Hunter Biden spoke about his connection with Hallie, his deceased brother Beau’s widow, a ‘star-crossed pairing’ formed by their shared misery after his death in 2015.
Who is Hallie Biden?
Hallie Biden is a school counselor from Delaware.
She tied the knot with President Joe Biden’s son, Beau Biden, back in 2002. Beau Biden’s mother, Neilia Hunter Biden, and his baby sister, Naomi Biden, tragically died in a car accident in 1972.
In 2015, Beau Biden tragically passed away from brain cancer.
Hallie Biden, previously known as Hallie Olivere, had two kids with Beau – Natalie Naomi Biden, born in 2004, and Robert Hunter Biden, born in 2006.
Hallie continued to have a close relationship with the Biden family, with Joe reportedly seeking her advice before launching his successful presidential bid in 2020.
Related Article: United States Secret Service Got Itself Into The Case Of Hallie Biden & Hunter Biden’s Gun
Who is Hunter Biden?
President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, has had a frequently tumultuous past. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, the Trump campaign targeted Hunter — who spoke in support of his father alongside his sister, Ashley, at the Democratic National Convention — highlighting his purportedly corrupt business dealings in a digital ad campaign aimed at casting a shadow over Biden’s potential presidency.
Hunter Biden’s Revelation About His Relationship with Hallie Biden
In 2017, Hunter Biden and Hallie Biden’s relationship made headlines when President Joe Biden’s son revealed that he was dating his late brother Beau’s widow two years after his passing.
In his autobiography, President Joe Biden’s son recounts a pivotal night in 2016 when he asked Hallie to pick him up in Arizona. He had been on a two-week binge and had driven across the country. He settled in Arizona after crashing his car and detoxed at a wellness ranch in Sedona. He was poised to return home, and it was Hallie he asked to bring him back to the East Coast — not his then-wife, Kathleen Biden.
Hunter, President Biden’s second son, confirmed that he and Hallie were dating in November 2017. The relationship began two years after Hunter’s older brother, Beau, who is President Biden’s first son, passed away from brain cancer at the age of 46 on May 30, 2015. The affair also came after Hunter separated from his wife, Kathleen, in 2015, five months after Beau’s passing.
In an interview with CBS This Morning in April 2021 to promote his new autobiography, Beautiful Things, Hunter opened up about how his and Hallie’s relationship came to be and the criticism the couple faced at the time. “I think people were confused by it,” Hunter said. “And I understand that. I mean, I really do. To me, it’s not something that is difficult to explain. Because it came out of a real overwhelming grief that we both shared. And we were together and trying to do the right thing. And that grief turned into a hope for a love that maybe could replace what we lost.”
Regarding the reason for their breakup in 2019, Hunter simply stated that the relationship “didn’t work.” According to People, President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden supported the relationship at the time, but many of Hunter’s clients severed ties with him because of the relationship. He also had to resign from the World Food Program US board of directors due to the controversy. “Well, I made a lot of decisions that I probably shouldn’t have made,” Hunter said on CBS This Morning. “There was a lot more compassion and understanding from the people that knew me. But it was a horrible time, too.”
In Beautiful Things, Hunter described how he and Hallie transitioned from being in-laws to something more. He explained that their relationship began in 2017 after leaving Grace Grove, a rehab facility in Arizona, and going to the resort Mii Amo, where he asked Hallie to meet him. “Feeling mentally and physically cleansed, I called Hallie and asked if she would come to Arizona to pick me up,” he wrote. “I wanted her to accompany me on the trip back. I didn’t trust myself to make it home without backsliding — without taking a detour into the pit I fell into on my way there. She flew out the next day.”
Hunter went on to reveal that he and Hallie bonded over their mutual misery following Beau’s death. “I was at my lowest, she was at her neediest, and we clung to each other with abandon. We talked at length about how much we had come to rely on each other, how our health and well-being seemed dependent on the love we’d grown to share,” he wrote. He continued, “It was an affair built on need, hope, frailty, and doom.” Reflecting on the relationship, Biden called the romance a “miscalculation on both our parts” and “errors of judgment born of a uniquely tragic time.” Kathleen filed for divorce soon after learning of the affair. Eventually, Hunter and Hallie’s relationship became public, and they had to evade the paparazzi constantly. He moved in with Hallie and her kids, Hunter and Natalie, in Annapolis and opted to maintain some sense of normalcy. “Our lives of quiet desperation were suddenly on full display, Hunter wrote. “I was desperately trying to hold on to a piece of my brother, and I think Hallie was trying to do the same.
“Neither of us had yet thought of the relationship as a long-term or permanent commitment until it was made public, and then neither of us was prepared to let the other go,” he continued. Ultimately, their relationship faded despite their efforts to make it work. While they were no longer close, Hallie continued to help Hunter in his struggles with addiction. She was the one who drove him to rehab in Maryland after the Biden family staged an intervention in 2019.
While their brief involvement was treated as a scandal, Hunter argued that he believed they were drawn together for a reason. “There’s no question about the unseen force in the middle of it all: Beau. It seems obvious now, but then it was this unspoken, unacknowledged dynamic that had begun to impel us both: the idea that we could keep Beau alive by being together — that by loving each other we somehow could love him back into existence.
“If ever there was a star-crossed pairing, it was ours. It made perfect sense except how it made no sense at all. It was an affair built on need, hope, frailty, and doom.”
In Beautiful Things, Hunter admitted that he and Hallie “weren’t close before Beau died.” He also explained that he and his brother’s widow “didn’t have much in common, didn’t even have much to talk about” when they began dating, but they continued to see each other with the hope of keeping Beau’s memory alive. “It seems obvious now, but then it was this unspoken, unacknowledged dynamic that had begun to impel us both: the idea that we could keep Beau alive by being together — that by loving each other we somehow could love him back into existence,” Hunter explained.
The reader may have mixed emotions about this text. On one hand, they might find it interesting to learn about Hunter Biden’s perspective on his relationship with his late brother’s widow, Hallie Biden. They might be curious to understand the complexities and dynamics involved in such a unique situation.
However, the reader might also feel a sense of discomfort or intrusion into the personal lives of the Biden family. They may question the appropriateness of discussing such intimate details in a memoir, wondering if it is a genuine attempt at self-reflection or a way to attract attention and publicity.
Overall, the reader’s opinion on this text will depend on their level of interest in the Biden family, their willingness to delve into personal matters, and their perspective on the boundaries of privacy in memoir writing.