DUNDALK, Ireland — Hunter Biden got out of the armored presidential car and walked over to a surging crowd, one that had waited for hours in the rain to see an American president whose ancestors had ties to this coastal town.
He approached the metal barricade, offering handshakes, smiles and greetings to many in the crowd, who in turn showed no hesitancy in welcoming the younger Biden. He stood about 20 feet from his famous father, blocking him from the view of frustrated photographers trying to capture the president, not the president’s son.
The moment showcased a different role for Hunter Biden, who for years has been engulfed by controversy over his drug use, his efforts to pursue business deals that trade on the family name and a trove of data allegedly contained on a laptop that he dropped off and never retrieved.
As the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the president’s son continues and House Republican leaders prepare their own probes, Hunter Biden has taken a far more combative posture toward GOP lawmakers and other accusers. In recent months, a newly refashioned legal team has sent cease-and-desist letters, filed countersuits and issued criminal referral letters.
Allies say this marks a moment in which Hunter Biden, 53, is trying to reclaim a more public presence following years of largely keeping silent and staying out of the limelight. Last week’s trip to Ireland provided the latest and perhaps starkest manifestation, as Hunter was by his father’s side at nearly every stop, at times acting almost as an aide and close adviser.
President Biden himself took the opportunity to introduce Hunter enthusiastically to various crowds, announcing his son’s presence along with that of the president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens.
People close to the Bidens say the trip merely highlighted a son joining his father on an important family trip to their ancestral homeland.
But Hunter Biden has appeared at several other high-profile events with the president in recent months. Some have been family events — he walked his daughter Naomi down the aisle for her wedding at the White House in November — while others have been more formal, such as when he worked the room at the celebrity-filled black tie Kennedy Center Honors ceremony late last year.
He attended a state dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron in December 2022. At one point during that dinner, The Washington Post previously reported, he walked up to a group including Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), then seen as the likely next House speaker, and said hello to McCarthy’s mother.
The political context makes these appearances more notable, and the Ireland trip arguably more than a family vacation. The family was devastated by the death of Joe Biden’s older son, Beau, in 2015, and as the 2020 Biden presidential run took shape, Hunter was in the depths of a serious drug addiction, which Hunter later chronicled in his 2021 memoir.
Hunter Biden kept a relatively low profile during the 2020 campaign, and his current reemergence comes at a sensitive moment for the president, who is expected to announce his reelection bid shortly. At the same time, House Republicans are ramping up investigations of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, while the Justice Department is investigating him for potential gun and tax offenses.
Complicating matters, the attorney for an IRS agent involved in the tax case sent a letter to Congress this week asserting that there has been improper political interference in the Hunter Biden investigation. The agent is seeking whistleblower protection to provide testimony to key congressional committees.
“Despite serious risks of retaliation, my client is offering to provide you with information necessary to exercise your constitutional oversight function and wishes to make the disclosures in a nonpartisan manner to the leadership of the relevant committees on both sides of the political aisle,” the attorney, Mark D. Lytle, wrote to top lawmakers on several House and Senate committees.
Just a few days earlier, the Ireland trip, by design or not, reinforced the image of a father who is unbowed by the controversy around his son, and a son who, after years of listening to his father’s advisers counseling a low profile, is now willing to take a more public posture.
When President Biden exited Air Force One in the pouring rain upon his arrival in Dublin, Hunter stood next to him, holding an umbrella over his father.
Later, as the president met with U.S. Embassy personnel, Hunter Biden pointed out a young boy who wanted to ask a question — and then, when the president did not appear to grasp the thrust of the question, interpreted it for him.
He even gave him tips on where he should stand. “You’re supposed to do the rope line, Dad,” the son said.
“I’m supposed to do the rope line?” the father responded.
“Just to say hi to everybody,” the son offered.
As they arrived at a deli and the president eyed the meats and sides, his son asked if he was going to order. Joe Biden said he was just looking and not hungry after all the pastries he’d consumed.
“Well, I may want to order something!” Hunter responded.
At nearly every stop, Biden made a point to introduce his son, as well as his sister.
“Stand up, guys,” he said at the Windsor Bar in Dundalk. “I’m proud of you.”
When Air Force One landed in Belfast, Hunter Biden shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. In Dublin, he pulled Irish President Michael Higgins over to tell him, “I’m a fan of your poetry.” That same evening, at a banquet, he was seated at the head table next to Marie Devlin, the wife of the late Irish poet Seamus Heaney.
President Biden’s supporters emphasize that the visit to Ireland was particularly personal in nature, given his family’s ties to the country, and that he is hardly the first president to bring family members on trips or take their advice.
