Hunter Biden: A Timeline of Life, Lies, and Legal Troubles

Tiana Lowe DoescherJune 3, 2024

The complex and ‍controversial life of Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, unfolds⁤ through personal and legal turmoil. From drug charges to high-profile affairs and financial disputes, his actions‍ continue to⁢ impact his‍ family and political⁢ landscape. The ongoing legal ‌battles⁣ and investigations shed light on⁤ a captivating saga of personal struggles and public ⁤scandals. Hunter Biden, the⁤ son of‍ President Joe Biden, navigates a tumultuous life marked by personal and legal challenges.‌ His journey includes drug charges, public scandals, ⁢and ongoing legal disputes,⁢ shaping a captivating narrative of personal struggles and political implications. The complexities of his experiences unfold ‍amidst a backdrop ⁤of intense scrutiny and intrigue.

For the beleaguered middle child of President Joe Biden, the personal is both political and material to his looming criminal comeuppance. As Hunter Biden begins his first of two criminal trials while his father embarks on a bruising reelection campaign, the Washington Examiner details the messy timeline of the first son’s personal and professional scandals as they pertain to his legal fate.

June 1988	Hunter Biden, then the 18-year-old son of Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), is arrested on charges of illegal drug possession but skirts prison time through a pretrial diversion program for first-time offenders.
July 1992	Hunter Biden and Kathleen Buhle meet while working as Jesuit volunteers in Portland.
July 1993	Hunter Biden marries Buhle, who is pregnant at the time with their first daughter, Naomi, but Buhle pointedly mentions in her memoir that the Bidens were careful not to mention her pregnancy at the time.
1996	After graduating from Yale Law School, Hunter Biden accepts a job from MBNA, the Delaware bank whose employees had previously donated $200,000 to his father’s Senate campaigns.
1998	Hunter Biden leaves MBNA to join the Commerce Department under the Clinton administration.
2005	Hunter Biden rejoins MBNA as his father spearheads a bankruptcy reform bill backed by the bank.
2006	President George W. Bush appoints Hunter Biden to Amtrak’s board for a five-year term, a nomination Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) defends because “Hunter Biden has spent a lot of time on Amtrak trains.”
2009	Hunter Biden founds Rosemont Seneca Partners with Christopher Heinz, the stepson of John Kerry and heir to the billion-dollar ketchup fortune, and Devon Archer, who would later testify that Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone dozens of times throughout his decadelong business relationship with the first son.
May 2013	The Navy admits Hunter Biden as a Reserve with two waivers, one for his advanced age and another for his prior drug arrest.
2013	Hunter Biden joins the board of Chinese private equity firm BHR Holdings.
February 2014	Hunter Biden is discharged from the U.S. Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine.
April 2014	Hunter Biden joins the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.
July 2014	Buhle discovers Hunter Biden’s photos of prostitutes from his business travels abroad while he is in rehab in Mexico.
July 2015	Buhle discovers Hunter Biden’s crack pipe in their home and tells him he cannot stay at the home until he is sober.
July 18, 2016	Emails indicate Hunter Biden began his affair with his brother’s widow, Hallie Biden.
Fall 2016	Despite the evidence indicating otherwise, Hunter Biden only concedes his affair with his sister-in-law began in the autumn of 2016.
Sept. 8, 2016	While in an extramarital affair with Hallie Biden, Hunter Biden exchanges sexts with Elizabeth Secundy, Hallie Biden’s sister.
November 2016	Hunter Biden’s daughters tell Buhle about his affair with Hallie Biden after finding incriminating messages on his iPad.
Dec. 9, 2016	Buhle files for divorce.
Feb. 23, 2017	Buhle files a court motion to freeze Hunter Biden’s assets, alleging he “created financial concerns for the family by spending extravagantly on … drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women.”
April 2017	The courts finalize the divorce of Hunter Biden and Buhle.
November 2017	Hunter Biden claims in his memoir he “essentially moved out” from his home with Hallie Biden.
November/December 2017	Navy Joan Roberts is likely conceived.
January 2018	Hunter Biden moves back in with Hallie Biden.
February 2018	Hunter Biden and Hallie Biden split.
April 1, 2018	Hunter Biden ceases all contact with Lunden Roberts, his former employee, after she tells him she is pregnant.
June 1, 2018	Hunter Biden hires an assistant through Owasco PC and photographs her holding his penis, saving the photos to a laptop.
July 3, 2018	Hunter Biden and Elizabeth Secundy sign a lease together on a Greenville, Delaware, home.
July 27, 2018	Hunter Biden texts Hallie Biden to get imminently tested for HIV.
Aug. 28, 2018	Lunden Roberts gives birth to Navy Joan.
October 2018	Hunter Biden lies that he’s not using drugs on the purchase of a handgun in Wilmington, North Carolina.
November 2018	Hunter Biden directs Owasco PC to remove Lunden Roberts from payroll and health insurance.
December 2018	Hunter Biden withdraws $20,000 from his daughter Maisy’s 529 for prostitutes and drugs.
