The president motioned to his son Hunter, who was standing nearby, asking him to listen and join the fine-tuning of the remarks that would be loaded into the teleprompter and delivered to a nation that had grown deeply skeptical of the president’s mental acuity in the aftermath of a stumbling, meandering debate performance four nights prior.
Hunter’s presence that evening raised eyebrows among some White House staffers, who saw it as a troubling sign that a politically problematic family member was taking a renewed part in official business. But for those in and close to the family, it was the latest sign that Hunter had stabilized his life and was assuming a role he’d long held inside his father’s orbit as a confidant and sounding board.
As remarkable as the past few weeks have been in the wider political universe, they have been equally turbulent inside the tight-knit Biden family, unfolding as the latest chapter in the clan’s long story of resolve amid tumult. Family members have flashed through a range of emotions, people close to them say — sadness, anger, determination — and are deeply frustrated by what they see as the betrayal and second-guessing of a man who has spent a half-century as a dedicated leader of the Democratic Party.
This picture of the Biden family in its patriarch’s hour of peril is based on interviews with multiple people with direct knowledge of the family’s thinking and private actions. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters related to the president’s inner circle.
Family members have often been with Biden in recent weeks as he seeks to ride out the political storm stemming from his debate performance. First lady Jill Biden joined him for a campaign swing in Pennsylvania. After he was diagnosed with covid-19 on Wednesday and with calls escalating by the day that he reconsider his decision to stay in the race, she joined him at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.
Hunter, who lives in California, flew out to meet Biden when the president was in Las Vegas recently for campaign events. They have remained in close contact, with Hunter following daily, often hourly, developments, on calls with his father and acting as a sounding board and a gut check. Other family members have been exchanging their usual daily phone calls and frequent text messages.
But in a family where any member can call an emergency meeting, no one has summoned the clan to discuss the patriarch’s political future, despite the extensive speculation from outsiders about some grand family council.
The family’s anger is driven in part by a conviction that Biden could have moved beyond a bad performance in a 90-minute debate if so many Democrats had not immediately joined forces against him. They have come to view the past few weeks as a Game of Thrones-style war among various factions of the party, with the loudest calling on him to depart coming from those he has fought against in previous battles. The tone some in the party are taking in their effort to push him out has only stiffened Biden’s resolve to stay in, they say.
“It’s like they don’t know he’s Irish,” said one person close to the family.
The most striking development in this private world may be the return of Hunter Biden to a central, supporting role, just weeks after his criminal trial made him a source of personal worry and political peril.
When he was convicted on June 11 of felony charges related to lying on a gun-purchase form, the family rallied behind him. His father called to make sure he was okay, then flew to Wilmington to embrace him on an airport tarmac.
But overnight, the father-son roles have been reversed: As Joe Biden fights for his political life, Hunter has talked with his father frequently, providing support amid a clamor of skeptical Democrats.
Interviews with several people close to family members say that, contrary to frequent depictions of Hunter and Jill Biden as irrational cheerleaders prevailing on the president to stay in while his political advisers press him to reconsider, the family dynamics are far more nuanced. The president throughout has been clear that he is not withdrawing, and they have affirmed all along that they are behind him no matter what. Biden may yet change his mind, and those close to the family say they would support that decision, too.
When it comes to Hunter Biden, the past few weeks have shown how a father and a son, each well-versed in tragedy and trauma, have handled a series of extraordinary difficult moments, their own and each other’s.
“The thing both of them care about more than anything else is not harming the other,” said one person close to the family. “It all has a Shakespearean quality to it.”
Surviving a legal blow
On June 11, at around 11:15 a.m., a federal jury in Delaware found Hunter Biden guilty of felony gun charges. His crime was lying on a form when he bought a gun in 2018, but the week-long trial laid bare, in sometimes painful detail, his humiliating and distasteful behavior when he was in the throes of a drug addiction.
Hunter hugged each member of his legal team after the verdict, thanking them and comforting his top defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, and whispering, “It’s all right.”
He then gathered with his friends and family in a crowded room nearby for what several who were there describe as an emotional scene where Hunter was stoic even as many were in tears after a devastating verdict that shocked some in his camp.
“Look guys, I’m going to be okay. This isn’t hell,” Hunter said, according to people who were there. “My addiction was hell. Whatever happens, I’m standing here today, and that’s what matters.”
