A supposedly candid memoir doesn’t even acknowledge his fourth daughter, whose mother was a stripper on his payroll.
A supposedly candid memoir doesn’t even acknowledge his fourth daughter, whose mother was a stripper on his payroll.
I n his memoir Beautiful Things, Hunter Biden’s sole mention of one particularly messy detail — without acknowledging error or even that a familiar story was reported correctly — is this one: “I would later challenge in court the woman from Arkansas who had a baby in 2018 and claimed the child was mine — I had no recollection of our encounter.” That’s it? No acknowledgment of the woman’s name (Lunden Roberts) nor of his fourth daughter’s name (Navy Joan Roberts, now 2), nor of the fact that he settled the paternity suit in 2019 and agreed to pay child support because he is in fact the proven father of the child in question?
That Biden didn’t remember his encounter with Roberts is, of course, a lie. She was one of only a handful of employees on the payroll of Biden’s “consulting firm,” Rosemont Seneca, and to justify her appearance there in 2017, he told the general manager of his office building that she was a “basketball mentor” to Biden’s daughter Maisy and to Barack Obama’s daughter Sasha. Apparently, Hunter dug around to try to find some possible justification for why he’d have a stripper on his payroll (the office manager warned Hunter about allowing unsavory characters into the building using the side entrance) and came up with this detail: Lunden, a stripper at a Dupont Circle club where Biden was seen many times, had played a little basketball at Arkansas State. Voilà. She was an essential basketball coach to two children. But if he had forgotten about his hookup with Lunden Roberts, he wouldn’t have put her on his payroll while she was pregnant.
Another amusing passing mention is that he was “discharged from the Naval Reserve for failing that drug test in 2014,” no further details offered. Since Biden is a bit reluctant to share, I’ll elaborate: In 2013, when he was 43, he sought and received a direct commission into the Navy, which is sort of like getting a direct diploma from Harvard without the intervening steps of attending classes. It is extraordinarily unusual to join the military at that age, which is retirement time for some officers, and Biden needed to get a special age waiver to join. He also got a second waiver excusing him for past drug abuse. Nevertheless, within a month after his commissioning, in June of 2013, he failed a drug test. And he still wasn’t kicked out, not until the following February. This is how Biden explained all of this to Adam Entous of the New Yorker in their lengthy conversations:
Hunter wrote a letter to the Navy Reserve, saying that he didn’t know how the drug had got into his system and suggesting that the cigarettes he’d smoked outside the bar might have been laced with cocaine. Hunter called Beau, who contacted Tom Gallagher, a former Navy lawyer who had worked with Beau at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Philadelphia. Gallagher agreed to represent Hunter pro bono, but it became clear that, given Hunter’s history with drugs, an appeals panel was unlikely to believe the story that he had ingested cocaine involuntarily, and that appealing the decision would require closed-door hearings and the testimony of witnesses, increasing the likelihood of leaks to the press. Hunter decided not to appeal. Navy records show that Hunter’s discharge took effect on February 18, 2014.
In the book, Biden doesn’t repeat this absurd claim, not amongst all of his detailed confessions of heavy drug use. Crack, he says, delivers “a sense of utter, almost otherworldly well-being. You are at once energetic, focused and calm. Blood rushes to every extremity: your skin ripples with what feels like bumblebees . . . of course, it’s all delusional and self-defeating — but not at the moment.” He says he could do crack around the clock, every day, and yet when one is enslaved by the drug, one can “still make your meetings (sometimes), still return your calls (sometimes), still pay your bills (sometimes).” He imagines a conversation: “Them: Why do you do drugs? Us: Because they make us feel good.”
Nowadays, he says he turned his life around after meeting a pretty, blonde, 32-year-old South African activist, Melissa Cohen. The circumstances of their relationship are a little odd. He told her he loved her within a minute or two of meeting her; she told him she loved him an hour later. And, as one does, they agreed to get married within a week. Biden says she immediately put him to rights by seizing his car keys and deleting all of his drug contacts from his phone. So, all better then.
Lucky for Hunter, though, he’s found a new way to sell his name: He is working with a dealer again. No, this time he’s the seller, and he is retailing his paintings for up to $500,000. Hey, folks, want to ingratiate yourself with a U.S. president? His son is still accepting large checks for the profession of being a Biden, lightly disguised by pretend activities. Then: corporate governance. Now: art. One art expert drily told the New York Post, referring to the insanely high prices sought by this 51-year-old newcomer, “That would be on the high end, certainly, for an emerging artist.” An art consultant who said he’s “not a fan” of the paintings nevertheless explained, “I’m very positive that he’s gonna do well in the market because this industry is very much about, what’s a simple way to put this — it’s like clout.” Never change, Hunter. You’re one of America’s classic grifters.