father's senate campaigns over the years. Biden delayed his start date at MBNA to serve as co-chair for his father's reelection campaign. By 1998, Hunter Biden had risen to the rank of executive vice president. Biden departed from MBNA in 1998. He then served at the United States Department of Commerce, focusing on ecommerce policy for President Bill Clinton's administration.

In 2001, Biden became a lobbyist, co-founding the firm of Oldaker, Biden & Belair. According to Adam Entous of The New Yorker, Biden and his father established a relationship in which "[Joe] Biden wouldn't ask Hunter about his lobbying clients, and Hunter wouldn't tell his father about them". In 2001, he was also rehired by MBNA as a consultant, where he was paid a yearly $100,000 retainer until 2005. MBNA's rehiring of Biden was controversial because his father was pushing for passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which was beneficial to the credit card industry and supported by MBNA during Biden's time at the bank. The legislation made it more difficult to get bankruptcy protection.

Biden was appointed to a five-year term on the board of directors of Amtrak by President George W. Bush in 2006. Biden was the board's vice chairman from July 2006 until he was replaced as vice chairman in January 2009. He resigned from the board that February, shortly after his father became vice president. Biden said during his father's vice-presidential campaign that it was time for his lobbying activities to end.

Biden's application for a position in the U.S. Navy Reserve was approved in May 2013. At age 43, Biden was accepted as part of a program that allows a limited number of applicants with desirable skills to receive commissions and serve in staff positions. Biden received an age-related waiver and a waiver for a past drug-related incident; he was sworn in as a direct commission officer by his father in a White House ceremony. Results of a routine urinalysis taken on Biden's first weekend of reserve duty revealed cocaine in his system. He was discharged administratively in February 2014. Biden attributed the result to having smoked a cigarette that he had asked a group of men outside a store to give him, claiming the cigarette contained cocaine as well as tobacco. He did not appeal the discharge.

In 2006, Biden and his uncle James Biden purchased international hedge fund Paradigm Global Advisors with an $8 million promissory note (equivalent to $12,776,494 in 2025). The joint promotion of the fund by an entity of the troubled Stanford Financial Group hastened the unwinding of the company in 2010. In September 2008, Hunter Biden founded a consultancy company named Seneca Global Advisors that offered to help companies expand into foreign markets. Biden was a partner in investment vehicles that included the name "Seneca" to denote his participation. In 2009, Biden, Devon Archer, and Christopher Heinz founded the investment and advisory firm Rosemont Seneca Partners. Biden also co-founded venture capital firm Eudora Global. Biden held the position of counsel in the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP in 2014. From 2011 to 2017, Biden was on the board of directors of World Food Program USA, a 501(c)(3) charity based in Washington, D.C., that supports the work of the UN World Food Programme; he served as board chairman from 2011 to 2015.

A detailed analysis of Hunter Biden's hard drive by NBC News showed that Biden and his firm were paid $11 million (equivalent to $15,203,571 in 2025) from 2013 to 2018, including $3.8 million (equivalent to $5,252,143 in 2025) in payments from CEFC China Energy, a defunct oil and gas company with links to the Chinese Communist Party, as well as from Burisma Holdings. In the U.S. criminal tax case against Biden, prosecutors alleged that he accepted payments from Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu to influence U.S. government agencies regarding a criminal probe in Romania. The allegations dated back to his work for Popoviciu in 2015, during Joe Biden's vice presidency.

From 2013 to 2020, Biden served as a member of the board of the China-based private equity fund BHR Partners, of which he acquired a 10% stake in 2017 at a discount to actual value and with borrowed money. The founders of BHR Partners included Biden's Rosemont Seneca Partners investment firm (20% equity), along with U.S.-based Thornton Group LLC (10% equity) and two asset managers registered in China. The Chinese-registered asset managers are the Bank of China (via BOC International Holdings-backed Bohai Industrial Investment Fund Management) and Deutsche Bank-backed Harvest Fund Management.

In September 2019, while President Donald Trump was accusing Hunter Biden of malfeasance in Ukraine, he also falsely claimed that Biden "walk[ed] out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund" (equivalent to $1,888,910,582 in 2025). Later in 2019, The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Trump was incorrect in claiming that Hunter received this $1.5 billion, stating that Trump had no evidence to support the claim and that he incorrectly interpreted BHR's past fundraising target of $1.5 billion; BHR invested money raised from other companies and did not keep the funds. Trump publicly called upon China to investigate Hunter Biden's business activities there while his father was vice president.

Hunter Biden announced his resignation from the board of directors of BHR Partners, effective the end of October 2019, citing "the barrage of false charges" by then-U.S. president Trump. This was confirmed by Biden's attorney, who said in November 2021 that his client no longer held any direct or indirect interest in BHR. However, as of April 2020, Chinese business records showed that Hunter Biden remained a board member of BHR. According to his lawyer, Biden had "not received any compensation for being on BHR's board of directors" nor had he received any return on his equity share in BHR. Biden's lawyer George Mesires told The Washington Post that BHR Partners had been "capitalized from various sources with a total of 30 million RMB (Renminbi), or about $4.2 million, not $1.5 billion". Biden's solely owned company Skaneateles LLC owned a 10% equity stake in BHR as of December 2020. In November 2021, New York Times reported that "Chinese corporate records show Skaneateles remains a part owner of BHR". Skaneateles was dissolved in 2022.