January 2019	The Owasco PC assistant with whom Hunter Biden had a sexual relationship contacts the company to request her late paycheck and inquire about her insurance status.
March 2019	Hunter Biden sends the Owasco PC assistant increments of money over Apple Pay as he asks her to FaceTime nude with “no talk of anything but sex.”
April 2019	Hunter Biden’s term on the Burisma board expires just as Vice President Joe Biden launches his 2020 bid for the presidency.
April 2019	Hunter Biden drops off his laptop at a Delaware computer repair shop and never returns to pick it up, rendering the laptop the legal property of the shop’s owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, after 90 days of his possession.
May 2019	Hunter Biden meets and marries Melissa Cohen in the span of a week, while Lunden Roberts files a paternity and child support suit against him in Arkansas.
June 2019	Buhle, battling colon cancer, brings a motion to a Washington, D.C., court to enforce Hunter Biden’s spousal support that he failed to pay.
September 2019	Former Vice President Joe Biden says, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”
October 2019	Hunter Biden announces he’s stepping down from BHR, while Mac Isaac’s father goes to an FBI branch office in Albuquerque to inquire about the implications of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
December 2019	Hunter Biden meets Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris at a fundraiser with the presidential candidate while the FBI seizes the laptop from Mac Isaac after a previous visit to his home to question him about the laptop’s contents.
February 2020	Morris begins loaning Hunter Biden millions and preparing his tax statements firsthand to curtail “considerable risk personally and politically.”
March 2020	Lunden Roberts settles her child support lawsuit after Hunter Biden agrees to pay $20,000 monthly for Navy Joan.
April 15, 2020	Buhle’s legal team requests that Hunter Biden be held in contempt after he failed to pay a court-ordered, quarter-million-dollars-plus interest.
August 2020	After hearing nothing about Hunter Biden’s laptop from the FBI for over half a year, Mac Isaac tips off the legal team of Rudy Giuliani about the laptop, which Mac Isaac made a copy of before handing the original to the FBI.
September 2020	Steve Bannon connects New York Post reporter Emma-Jo Morris with the laptop copy, while Twitter, which had established a backchannel with the FBI in preparation for the 2020 election, conducted “tabletop exercises” to game out how it would censor a “Burisma” leak about Hunter Biden before his father’s election.
Oct. 12, 2020	The New York Post publishes the first blockbuster expose of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and despite the FBI privately confirming the laptop’s authenticity to Twitter, social media giants around the world unite to censor the story.
Oct. 19, 2020	Dozens of foreign policy and senior intelligence officials, including former CIA Directors John Brennan and Leon Panetta, claim without evidence that the laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Oct. 22, 2020	Former Vice President Joe Biden says, “My son has not made money” in China despite later evidence to the contrary.
Jan. 29, 2021	A Washington, D.C., court determines Hunter Biden owes Buhle more than $1.7 million in alimony, legal fees, and interest.
March 2022	The New York Times reveals that Hunter Biden had been under federal investigation since 2018 for his overseas business dealings and whether they violated federal statutes such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
September 2022	Hunter Biden files a motion to reduce his child support payments to Lunden Roberts.
October 2022	The Washington Post reveals that although federal agents determined they had enough evidence to charge Biden criminally for tax and gun crimes, attorney David Weiss had not decided whether to file charges.
April 2023	Buhle’s legal team files a motion claiming that Hunter Biden owed her nearly $3 million.
June 20, 2023	The Justice Department attempts to secure a sweetheart deal in which the first son would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and enter a pretrial diversion program for gun charges in exchange for blanket immunity from any other future charges, including FARA violations.
June 21, 2023	Hunter Biden moves into the White House with his wife and son.
June 22, 2023	Hunter Biden rubs shoulders with Attorney General Merrick Garland at the White House state dinner.
June 29, 2023	Hunter Biden settles his child support dispute with Lunden Roberts for an undisclosed amount and the promise that Navy Joan cannot adopt the “Biden” surname.
July 5, 2023	Hunter Biden moves out of the White House.
July 26, 2023	Judge Maryellen Noreika declares the deal “unconstitutional” and “not worth the paper it is printed on,” leading Hunter Biden to reverse his “guilty” plea to “not guilty.”
August 2023	Garland approves Weiss’s request to be appointed as a special counsel as Weiss announces the government could not reach a plea agreement with Hunter Biden.
September 2023	Hunter Biden is indicted on tax and gun charges with less than a month remaining on the statute of limitations.
May 15, 2024	With less than a month before the beginning of Hunter Biden’s first criminal trial, Morris reportedly complains that he is running out of money to continue to back Hunter Biden’s legal defense.
June 3, 2024	The first lady joins her stepson on the first day of his first criminal trial.