Hunter Biden dated his widowed sister-in-law after a crack binge and married his girlfriend just a week after meeting her
Former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, recently opened up about his addiction to drugs, alcohol, his new marriage, and him dating his widowed sister-in-law in an interview with The New Yorker. The younger Biden son, in the 11,000-word piece, stated that he has struggled with alcohol and cocaine addiction for decades.
Hunter, in the interview published on Monday, July 1, also talked about his divorce from his first wife Kathleen Buhle Biden and him dating Hallie Biden, the widow of his late brother Beau.
The 49-year-old told the magazine: "Look, everybody faces pain. Everybody has trauma. There's addiction in every family. I was in that darkness. I was in that tunnel — it's a never-ending tunnel. You don't get rid of it. You figure out how to deal with it."
The interview by Hunter appears to be a deliberated attempt to neutralize whatever damage his controversial life choices may have done to his father's 2020 presidential campaign. Shortly after the former Vice President announced his Democratic run, multiple reports of Hunter's extravagances began making headlines, including reports of his infidelity, his visits to strip clubs, his alleged use of prostitutes, his business dealings in Ukraine and China, and his recent marriage to a woman he had known just for 10 days.
The younger Biden, during the interview, recalled that he first started drinking when he was a teenager and tried cocaine for the first time as a student at Georgetown University and, since then, began taking the substance repeatedly, he revealed.
According to the magazine, Hunter went to treatment centers at least nine times, including a 12-step yoga retreat in Big Sur, California, and a clinic in Tijuana that provides a psychoactive alkaloid derived from the roots of a West African shrub called ibogaine. The substance is illegal in the United States.
Hunter, on December 9, 2016, filed for divorce from Kathleen Biden, with who he has three daughters — Maisy, Finnegan, and Naomi. Kathleen reportedly charged that Hunter had "created financial concerns for the family by spending extravagantly on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations) while leaving the family with no funds to pay legitimate bills." The younger Biden denied hiring prostitutes, stating that he had not been to a strip club in years.
However, during the New Yorker interview, he told the magazine that after the story about her divorce allegations was published: "'I went directly to a strip club. I said, 'F*** them'." Reports state that the couple had formally separated a year after Hunter had another relapse. He returned to rehab in California after crashing a rental car, which was found to have cocaine residue along with his attorney-general badge and a Secret service card in it.
Hallie Biden, after the incident, flew out to visit him in November 2016 in rehab, and that is when they decided to become a couple. Hunter said that they had become close after his brother Beau died in May 2015 of brain cancer.
"We were sharing a very specific grief," he told the magazine. "I started to think of Hallie as the only person in my life who understood my loss."
Joe Biden reportedly learned of their relationship when the New York Post called his office to ask for a comment on Hunter and Hallie's relationship. Hunter subsequently issued a statement, saying he and Hallie were "incredibly lucky to have found the love and support we have for each other in such a difficult time."
Hunter told the magazine that he had asked his father to make a statement on their relationship too. "I said, 'Dad, Dad, you have to'. He said, 'Hunter, I don't know if I should. But I'll do whatever you want me to do'. I said, 'Dad if people find out, but they think you're not approving of this, it makes it seem wrong. The kids have to know, Dad, that there's nothing wrong with this, and the one person who can tell them that is you'."
After several months of dating, the pair split up as Hunter told the New Yorker: "All we got was s*** from everybody, all the time. It was really hard. And I realized that I'm not helping anybody by sticking around," he said, adding that he moved to Los Angeles in an effort to "completely disappear".
Shortly after the split for Hallie, he met 32-year-old South African filmmaker Melissa Cohen in May this year and began dating her. A few days later, he proposed and she accepted the marriage proposal, with the pair marrying the next day.
"I called my dad and said that we just got married. He was on speaker, and he said to her, 'Thank you for giving my son the courage to love again'," he told the magazine, adding "And he said to me, 'Honey, I knew that when you found love again that I'd get you back'."
"And my reply was, I said, 'Dad, I always had love. And the only thing that allowed me to see it was the fact that you never gave up on me, you always believed in me'," he added.