Hunter Biden facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Hunter Biden
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Biden in 2014
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Robert Hunter Biden
February 4, 1970 Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. |
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| Children | 5, including Naomi |
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| Branch/service | United States Navy |
| Years of service | 2013–2014 |
| Rank | Ensign |
| Unit | United States Navy Reserve |
Robert Hunter Biden (born February 4, 1970) is an American attorney and businessman. He is the second son of U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Biden was a founding board member of BHR Partners, a Chinese investment company, in 2013, and later served on the board of Burisma Holdings, one of the largest private natural gas producers in Ukraine, from 2014 until his term expired in April 2019. He has worked as a lobbyist and legal representative for lobbying firms, a hedge fund principal, and a venture capital and private equity fund investor.
Biden's tax affairs have been under federal criminal investigation since late 2018. On December 7, 2023, the special counsel indicted Biden on nine counts, all tax-related charges. Biden was convicted of all three felony charges in June 2024.
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Early life and education
Robert Hunter Biden was born on February 4, 1970, in Wilmington, Delaware. He is the second son of Neilia Biden (née Hunter) and Joe Biden. Hunter Biden's mother and younger sister Naomi were killed in an automobile crash on December 18, 1972. Biden and his older brother Beau were also seriously injured but survived. Beau suffered multiple broken bones while Hunter sustained a fractured skull and severe traumatic brain injuries. Both spent several months in the hospital, when their father was sworn into the U.S. Senate in January 1973. Hunter and Beau later encouraged their father to marry again, and Jill Jacobs Stevenson became their stepmother in 1977. Biden's half-sister Ashley was born in 1981.
Like his father and brother, Biden attended Catholic high school Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Georgetown University in 1992. During the year after he graduated from college, he served as a Jesuit volunteer at a church in Portland, Oregon, and met Kathleen Buhle, whom he married in 1993. After attending the Georgetown University Law Center for one year, he transferred to Yale Law School and graduated in 1996.
Early career
After graduating from law school in 1996, Biden accepted a consultant position at the bank holding company MBNA. By 1998, Hunter Biden had risen to the rank of executive vice president at MBNA. Biden departed from MBNA in 1998. He then served at the United States Department of Commerce, focusing on ecommerce policy for President Bill Clinton's administration. Biden then became a lobbyist, co-founding the firm of Oldaker, Biden & Belair.
Hunter Biden was appointed to a five-year term on the board of directors of Amtrak by President George W. Bush in 2006. Biden was the board's vice chairman from July 2006 until 2009, was replaced as vice chairman in January 2010, and resigned from the board in February, shortly after his father became vice president.
Investor, lobbyist, philanthropy
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In September 2008, Biden founded a consultancy company named Seneca Global Advisors that offered to help companies expand into foreign markets. In 2009, he, Devon Archer, and Christopher Heinz founded the investment and advisory firm Rosemont Seneca Partners. He held the position of counsel in the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP in 2014.
Biden was on the board of directors of World Food Program USA, a 501(c)(3) charity based in Washington, D.C., that supports the work of the UN World Food Programme from 2011 to 2017; he served as board chairman from 2011 to 2015. While an unpaid chair of World Food Program USA, Hunter Biden helped increase funding 60 percent in five years - to more than $2 billion.
BHR Partners
From 2013 to 2020, Biden served as a member of the board of the China-based private equity fund BHR Partners, of which he acquired a 10% stake in 2017 at a discount.
In September 2019, while Trump was accusing Hunter Biden of malfeasance in Ukraine, he also falsely claimed that Biden "walk[ed] out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund" and earned "millions" of dollars from the BHR deal. Trump publicly called upon China to investigate Hunter Biden's business activities there while his father was vice president. Hunter Biden announced on October 13, 2019, his resignation from the board of directors for BHR Partners, effective at the end of the month, citing "the barrage of false charges" by then-U.S. President Trump. According to his lawyer, Biden had "not received any compensation for being on BHR's board of directors" nor had he received any return on his equity share in BHR.
BHR Partners invests Chinese venture capital into tech startups, such as an early-stage investment in Chinese car hailing app DiDi and cross-border acquisitions in automotive and mining.
Burisma Holdings
Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings owned by Ukrainian oligarch and former politician Mykola Zlochevsky in April 2014. Biden's business partner, Devon Archer, had joined the board of Burisma several months prior. Biden was hired to help Burisma with corporate governance best practices, while still an attorney with Boies Schiller Flexner, and a consulting firm in which Biden is a partner was also retained by Burisma. Biden served on the board of Burisma until his term expired in April 2019.
Since early 2019, Hunter and his father Joe Biden have been the subjects of claims of corrupt activities in a Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory pushed by then-U.S. President Donald Trump and his allies. There has been no evidence produced of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden in Ukraine.
Work as an artist
In February 2020, The New York Times reported that Biden had been painting as an "undiscovered artist" in his Hollywood Hills home. The report also displayed some of his paintings, including "Untitled #4 (a study in ink)" and "Untitled #3 (a signed work)".
Biden's art dealer, Georges Bergès, hosted a private viewing for Biden in Los Angeles in fall 2021, followed by an exhibition in New York. Biden's paintings were put up for sale for as much as $500,000 per painting, with a single buyer purchasing $875,000 of his art. One of the buyers was Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, who is currently on the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. This provoked conflict-of-interest concerns as well as concerns about a lack of transparency.
Investigations and federal indictments
In December 2020, Biden made a public announcement via his attorney that his tax affairs were under federal criminal investigation.
On June 20, 2023, in a deal with prosecutors, Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges of failure to pay income tax, and to enter a pretrial diversion program related to a felony gun charge of unlawful possession of a firearm.
On December 7, 2023, Biden was indicted in California on nine tax charges, including three felony and six misdemeanor offenses. On January 11, 2024, Biden pleaded not guilty to the tax charges.
On June 11, Biden was found guilty on three felony charges for federal gun violations. The conviction made Biden the first child of a sitting U.S. president to be convicted in a criminal trial. Due to his conviction on felony charges, Biden's license to practice law in Washington, D.C. was suspended.
On September 5, 2024, Biden's defense lawyer Abbe Lowell revealed that Biden would change his plea from not guilty to guilty in the federal tax case. Biden had been indicted with three felony charges– one tax evasion count and two counts of filing false returns – and six misdemeanor charges.
Biden is scheduled to be sentenced on December 17, 2024 and he could face up to 17 years in prison.
Personal life
Relationships
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In 1993, Biden married Kathleen Buhle. They have three daughters, one of whom is Naomi Biden. The couple formally separated in October 2015, and divorced in 2017. Buhle's 2022 memoir If We Break documents her account of the relationship.
Biden began a relationship with Hallie Olivere Biden, widow of his brother Beau, in 2016. The relationship ended by 2019.
Biden has a fourth daughter, born in August 2018 in Arkansas, to Lunden Alexis Roberts.
Biden married South African filmmaker Melissa Cohen in May 2019, within a week of first meeting her. Their child, a son, was born in March 2020 in Los Angeles.
Memoir
Biden released Beautiful Things, a memoir of the trauma of the accident that claimed his mother and sister on April 6, 2021.
See also
In Spanish: Hunter Biden para niños