The president, who was in Washington, called his son and hastily made plans to fly to Wilmington to see Hunter. They met on the tarmac at Delaware Air National Guard base, embracing each other before Hunter flew back to his home in Los Angeles with his wife and young son, Beau.
That evening, the president and first lady personally called some of those who had attended the trial to thank them and to ask how they thought Hunter was doing.
The answers that came back were that he seemed surprisingly strong. It was an unquestionably significant legal setback, one that could result in a prison sentence, but he seemed to have achieved some sense of personal stability.
Joe Biden soon left for the Group of Seven conference in Italy, joined by several of Hunter’s older daughters, including Naomi, who had testified at the trial.
The weekend at Camp David
About two weeks later, as the president’s fateful debate performance played out in Atlanta, Hunter was home in California. Jill Biden was with her husband. Biden’s grandchildren were scattered around the country.
Afterward, they knew the debate had not gone well and worried about the impression it left. But it did not alter their approach to the campaign.
Many outside the family thought Biden faced an immediate decision about whether to stay in the race, but that seems never to have been a question for the president himself. He saw the debate simply as a setback in an otherwise sound campaign, a hurdle in a life full of them. That attitude was adopted by the family largely without discussion.
“There is no walking into this as if he’s like, ‘Should I get out, should I not get out?’ That’s just not who Joe Biden is,” said one person close to the family. “It’s not like he was teetering until he talked to Hunter and Jill.”
By late Saturday night, some 48 hours after the debate, the whole family was at Camp David — not for some emergency council, but for a prearranged gathering in the days before Independence Day. Just weeks earlier, the question was how Hunter was faring against his detractors; now it was how Joe would face his.
The tone of that weekend, in private moments without political advisers, set the course for the tumultuous weeks to come: Biden was staying in and the family was backing him. The question was how to proceed with the race, not whether to.
Many in the family, like their patriarch, believe the election remains close. They dismiss polls that show otherwise and do not believe an alternative candidate would fare any better against Trump. Deep in Biden’s psyche is the conviction that he is an underdog who has consistently been underestimated by party leaders, only to prove them wrong.
But family members resist the idea that they are the ones driving the decision. They resent any notion that they are propping up the president. He is capable of making these weighty decisions as he always has, they say, with their input and backing.
There is also a redemptive quality to the family discussions.
Five years ago, when Biden decided to run for president, the family was deeply fractured in the aftermath of his son Beau’s death, dealing with divorce, affairs and addiction. Hunter was in some ways more distant from his father than he’d ever been.
This post-debate gathering at Camp David showcased a family that was largely united, with Hunter as present in his father’s life as he was before a drug addiction tore him away.
Clear-eyed about the danger
When they returned to the White House after the weekend at Camp David, the family stayed close. They celebrated the Fourth of July together. Ashley Biden was dancing on the portico, hugging her father’s waist from behind. One granddaughter, Maisy, wore a white T-shirt with “I [heart] Joe” written on it.
Jill stood by his side. They looked on as fireworks burst in the sky.
Hunter flew back to Los Angeles on July 5 and his father flew to Wisconsin for a campaign event. They have remained in close contact.
Biden remains certain he is the party’s best option, according to those close to the family, and they support him in that. But they also recognize that things can change quickly in politics and that Biden could be 100 percent in until he’s 100 percent out.
“Hunter would support anything his dad wanted to do and he trusts his dad’s judgment,” one person close to the family said. “If his dad said, ‘I can hand this off and I can’t do it,’ Hunter would say, ‘Dad you’re the best, I love you, I trust you and I support you.’”
Of anyone in the family, Hunter has faced the most scrutiny as a result of his father’s presidency. That arguably gives him an incentive to hope his father pulls out rather than endure a vitriolic reelection race potentially followed by four more years of an unwelcome spotlight.
But if Biden pulled out and Trump were to win, some family members worry that he would use the Justice Department to target Hunter.
In recent days, those close to the family have become more combative as a growing number of Democrats have publicly called for him to step aside. If Biden gets out, they say, he should make the decision based on his own political gut and not because of external pressures from figures such as George Clooney, former president Barack Obama or former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Still, those in the family orbit say Biden’s relatives are not oblivious to the storms roaring around him, making the days ahead, even for them, difficult to predict.
“They are not in a bubble. They don’t have their head in the sand,” one person close to the family said. “They’ve been very clear-eyed about this from the beginning. And that has continued.”
