President Joe Biden fathered four children from two marriages – although only two of his children are still alive today.
Mr. Biden had three children with his first wife, Neilia Biden, whom he married in 1966. In order of birth, they were Joseph Robinette III, known as Beau; Robert Hunter; and Naomi Christina, known as Amy.
On December 18, 1972, Neilia was driving with the three children to buy a Christmas tree when their car was hit by a tractor-trailer. Neilia and Naomi Biden were pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Naomi was a little over a year old then.
Both boys survived but with serious injuries. Less than a month later, Mr. Biden was sworn in to the Senate on January 3, 1973, at the hospital where his sons were recovering.
Senator Biden met future First Lady Jill Tracy Jacobs on a blind date in 1975 and the couple married in 1977. They had a daughter, Ashley Blazer, a few years later.
Here’s everything you need to know about Mr. Biden’s children.
Handsome Biden
Handsome Biden was born February 3, 1969 in Wilmington, Delaware. He suffered multiple fractures in the car crash and was subsequently hospitalized for several months.
Beau attended the University of Pennsylvania and then Syracuse University Law School before working for Judge Steven McAuliffe in the United States District Court of New Hampshire.
Between 1995 and 2004, he worked for the Department of Justice in Philadelphia, before becoming a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
He married Hallie Olivere in 2002 and they had a daughter, Natalie, in 2004, and a son, Robert, in 2006. Just like his uncle, Robert is known as Hunter.
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In 2003, Beau joined the Delaware National Guard. He was deployed to Iraq in late 2008.
Beau ran for attorney general of Delaware in 2006 and won, also winning re-election in 2010. He held the position even while deployed to Iraq.
Memorably, in 2008, he spoke at the Democratic National Convention after his father was nominated for vice president. During his speech, he recalled the tragic car accident and his father’s commitment to parenthood.
However, Beau suffered from several medical issues in the 2010s.
Before being re-elected attorney general, Beau was hospitalized for a mild stroke. Then, in 2013, he was diagnosed with brain cancer after becoming disoriented and weakened. He underwent surgery to remove a lesion and then underwent radiation and chemotherapy.
After that, his cancer went into remission for a short time.
In 2016, Beau announced his intention to run for governor of Delaware, but on May 20, 2015, he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. His cancer had returned.
Just 10 days later, Beau died at the age of 46.
He is buried at St Joseph’s on Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware alongside his mother and sister. His father attends church services and often speaks of him with great affection at official events.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who knew Beau well, also spoke fondly of him, calling him “my dear friend» in a speech.
Hunter Biden
Hunter Biden was born on February 4, 1970. In the car accident he suffered a skull injury and, like his brother, underwent months of treatment to recover.
He attended Georgetown University and graduated with a degree in history in 1992. He later served as a Jesuit volunteer at a church in Portland, Oregon, where he met Kathleen Buhle, whom he married in 1993.
Returning to graduate school, Hunter attended Georgetown University Law Center for a year, before transferring to Yale Law School, from which he graduated in 1996.
Hunter had three children with Kathleen: Naomi, named after her late sister, Finnegan, named after her grandmother Jean Finnegan, and Maisy, who went to school with Sasha Obama.
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Kathleen and Hunter separated in 2015 and divorced in 2017. For a time in 2016, Hunter dated his late brother’s wife, Hallie.
In 2018, his fourth child was born to Lunden Alexis Roberts in Arkansas, with a judge signing an order declaring Hunter’s paternity in early 2020.
He married South African filmmaker Melissa Cohen in May 2019 and had his fifth child, a son, with her in March 2020.
Professionally, Hunter worked for MBNA America after graduation and then for the Department of Commerce, focusing on e-commerce policy from 1998 to 2001.
In 2001, he co-founded the lobbying firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, and in 2006, with his uncle James Biden, he bought the international hedge fund Paradigm Global Advisors. He was CEO for five years.
Also in 2006, he was appointed to the Amtrak board of directors by President George W. Bush, but left in 2009 when his father became vice president.
Since 2009, Hunter has been an investor and lobbyist specializing in natural resource extraction and technology. He also served as an attorney at a law firm and served on the board of directors for the charity World Food Program USA.
Hunter has struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction for many years, and a positive test for cocaine in 2013 saw a new career in the U.S. Navy Reserve cut short after just one month.
His investment career has made him the subject of conspiracy theories regarding his father’s political career, particularly regarding his business activities in Ukraine with the company Burismand in China concerning the companies BHR Partners, Ye Jianming and CEFC Energy.
In 2019 Donald Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led Congress after it emerged he pressured Ukraine’s president to try to dig up Hunter and his father in exchange for continued military support and a visit to the White House. Mr. Trump was acquitted by Republican allies in the Senate.
Hunter announced he was under federal criminal investigation for his tax affairs shortly before his father became president.
Three weeks before the 2020 election, a laptop belonging to Hunter abandoned at a repair shop resurfaced. The first reports of The New York Post suggested that Hunter provided an “opportunity” for a Burisma advisor to meet his father. Conservative media outlets seized on the information, speculating – even today – that Hunter’s laptop linked his father to corruption in Ukraine. Based on the available evidence, it is unclear whether Hunter did anything wrong.
In an interview with Piers Morgan, Mr. Trump said the story “made a 17-point difference,” appearing to claim it as proof of his baseless narrative that the results of the 2020 presidential election were handed to him. stolen.
Hunter’s conduct continued to be a subject of consternation for Republicans during Mr. Biden’s presidency and a focal point of the Twitter Files — internal Twitter documents released by the company’s new owner, Elon Musk. retailer how the platform first moved to block a New York Post story on Hunter’s laptop before changing course.
On September 14, 2023, Hunter was indicted on federal gun-related charges. On October 3, he pleaded not guilty.
Ashley Biden
Ashley Biden was born on June 8, 1981 and is the only child from Joe’s marriage to Jill Biden.
With a degree in cultural anthropology from Tulane University, she pursued a career in social work and earned a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010.
She spent 15 years as a social worker with the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families. In 2012, Ashley became associate director of the Delaware Center for Justice, focusing on criminal justice reform in the state, eventually serving as the center’s executive director until 2019.
(DNCC via Getty Images)
In 2012, she married Howard Krein, a plastic surgeon, introduced to her by her brother Beau, and in 2017 she launched an ethical fashion brand to raise money to combat income and racial inequality in the United States .
Ashley joined Hunter to introduce their father at the 2020 Democratic National Convention before accepting the presidential nomination.