During his father's presidency, Hunter emerged as one of six key individuals who insulated Joe from scrutiny and acted as an intermediary between him and others. After a poor presidential debate performance by Joe in June 2024 caused intensified public concern about his age and fitness for the presidency, Hunter helped Joe with speech preparation and began joining meetings with the president and his staffers. Hunter maintained daily, often hourly contact with his father on calls. Joe increasingly relied on Hunter for advice, and Hunter emerged as one of the strongest voices in Joe's circle urging him not to drop out of his reelection campaign.

Hunter had been a regular presence in public White House events, but his increased involvement in Biden's presidency and campaign led to surprise and concern from White House staffers. After Joe's poor debate performance, Hunter advocated for Joe to fire some of his top staffers, including Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer. Hunter also began acting as a "de facto gatekeeper" for access to the president. During an interview with Andrew Callaghan in July 2025—his first interview since the 2024 presidential election—Biden castigated David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Anita Dunn, George Clooney, Jake Tapper, James Carville, and others, whom he blamed to various degrees for purportedly forcing his father to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race. Calder McHugh of Politico referred to Biden's statements in the interview as "a view of history that is simply inconsistent with the facts".

Between 2023 and 2024, Hunter privately sued numerous individuals, organizations, and the U.S. Government alleging various instances of invasion of privacy and defamation. In September 2023, Biden filed suit against the IRS, claiming unlawful disclosures of his tax return information in relation to two IRS employees who provided information to members of Congress. The D.C. District Court dismissed his claim under the Privacy Act in September 2024, and Biden dropped the suit altogether in 2025. In 2023, Biden sued Garrett Ziegler's Marco Polo organization, accusing the group of invasion of privacy for publishing 128,000 of his emails that were recovered from his lost laptop computer. In March 2025, Biden sought to have the case dismissed due to his worsening personal financial situation and inability to continue to pay for his own legal representation.

In 2024, Biden sued Rudy Giuliani alleging Giuliani was responsible for the "total annihilation" of his privacy due to his involvement in releasing data from his laptop computer. He dropped the lawsuit shortly thereafter. The same year, he sued Fox News for airing images taken from the laptop, but dropped the lawsuit without explanation the following month. Three months later, however, he resurrected the lawsuit in state court. In a statement, Fox News described the second lawsuit as "devoid of any merit". In June 2025, Biden was sued by Winston & Strawn for over $50,000 in unpaid legal fees from its representation of him in his federal criminal cases.

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 (equivalent to $622,026 in 2025), with Kevin Morris purchasing $875,000 (equivalent to $1,088,546 in 2025) worth of his art. Another buyer was Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a prominent California Democratic Party donor who was appointed to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad by Joe Biden. Business Insider was unable to verify how much Hirsh Naftali spent on the art, nor whether the purchase occurred before or after her appointment. An ethicist interviewed by the news website said that the purchase was ethically problematic, particularly if it occurred before her appointment, as "it might be perceived as a quid pro quo." The purchases provoked concerns about possible conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency. According to court filings by Biden, between December 2021 and December 2023, he sold approximately $1.5 million (equivalent to $1,866,079 in 2025) of his paintings. From December 2023 to March 2025, he sold $36,000 worth (equivalent to $44,786 in 2025).

His Washington D.C. law license was suspended in 2024, though NBC News reported that it was unclear what impact the suspension would have on his livelihood as he was currently working as an artist. In January 2025, his rental home was damaged and left uninhabitable during the Palisades Fire and he had difficulty finding new housing, resulting in him experiencing homelessness. By this point, he was several million dollars in debt and his income severely impacted by flagging interest in his memoir, which was selling less than 200 copies per month. In court filings, Biden averred that he had anticipated earning money from invitations for paid speaking engagements, but no such invitations had materialized. In April 2025, Biden consented to disbarment in Washington D.C. in order to avoid disbarment proceedings over his criminal convictions.

In March 2025, Hunter's Secret Service detail was withdrawn on the direction of Donald Trump. Prior to the end of his term, Joe Biden had ordered an extended period of post-presidency protection for Hunter. In August 2025, Melania Trump sent a letter demanding that Biden retract statements he made about her, Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein during an interview earlier that month with Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan. Biden had attributed the information to journalist Michael Wolff. In a subsequent interview, Biden refused to apologize or retract his statements.

In December 2025, Waterbury, Connecticut based Judge Trial Referee Patrick L. Carroll III disbarred Biden from the Connecticut bar, which Biden entered in 1997 a year after he graduated from Yale Law School, after finding that Biden violated state's attorney conduct rules.

Biden began work in August 2025 as the development director for the nonprofit group BASTA Universal, which he described as "the leading homeless prevention and tenants' rights group in southern Los Angeles"

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. In 2016, Biden began a relationship with his brother's widow, Hallie Olivere Biden. The relationship ended in 2019.

Between 2017 and 2018, Biden had relationships with Zoë Kestan and Lunden Alexis Roberts. The relationship with Roberts resulted in the birth of Biden's fourth daughter, in August 2018. Biden initially denied that the child was his, but a DNA test, conducted as part of a paternity suit filed in May 2019 by Roberts, confirmed he is the father. The lawsuit was settled in March 2020 after Biden agreed to pay Roberts $20,000 a month in child support (equivalent to $25,643 in 2025). 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. Biden and Lunden Roberts reached a settlement in June 2023 in which Biden agreed to give several of his paintings to their daughter and pay an undisclosed monthly amount in child support until she turns 18. Biden also agreed to assist with college tuition. Roberts agreed to drop her petition to change their daughter's surname. As of December 2024, Biden has not met his daughter with Roberts in-person, and has only met with her virtually. In December 2024, Biden stopped the virtual meetings, which Lunden Roberts believes was in response to her publishing a memoir about her relationship with him.