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Politics|A Timeline of Hunter Biden’s Life and Legal Troubles

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/us/politics/hunter-biden-legal-troubles-timeline.html

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Hunter Biden Case

Special Counsel Appointed

Biden’s Life and Troubles

Who Is David Weiss?

How a Plea Deal Collapsed

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A Timeline of Hunter Biden’s Life and Legal Troubles

Mr. Biden, 53, has acknowledged a decades-long addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine. His foreign business dealings have led to questions about President Biden’s influence.

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Hunter Biden, son of President Biden, leaves a U.S. District Court in Delaware. The Justice Department has named a special counsel to an investigation into his conduct.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

By Michael Levenson

Published Aug. 11, 2023Updated Aug. 14, 2023

With the news that the Justice Department has named a special counsel to investigate a wide range of conduct by President Biden’s son Hunter Biden, his life is bound to come under even more intense scrutiny.

A father of five with a law degree from Yale, Mr. Biden, 53, has acknowledged a decades-long addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine, and his foreign business dealings have led to questions about President Biden’s influence.

Here’s a look at key dates in the life of the president’s son.

Feb. 4, 1970

Hunter Biden is born, the second child of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Hunter’s older brother, Beau, was born in 1969, and his sister, Naomi, was born in 1971.

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Senator-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Neilia, cut his birthday cake at a party in 1972. Hunter is at center right. Credit...Bettmann via Getty Images

Dec. 18, 1972

Neilia Hunter Biden and Naomi Biden are killed in a car crash while shopping for a Christmas tree near their home in Wilmington, Del. Hunter Biden and Beau Biden are seriously injured in the crash but survive.

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1992

Hunter Biden graduates from Georgetown University.

July 1993

Hunter Biden marries Kathleen Buhle. They met in their 20s while they were both in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Portland, Ore.

1996

Hunter Biden graduates from Yale Law School.

Early 2000s

The period when Hunter Biden says he began drinking heavily at dinner, at parties and after work at Oldaker, Biden & Belair, a law and lobbying firm, where he had been a partner since 2001.

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Hunter Biden watches Senator Biden while campaigning in Dubuque, Iowa, in 2007.Credit...Scott Olson/Getty Images

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Sept. 12, 2008

Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign announces that Hunter Biden, his running mate’s son, has quit working as a Washington lobbyist. Records showed Hunter Biden’s clients included an online gambling venture, biotechnology companies and colleges seeking earmarks.

2013

Hunter Biden and two other Americans join Chinese partners in establishing a Shanghai-based investment company known as BHR. The firm helped to finance an Australian coal-mining company controlled by a Chinese state-owned firm and assisted a subsidiary of a Chinese defense conglomerate in buying a Michigan auto parts maker.

The Hunter Biden Investigation

President Biden’s son Hunter has been under investigation since 2018 over his foreign dealings, drug use and finances.

The Unraveling of a Plea Deal: The investigation appeared to be near an end in June after Hunter Biden agreed to enter a plea agreement. Instead, his legal troubles got worse.

Special Counsel:  Days after a judge delayed the deal, the prosecutor in the case was elevated to special counsel status, a stunning reversal. Still the move might not change much in practice.

A Political Liability: With the appointment of the special counsel, what had been a relatively contained political scandal could now go on for months just as the president is gearing up for his re-election campaign.

What Democrats Think: More than a dozen officials, operatives and pollsters told us that Hunter Biden’s legal troubles were less worrisome than other concerns about the president, such as his age and his low approval ratings.

2014

Hunter Biden is discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine use. He had been commissioned as an ensign on May 7, 2013, and was assigned to a public affairs reserve unit in Norfolk, Va.

APRIL 2014

Hunter Biden joins the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that was under investigation for corruption as Joe Biden, then the vice president, was overseeing White House policy toward Ukraine. Hunter Biden made more than $800,000 in 2013 and more than $1.2 million in 2014.

