Hunter Biden

Robert Hunter Biden (born February 4, 1970) is an American attorney and businessman. He is the second son of former president Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Hunter 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.

Since early 2019, Hunter and his father have been the targets of false allegations that Joe pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor to protect Hunter, which intensified after the New York Post published an article in October 2020 about a laptop computer that had belonged to Hunter Biden. Biden was convicted of three federal firearms-related felony charges in June 2024 after he had admitted to illegally owning a gun while a drug user. His tax affairs have been under federal criminal investigation since late 2018, and in September 2024, he pleaded guilty to all of the tax charges.

In December 2024, Biden's father pardoned him for all federal offenses committed between 2014 and 2024, including any potential offenses not yet discovered. In 2025, he was disbarred in both Washington D.C. and by the Connecticut bar, which he entered soon after graduating from law school.

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. His mother and younger sister Naomi died 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, during which time 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 the 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, whose employees donated more than $200,000 (equivalent to $410,567 in 2025) to his father's senate campaigns over the years. Biden delayed his start date at MBNA to serve as co-chair for his father's reelection campaign. By 1998, Hunter Biden had risen to the rank of executive vice president. 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.

In 2001, Biden became a lobbyist, co-founding the firm of Oldaker, Biden & Belair. According to Adam Entous of The New Yorker, Biden and his father established a relationship in which "[Joe] Biden wouldn't ask Hunter about his lobbying clients, and Hunter wouldn't tell his father about them". In 2001, he was also rehired by MBNA as a consultant, where he was paid a yearly $100,000 retainer until 2005. MBNA's rehiring of Biden was controversial because his father was pushing for passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which was beneficial to the credit card industry and supported by MBNA during Biden's time at the bank. The legislation made it more difficult to get bankruptcy protection.

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 he was replaced as vice chairman in January 2009. He resigned from the board that February, shortly after his father became vice president. Biden said during his father's vice-presidential campaign that it was time for his lobbying activities to end.

Navy Reserve

Biden's application for a position in the U.S. Navy Reserve was approved in May 2013. At age 43, Biden was accepted as part of a program that allows a limited number of applicants with desirable skills to receive commissions and serve in staff positions. Biden received an age-related waiver and a waiver for a past drug-related incident; he was sworn in as a direct commission officer by his father in a White House ceremony. Results of a routine urinalysis taken on Biden's first weekend of reserve duty revealed cocaine in his system. He was discharged administratively in February 2014. Biden attributed the result to having smoked a cigarette that he had asked a group of men outside a store to give him, claiming the cigarette contained cocaine as well as tobacco. He did not appeal the discharge.

Investing, lobbying, and philanthropy

In 2006, Biden and his uncle James Biden purchased international hedge fund Paradigm Global Advisors with an $8 million promissory note (equivalent to $12,776,494 in 2025). The joint promotion of the fund by an entity of the troubled Stanford Financial Group hastened the unwinding of the company in 2010. In September 2008, Hunter Biden founded a consultancy company named Seneca Global Advisors that offered to help companies expand into foreign markets. Biden was a partner in investment vehicles that included the name "Seneca" to denote his participation. In 2009, Biden, Devon Archer, and Christopher Heinz founded the investment and advisory firm Rosemont Seneca Partners. Biden also co-founded venture capital firm Eudora Global. Biden held the position of counsel in the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP in 2014. From 2011 to 2017, 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; he served as board chairman from 2011 to 2015.

A detailed analysis of Hunter Biden's hard drive by NBC News showed that Biden and his firm were paid $11 million (equivalent to $15,203,571 in 2025) from 2013 to 2018, including $3.8 million (equivalent to $5,252,143 in 2025) in payments from CEFC China Energy, a defunct oil and gas company with links to the Chinese Communist Party, as well as from Burisma Holdings. In the U.S. criminal tax case against Biden, prosecutors alleged that he accepted payments from Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu to influence U.S. government agencies regarding a criminal probe in Romania. The allegations dated back to his work for Popoviciu in 2015, during Joe Biden's vice presidency.

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 to actual value and with borrowed money. The founders of BHR Partners included Biden's Rosemont Seneca Partners investment firm (20% equity), along with US-based Thornton Group LLC (10% equity) and two asset managers registered in China. The Chinese-registered asset managers are the Bank of China (via BOC International Holdings-backed Bohai Industrial Investment Fund Management) and Deutsche Bank-backed Harvest Fund Management.

In September 2019, while President Donald 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" (equivalent to $1,888,910,582 in 2025). Later in 2019, The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Trump was incorrect in claiming that Hunter received this $1.5 billion, stating that Trump had no evidence to support the claim and that he incorrectly interpreted BHR's past fundraising target of $1.5 billion; BHR invested money raised from other companies and did not keep the funds. Trump publicly called upon China to investigate Hunter Biden's business activities there while his father was vice president.

Hunter Biden announced his resignation from the board of directors of BHR Partners, effective the end of October 2019, citing "the barrage of false charges" by then-U.S. President Trump. This was confirmed by Biden's attorney, who said in November 2021 that his client no longer held any direct or indirect interest in BHR. However, as of April 2020, Chinese business records showed that Hunter Biden remained a board member of BHR. 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. Biden's lawyer George Mesires told The Washington Post that BHR Partners had been "capitalized from various sources with a total of 30 million RMB (Renminbi), or about $4.2 million, not $1.5 billion". Biden's solely owned company Skaneateles LLC owned a 10% equity stake in BHR as of December 2020. In November 2021, New York Times reported that "Chinese corporate records show Skaneateles remains a part owner of BHR". Skaneateles was dissolved in 2022.