The moment appeared to be brutal for the Biden family, whose members fought to hold back tears and sometimes lost that battle. Over a few raw days, Hunter Biden’s trial showcased just how dark the family’s dynamics had grown in recent years, providing new insight into the first family and its attempt to find closure after the death of the president’s son Beau, and the pain and grief that still threaten those efforts.
While the trial, whose guilty verdict was announced Tuesday, focused on the narrow question of whether Hunter Biden lied on a gun-purchase form six years ago, it was more broadly a trial for the sprawling Biden clan, testing the relationships in a family that had splintered almost to the breaking point not long before their patriarch ascended to the White House.
The trial’s ruthless choreography meant that a daughter testified as the star witness for the defense, while her mother was a key witness for the prosecution. It meant that the widow of the family’s great hope — Beau, who died of cancer in 2015 — looked out from the witness box for reassurance not from anyone in the Biden family she’d been part of for years, but from her new husband, who sat on the opposite side of the room from the Bidens.
The family has repeatedly found itself torn apart by tragedy and dissension, then attempted to piece itself back together. Often that pattern has reflected love and resilience. But the picture that emerged over the past week-and-a-half was also one of ongoing damage. The guilty verdict showcased some of the challenges ahead as family members hugged him and held hands, even as Hunter awaits sentencing that could include jail time.
The trial highlighted that Joe Biden now oversees not just a fractured family but a divided nation. When he began his Senate career in 1972, Republicans and Democrats rallied to his side after the unspeakable loss of his wife and baby daughter in a car crash. Decades later, Biden’s adversaries have been quick to seize on Hunter’s struggles to bombard him with hard-hitting political attacks that depict his whole family as corrupt.
After that 1972 car crash, Joe Biden’s siblings — particularly sister Valerie and brother Jimmy — rushed to help raise young Hunter and Beau, at times moving into Joe Biden’s home to look after them. A woman named Jill Tracy soon entered their lives to become a new mother to the boys, and the rebuilt family created new traditions like spending Thanksgiving on Nantucket Island, Mass.
Its equilibrium was shattered again when Beau Biden died of brain cancer, sending Hunter, who’d struggled with drug abuse, into a deep pit of addiction. He started an ill-fated romance with Beau’s widow Hallie, which may have provided a temporary salve for their grief but irrevocably ruptured Hunter’s long marriage to Kathleen Buhle and caused angry divisions throughout the family.
Recent years have brought greater stability, even as Kathleen and Hallie have largely faded from public view. Hunter has remarried to Melissa Cohen-Biden, who attended the trial each day, kissing her husband and bringing family members coffee during breaks. She shook her head when prosecutors mentioned the embarrassing texts from Hunter they’d introduced as evidence, and she vociferously confronted conservative activist Garrett Ziegler, who has repeatedly targeted Hunter online, when she ran into him in the hallway.
“I am more grateful today for the love and support I experienced this last week from Melissa, my family, my friends, and my community than I am disappointed by the outcome,” Hunter said after the guilty verdict. “Recovery is possible by the grace of God, and I am blessed to experience that gift one day at a time.”
The trial unfolded in a wood-paneled courtroom with portraits of judges on the walls, where the air was cold enough to trigger remarks from family members who started bringing jackets and shawls — an echo of Donald Trump’s complaints about the cold temperature at his own recent trial.
The unity among much of the family was evident, as relatives whom Hunter had fled, abandoned or ignored during his addiction showed up to support him. They sat in the first two rows, where Hunter would kiss and hug each one before joining a defense table crowded with binders of exhibits, including his text messages and photos of his drugs. During the proceedings, he would at times swivel his chair to smile at his relatives. At one point he noticed that his wife was missing and mouthed to his mother, “Is she in the bathroom?” The first lady gave a nod to reassure him Melissa would be back.
Jill Biden showed up almost every day, flying across the Atlantic Ocean four times as she shuttled to and from President Biden’s official visit to France to commemorate D-Day. Hunter Biden’s uncle Jack Owens, who has long been close to the president and married his sister Valerie, was there every day.
“That’s how we roll,” Cuffe Owens, one of Hunter’s cousins, said of the family’s unity as he walked into the courtroom.
