Jill Biden puts on a powerful show of support for Hunter — while snubbing his now-5-year-old daughter
Jill Biden made a show for the jury last week of putting family first when she sported bright colors and sat ostentatiously in the front row of her stepson Hunter Biden’s gun trial in Wilmington. The power of the presidency emanated from the first lady in that courtroom, and she made sure with her stilettos and vivid power suits, her center stage position and Secret Service detail, that nobody, least of all the jurors, could miss her presence.
So determined was she to show her devotion to Hunter that when she had to join the president on an official visit to France for D-Day commemorations in the middle of the trial, Dr. Jill even had the taxpayers foot the bill for an extra trans-Atlantic solo round trip so she and her ever-present factotum Anthony Bernal could pop back and sit in the court for a few hours Friday before returning to Paris on Saturday.
But, according to the woman who had to launch a paternity suit against Hunter and get a court to force him to take a DNA test before he would acknowledge their now-5-year-old daughter, the first lady has been unkind and callous toward the president’s seventh grandchild.
Neither Jill nor Joe nor Hunter Biden has ever met Navy, says Lunden Roberts, 33, in her new book, “Out of the Shadows.” She describes her year as an on-again, off-again lover of the first son in 2018 — his year of self-confessed “debauchery” and crack addiction, during which he bought a gun and allegedly lied on the federal background check form that he was not addicted to drugs.
She chronicles her desperation when Hunter, 54, “ghosted” her while she was pregnant, the hardship of being thrown off his payroll three months after the birth of Navy Joan, the humiliation of dragging him into court, the blow two years later when he reapplied to the court to slash his child support payments, and the hurt when the first family refused to acknowledge her daughter.
After she agreed last year to a reduction in child support payments from $20,000 a month to less than $5,000, Roberts extracted a promise from Hunter that he would establish a relationship with his daughter, which he has done through Zoom calls, and acknowledge that she was a Biden.
A few weeks later, Joe and Jill Biden for the first time publicly acknowledged Navy Joan Roberts as their grandchild in a statement to People magazine.
“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter,” Joe said in the July 28, 2023, statement. “This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter. Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”
But that was the only grudging acknowledgment Navy ever got from the first couple.
Later that year, the Bidens broke with their tradition of the previous two Christmases of hanging six Santa stockings embroidered with the names of each of their grandchildren over the mantle in the State Dining Room at the White House. There were even extra personalized stockings for their pets.
Navy had been left out of every first family Christmas display, and then in 2023, when Roberts expected she would be included, there was no display at all.
In an interview with podcast host Megyn Kelly last week, Roberts raised the snub: “It is hurtful to see, you know, a matriarch of a family who is supposed to bring a family together purposely exclude someone part of that family and part of that bloodline.”
Roberts said she was particularly stung when she bought her daughter a children’s book written by the first lady, “Joey: The Story of Joe Biden,” and realized it was dedicated: “To my grandchildren: Naomi, Finnegan, Maisy, Natalie, Hunter, and Beau.”
Jill had “purposefully” excluded Navy, Roberts writes in her book, “a small innocent child and a family member.”
“That is something that someday my daughter will read,” Roberts told Kelly, “and my daughter will see, and it breaks my heart to know that it will break hers. She is going to see about being excluded and she is going to wonder why, and all I can do is be there for her when she is old enough to understand these things.”
In his memoir “Beautiful Things,” Hunter claimed he had “no recollection” of his “encounter” with Roberts and refused to acknowledge Navy’s existence.
“Hunter Biden is … the father of three daughters [and a] son,” he wrote on the jacket flap of the 2021 memoir, erasing the fourth of his five children.
“How would that make any woman feel, especially when that’s the father of their child saying that,” Roberts told Kelly. “It’s hurtful.”
But she says she hopes now that Hunter and Navy are building a Zoom relationship, he can “turn things around and try to explain … those behaviors.”
Roberts agreed to reduced child support because it was more important to her that her daughter had the chance to know her father. She also agreed to drop her bid to have Navy take the Biden surname.
“That day I feel like my daughter won because she got her father and that’s worth any amount of money, any amount of child support, my daughter building a relationship with her father,” she said.
When Kelly pointed out that Hunter was crying poor at a time when he was living in a $15,000-a-month rental in Malibu, Roberts said: “Just seeing her face light up finally to get this relationship that she yearned for for so long, I don’t care what he does with his money … be a good role model, show her love, do fatherly things, that’s what matters to me.”
As for Hunter having never met his little blond, blue-eyed daughter, Roberts says, “Navy knows her father is very busy right now. He’s got a lot of things on. She’s waited five years; she can wait a couple more months.”
Roberts’ devotion to her daughter and ability to forgive Hunter are commendable.
But you get the feeling that she will find it harder to forgive the Biden matriarch.