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May 30, 2015

Beau Biden, the former attorney general of Delaware, dies of brain cancer at age 46. Hunter Biden has a relapse of alcohol addiction.

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Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, left, arrive for a burial Mass for Beau Biden in Delaware in 2015.Credit...Getty Images

May 2016

The first anniversary of Beau Biden’s death sends Hunter Biden into a spiral of depression that leads to crack cocaine use and addiction.

2017

Mr. Biden and Ms. Buhle finalize an acrimonious divorce after 24 years of marriage and three children.

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March 2017

The celebrity gossip site PageSix.com reports that Hunter Biden and Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie Biden, are in a romantic relationship.

August 2018

Lunden Roberts, who lives in Arkansas, gives birth to Navy Joan Roberts, a daughter of Hunter Biden. In his memoir, Mr. Biden wrote that he had “no recollection” of his encounter with Ms. Roberts and that he had engaged in “rampages” with women after his divorce.

Oct. 12, 2018

Hunter Biden buys a .38-caliber handgun at StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply in Wilmington. He asserts on a U.S. government form that he is not using drugs.

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The New York Post published a story claiming it had obtained documents from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden that had been brought in for repairs.Credit...Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

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April 2019

Hunter Biden leaves a damaged laptop with “alarming” and “embarrassing” content at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, according to the business owner, John Paul Mac Isaac. Mr. Mac Isaac says he copied the computer’s contents and told the F.B.I. about it.

May 2019

Hunter Biden marries Melissa Cohen in Los Angeles, six days after meeting, according to ABC News.

2019

DNA testing confirms that Hunter Biden is Navy Roberts’s father, and he is ordered to pay monthly child support beginning in 2020.

October 2019

Hunter Biden announces plans to step down from the board of BHR as Joe Biden, campaigning for president, faces attacks over his son’s foreign business dealings.

Oct. 22, 2020

In the final weeks of his presidential campaign, Joe Biden falsely claims that “my son has not made money” in China and that “the only guy who made money from China is this guy,” referring to President Donald J. Trump.

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President Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, hug Hunter Biden after his father is sworn in.Credit...Olivier Douliery/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dec. 9, 2020

Hunter Biden discloses that he is under investigation by the Justice Department. The investigation, which began in late 2018, is led by the U.S. attorney in Delaware and is said by people familiar with the inquiry to have examined potential criminal violations of tax and money laundering laws.

June 20, 2023

Hunter Biden agrees to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time and accepts terms that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a felony charge alleging that he falsely asserted that he was sober when he bought the handgun in 2018.

June 2023

Ms. Roberts and Mr. Biden end a yearslong battle over child support that requires him to give Navy Roberts some of his paintings and to provide a monthly payment.

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Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, leaves the O’Neill House Office Building after testifying to the House Oversight Committee in Washington, D.C.Credit...Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

July 2023

Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, tells Congress behind closed doors that President Biden spoke to his son’s international business associates for more than a decade. According to Democrats, Mr. Archer said that the elder Mr. Biden was not party to any of his son’s business deals and that Hunter Biden had tried to sell the illusion that he was providing access to his father.

July 26, 2023

A federal judge in Delaware, Maryellen Noreika, puts on hold the proposed plea deal that would have settled Mr. Biden’s tax and gun charges, saying she did not want to be “a rubber stamp.”

July 28, 2023

President Biden publicly acknowledges Navy Roberts for the first time, saying that he and Jill Biden “only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”

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Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he would appoint a special counsel to handle the federal investigation into Hunter Biden.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Aug. 11, 2023

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announces that David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, has been elevated to special counsel status in the investigation into Hunter Biden’s conduct. Prosecutors file court papers indicating that the proposed plea deal in Mr. Biden’s gun and tax case has collapsed, making clear that they expect the case to go to trial.

A correction was made on
Aug. 14, 2023
:
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of children Hunter Biden has. It is five, not four.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at [email-masked] more

Michael Levenson joined The Times in December 2019. He was previously a reporter at The Boston Globe, where he covered local, state and national politics and news. More about Michael Levenson

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