But the trauma was inescapable. Ashley Biden, Hunter’s sister, wept quietly as prosecutors played an audiobook of his memoir, specifically a portion recounting how he would cook cocaine and neglect his family. Kathleen Buhle spoke about the strain Hunter’s addiction put on their daughters and their marriage; Jill Biden was not there for her testimony.
“He moved out really after I found the crack pipe,” Buhle said. “But I didn’t consider us separated until I found out about the infidelity.”
Some of that infidelity occurred with her former sister-in-law Hallie Biden, who said that she and Hunter both began using drugs in the aftermath of Beau’s death. “It was a terrible experience that I went through,” she told the jurors, speaking softly and haltingly. “I’m embarrassed and ashamed, and I regret that part of my life.”
An exotic dancer testified that she, too, became involved with Hunter during this stretch, describing a long period when they would move from one hotel room to another, withdrawing cash and buying drugs. Hunter at one point gave her $800 to buy designer clothes that he planned to give to his daughters, she said. On another occasion they traveled to Providence, R.I., so Hunter could buy more drugs — and also to tour her alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design, where Hunter said one of his daughter’s might want to go.
Naomi Biden, Hunter Biden’s 30-year-old daughter, took the stand Friday, the final day of testimony, to help a father who by his own account often had not been there for her. When Naomi first took the stand, defense lawyer Abbe Lowell asked how many siblings she had.
“Two sisters,” she said, before quickly adding, “and a brother. Who I love.” That was a reference to her father’s 4-year-old son with his current wife, who is named after his brother, Beau. Naomi did not mention another child, a 5-year-old daughter named Navy, whom Hunter had with an Arkansas woman and who he denied was his until a paternity test showed otherwise in 2020.
Naomi told jurors how she and her then-boyfriend, Peter Neal, drove from his parents’ house in Wyoming to Los Angeles in 2018. Naomi wanted her future husband to meet her father, who had been in rehab and had recently reached out. They met at a coffee shop, ate lunch, went shopping and met his sobriety coach.
The testimony appeared difficult for her — “Sorry. I’m nervous,” she said early on — but the defense team viewed her as a key witness who could show that Hunter was attempting to stabilize his life around the time of the gun purchase.
“He seemed like the clearest that I had seen him since my uncle died,” Naomi recounted. “And he just seemed really great.”
But on cross-examination, prosecutors introduced 20 pages of text messages to devastating effect, portraying an unresponsive father who had other priorities, was not always interested in seeing her and pestered her about errands in the middle of the night.
“Are you up?” he wrote one night at 11:40 p.m. Later, at about 2 a.m., he asked whether Neal could meet him at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York to return Hunter’s truck, which Naomi and Neal had borrowed, in exchange for another car.
“Right now?” she wrote. Hunter did not respond.
The next day she tried again to connect, asking if they could see each other. Hunter declined.
That triggered a sad emoji from his daughter. “I’m really sorry, dad, I can’t take this,” she wrote, adding later, “I don’t know what to say, I just miss you so much, I just want to hang out with you.”
Later Hunter responded, “I’m sorry I have been so unreachable. It’s not fair to you.”
Prosecutors asked whether Naomi was aware that her father during that period was meeting with “someone named Frankie” in his hotel room and that he had provided access codes so that Frankie could get money from his bank account.
“No,” she said softly.
When Naomi’s testimony concluded, she walked out of the courtroom, giving Hunter a hug and wiping her eyes. The family members’ faces looked ashen as they crowded into a side room, tearful and angry.
Later that afternoon, the defense decided not to call James Biden, Hunter’s uncle whom he has described as his best friend.
President Biden was notably absent from the trial, occupied with a high-profile trip to France and determined to show that, unlike Trump, he would not seek to influence the workings of the justice system. But he stayed in close touch with Hunter, as he has throughout his presidency, according to people close to the family.
“I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal,” President Biden said after the verdict. “Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.”
Now that the family is trying to move forward after the verdict — reprising its familiar pattern of unifying after a painful experience — more turmoil lies ahead: Hunter Biden faces another criminal trial, this one on tax evasion charges, in September.
