Christmas greetings from the Biden family were conspicuously missing two members who are the subject of considerable scandal and chatter: Hunter Biden and his wife, Melissa.
Joe Biden posted a photo on Twitter late Christmas morning that included most members of the Biden clan along with a video featuring two of the family dogs. The Bidens added the message: “Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. With love, from my family to yours.”
May your time with loved ones be full of peace, laughter, and joy. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. With love, from my family to yours. pic.twitter.com/L7mwR4nBKd
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 25, 2019
Hours later, the former vice president’s Twitter account posted a video featuring Champ and Major Biden, two German shepherds. “When we say Merry Christmas from the entire Biden family, that means even the dogs.” Neither his son nor his new daughter-in-law appear in either of the tweets.
When we say Merry Christmas from the entire Biden family, that means even the dogs. pic.twitter.com/PblQHBH792
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 25, 2019
The scandals surrounding Hunter Biden, 49, are fraught politically for his father, currently mounting a third White House run. On Christmas Eve, news broke that private investigators hired by Lunden Roberts, the mother of Hunter Biden’s 16-month-old child, alleged in a court filing that Hunter Biden is the subject of multiple criminal investigations. His lawyers called the accusation “a scheme by a non-party simply to make scandalous allegations in the pending suit to gain some quick media attention.”
Hunter Biden previously denied having had relations with Roberts, although the results of a court-ordered paternity test released in November confirmed he is the father. Joe Biden, 77, has so far refused to comment on the matter. Roberts, 28, previously worked as a stripper in Washington.
Hunter Biden’s role on the corporate board of Burisma, a Ukraine-based gas company, partially triggered the phone call that led to impeachment hearings against President Trump, who has alleged Joe Biden improperly pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor who was investigating the company.
Both Hunter Biden’s father and mother have maintained that their son’s position with Burisma, in which he earned north of $50,000 a month at times, was appropriate.
“We knew it was going to be tough. Our family knew it was going to be tough,” Jill Biden said earlier this month. “But we never could have imagined that it would turn into, that Donald Trump would be asking a foreign government to get involved in our elections.”
Hunter Biden married the 33-year-old South African Melissa Cohen Biden in June of this year, getting engaged just six days after meeting. Before their marriage, Hunter Biden struggled for years with substance abuse issues.
He first entered a rehabilitation facility in 2003 and later relapsed in 2010. Amid a divorce from his first wife, Kathleen, of 23 years, Hunter was accused in court documents of “spending extravagantly on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations).” The three children from that marriage, Naomi, 25, Finnegan, 19, and Maisy, 18, are featured in their grandfather’s Christmas greetings.
In 2014, Hunter Biden was dismissed from the Navy after testing positive for cocaine. Earlier this month, the Washington Examiner reported that he was first arrested for “possession of a controlled substance” in 1988. That charge was later expunged from his record. He has admitted to using cocaine as recently as 2016.
Before his relationship with Cohen Biden, Hunter Biden was dating Hallie Biden, 44, the widow of his brother, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.
