Hunter Biden Bio
Robert Hunter Biden (born February 4, 1970) is an American attorney, businessman, lobbyist, investor, and artist. He is the second son of President Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Over the course of his career, Hunter Biden has served on corporate boards, co-founded lobbying and investment firms, and engaged in legal work in the United States and abroad. His foreign business activities and personal finances drew federal investigation beginning in 2018, leading to criminal prosecutions on firearms and tax charges. In recent years he has worked as a painter and published a memoir about family tragedy and addiction.
Early Life and Background
Robert Hunter Biden was born on February 4, 1970, in Wilmington, Delaware. He is the second son of Joe Biden and Neilia Hunter Biden. On December 18, 1972, a car accident killed his mother and his younger sister Naomi. Hunter and his older brother Beau were seriously injured; Hunter sustained a fractured skull and severe traumatic brain injuries. Both brothers spent months in the hospital while their father was sworn into the U.S. Senate in January 1973. Hunter and Beau later encouraged their father to remarry, and Jill Jacobs became their stepmother in 1977. His half-sister Ashley was born in 1981.
Like his father and brother, Hunter attended the Catholic high school Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Georgetown University in 1992. After college he served as a Jesuit volunteer at a church in Portland, Oregon, where he met Kathleen Buhle, whom he later married. He attended Georgetown University Law Center for one year before transferring to Yale Law School, where he earned his law degree in 1996.
Path to Public Life
Following law school, Hunter Biden entered the worlds of banking, lobbying, and political consulting, areas shaped by his father’s long career in the U.S. Senate. He joined MBNA America as a consultant in 1996 and rose to executive vice president by 1998. After leaving the bank, he served in the United States Department of Commerce under President Bill Clinton, working on e-commerce policy. These early positions gave him experience in corporate America and federal government that informed his later private-sector work.
In 2001, Hunter Biden co-founded the lobbying firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, beginning a years-long career in Washington advocacy. He was also appointed to the Amtrak board of directors by President George W. Bush in 2006, serving as vice chairman until 2009. He resigned from the board in February 2009, shortly after his father became vice president, citing the need to end his lobbying activities. His later path included board positions with foreign companies and private equity firms, drawing national attention and federal scrutiny.
Hunter Biden Career
Early Career (1996–2006)
After graduating from Yale Law School in 1996, Hunter Biden accepted a consultant position at MBNA, the bank holding company whose employees donated more than $200,000 to his father’s Senate campaigns. He delayed his start to serve as co-chair of Joe Biden’s Senate reelection effort. By 1998 he had become an executive vice president, and he left the bank the same year to join the Department of Commerce, where he worked on e-commerce policy in the Clinton administration.
In 2001, Hunter Biden returned to the private sector as a lobbyist, co-founding Oldaker, Biden & Belair. He was also rehired by MBNA as a consultant on a yearly $100,000 retainer until 2005. His rehiring drew controversy because his father was simultaneously pushing for bankruptcy legislation favored by the credit card industry. In 2006, President George W. Bush appointed him to a five-year term on the Amtrak board, and he served as vice chairman before resigning in February 2009 when his father became vice president.
Foreign Business Roles (2013–2019)
In 2013, Hunter Biden became a founding board member of BHR Partners, a China-based private equity fund in which his firm Rosemont Seneca held a 20% stake. He acquired a 10% equity interest in BHR in 2017 using borrowed money. In April 2014, he joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company owned by oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, with compensation reported as high as $50,000 per month. He served on the Burisma board until April 2019. He announced his resignation from BHR in October 2019, citing politically motivated attacks.
His Burisma role attracted intense public scrutiny beginning in 2019, when President Donald Trump and his allies alleged that Joe Biden had pressed Ukraine to fire a prosecutor to protect his son. Multiple Ukrainian and U.S. officials later stated that no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden in Ukraine had been found, and the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was widely criticized for failing to address corruption. In 2016, Hunter Biden wrote a letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy on Burisma’s behalf regarding a potential energy project in Tuscany.
Legal and Personal Challenges (2018–2024)
Hunter Biden’s tax affairs became the subject of a federal criminal investigation in late 2018, and in October 2020, the New York Post published content from a laptop computer he had left at a Wilmington repair shop. Federal prosecutors later confirmed they possessed the laptop, and FBI investigators verified its authenticity at trial. In June 2024, Hunter Biden was convicted of three federal firearms-related felony charges after admitting to illegally owning a gun while a drug user. In September 2024, he pleaded guilty to all federal tax charges.
On December 1, 2024, President Joe Biden issued a full pardon covering federal offenses committed by his son between 2014 and 2024, including any potential offenses not yet discovered. Hunter Biden has publicly discussed long-term struggles with substance abuse, including crack cocaine addiction, in his 2021 memoir and in public statements. He entered the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2013 but was discharged in February 2014 after a positive drug test.
Hunter Biden Career Wins
Hunter Biden has built a multi-decade career spanning law, lobbying, investment, and the arts. His work has included high-profile board positions, multimillion-dollar business deals, and a successful memoir published in 2021.
Board and Business Highlights
Hunter Biden’s most prominent corporate role was on the board of Burisma Holdings from 2014 to 2019, where he was paid up to $50,000 per month. He also served on the BHR Partners board from 2013 until 2019, holding a 10% equity stake that was later dissolved. He sat on the Amtrak board from 2006 to 2009 and was its vice chairman.
Other Wins & Achievements
His 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things, received extensive media coverage and was described by The New York Times as a family saga, grief narrative, and addict’s howl. Between December 2021 and December 2023, court filings showed he sold approximately $1.5 million in paintings. He and his firm received $11 million from 2013 to 2018, contributing to his lifestyle and business profile during that period.
Hunter Biden Family
Family Background and Political Lineage
Hunter Biden is the son of Joe Biden, the 46th President of the United States, and Neilia Hunter Biden, who died in a 1972 car accident. His older brother, Beau Biden, served as attorney general of Delaware and died of brain cancer in 2015. His half-sister Ashley Biden is the daughter of Joe Biden and his second wife, Jill Biden. Hunter and Beau both attended Archmere Academy and Yale Law School.
Personal Life
Hunter Biden married Kathleen Buhle in 1993, and they had three daughters: Naomi, Finnegan, and Maisey. They separated in October 2015 and divorced in 2017. He began a relationship with his brother Beau’s widow, Hallie Olivere Biden, in 2016; that relationship ended in 2019. Between 2017 and 2018, he had relationships with Zoë Kestan and Lunden Alexis Roberts; a daughter was born in August 2018, and a paternity suit was settled in 2020. He married South African filmmaker Melissa Cohen in May 2019, and their son, Beau, was born in March 2020 in Los Angeles.