President Joe Biden randomly stopped by his daughter-in-law’s house days before she is scheduled to testify in her brother-in-law and ex-lover Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial.
Hallie Biden, the wife of Biden’s late son Beau Biden, is slated to speak during the trial, which begins on June 3, about the younger Biden son and the three federal felony charges he accumulated for allegedly lying on a federal form about his extensive and public drug use during a revolver purchase in 2018.
Biden, with the White House press pool in tow in a van, rolled up to Hallie’s Delaware residence on Saturday night for what appeared to be a “brief” private chat away from cameras and reporters.
The White House insisted to the New York Post that the stop had nothing to do with Hallie’s role as a witness in the government’s prosecution of Hunter and everything to do with Beau’s death.
“He visited her because of the approaching 9th anniversary of Beau’s passing,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
While Biden has made several public appearances related to the anniversary of his son’s passing in recent years, his travel schedule does not suggest he had an annual habit of dropping in on his daughter-in-law at her house days before Beau’s death date.
Biden is no stranger to using his son’s death to score political points, but Hallie’s role as a key witness for the prosecution of her ex-boyfriend raises questions about the president’s alleged deviation from his standard Beau mourning procedure. Biden has notably earned attention and credit from Hunter and his business partners for sweet-talking people to protect the Biden family “brand.”
Hallie, who became embroiled in an affair with Hunter shortly after Beau’s 2015 death, will be called to the witness stand because she was “in a romantic relationship with the defendant in October 2018” and because he “stayed at her home in the fall of 2018,” the same year as the questionable gun purchase.
At the behest of Hunter, Biden endorsed the marriage-ending relationship between his son and his other son’s wife in 2017. During their relationship, the couple suffered many addiction woes and arguments, including one in which Hallie threw away one of Hunter’s firearms near a high school in 2018, prompting the Secret Service to get involved. The couple ultimately split over Hunter’s stripper tryst that led to the Biden’s seventh grandchild.
Biden’s so-called “surprise” visit to Hallie’s home comes mere days after Hunter attended a state dinner alongside Attorney General Merrick Garland, who named Special Counsel David Weiss to the Biden case.
Weiss told the House Judiciary Committee in November that “political considerations played no part in our decisionmaking” about the investigation into Hunter, but the DOJ’s attempt to award Hunter a sweetheart plea deal and slap on the wrist suggests otherwise.