President Donald Trump hired his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as White House advisers, gave both of them offices in the West Wing and involved them in official meetings. In 2019, Trump’s sons Trump Jr. and Eric — who, unlike Ivanka, were not on the White House staff — accompanied Trump on his own presidential visit to Ireland, even buying rounds of beer for the locals.
Years before he died, Beau Biden, who in many ways was the lodestar for the family, had discussed taking a trip to Ireland with his father and Hunter. “I felt like Beau was with me and just felt like he completed the circle,” the president told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on the last day of the trip.
Father Frank O’Grady, the priest who performed Beau Biden’s last rites and now works at Ireland’s Knock Shrine, met with the Bidens during their visit to the pilgrimage site. O’Grady said Hunter gave him a big hug as they remembered one another from their time sitting by Beau’s hospital bedside.
“I think he went through grief just like his father, but maybe had different ways of expressing it,” O’Grady said of Hunter.
Hunter Biden for years has played a complicated role in his father’s professional orbit. Some of Biden’s longtime advisers have long been wary of having Hunter Biden near any political activities, viewing him as a liability and potential distraction. But they also struggle to speak to the president about his son, given their intense familial bond colored by tragedy.
Earlier in Biden’s political career, Hunter Biden, along with Beau, played a critical role. During the then-senator’s 2008 presidential campaign, the three would travel together in Iowa on what was dubbed by the campaign as the “Here Come the Bidens!” tour.
Hunter, like Beau, could speak bluntly to their father, telling him to curtail his sometimes lengthy speeches, and the sons added to the wholesome family image he sought to project. While Beau, who served as attorney general of Delaware, was seen by Biden’s allies as the heir to his father’s political legacy, Hunter was considered an important adviser to both his father and his brother.
Some close to Hunter Biden are hoping that he can reestablish that role in his father’s potential reelection campaign. Throughout the 2020 run, Hunter Biden was a lightning rod and at times, by his own account, on drug-induced benders. The chair reserved for him at his father’s speech launching the campaign sat empty.
“In the last five years alone, my two-decades-long marriage has dissolved, guns have been put in my face, and at one point I dropped clean off the grid, living in $59-a-night Super 8 motels off I-95 while scaring my family even more than myself,” Hunter Biden wrote in his memoir.
He also recounted a major confrontation between him and his father in the weeks before Biden announced his presidential campaign. Hunter, in the midst of his latest bender, came to dinner, only to find family members waiting to stage an intervention; he stormed out, his father chasing after him. “He grabbed me, swung me around, and hugged me,” Hunter Biden wrote. “He held me tight in the dark and cried for the longest time.”
Some of President Biden’s associates say the president derives support and comfort from his son’s presence, and that this outweighs any potential liabilities. Father and son are in some ways making up for lost time, they say.
“It’s good for Joe Biden,” said one former top Biden aid, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss what is still considered a sensitive topic. “If you believe Hunter is corrupt, you’re always going to believe he’s corrupt. For Joe Biden the candidate, it’s good. … All the negatives are already out there.”
In the last campaign, Hunter Biden’s struggles with drug addiction weighed heavily on his father, both personally and politically, according to those close to the family. Trump memorably brought up the issue during a presidential debate, prompting Biden to respond more as a father than a candidate.
“My son, my son, my son — like a lot of people, like a lot of people you know at home — had a drug problem,” Biden said. “He’s overtaken it, he’s fixed it, he’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son.”
Biden’s allies say that Hunter Biden’s elevated public presence reflects that pride, and in some ways is simply a more visible version of the private role Hunter has played for some time.
“This is the physical manifestation of what he said against Trump,” said the former longtime Biden aide. “I imagine those that really care about Joe Biden, they’re comforted by the fact that Hunter is around more.”
Those close to Hunter Biden also say that his life is more stable than it has been in years. In 2019 he married Melissa Cohen a week after meeting her, and they now have a young son who is named after Beau.
At the same time, several House Republicans are making plans to investigate Hunter Biden, whose longtime business dealings, sometimes trading on the family name, they see as a political vulnerability for his father.
On Monday, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said that he and several other lawmakers went to the Treasury Department to view financial records related to several Biden family members.
“The Biden family enterprise is centered on Joe Biden’s political career and connections, and it has generated an exorbitant amount of money for the Biden family,” Comer said in a statement. “We will soon provide the public with more information about what we’ve uncovered to date.”
But days earlier, any investigations appeared to be the furthest thing from the mind of the Bidens.
In a speech on Friday night in Ballina, Ireland, in front of a cheering crowd of 27,000 at the end of his trip, the president mentioned his son and spoke about the importance of his family — past and, particularly in that moment, present.
“I can hear my dad’s voice again. He’d always say, ‘Joey, remember: Family is the beginning, the middle and the end,’” the president said. “Beginning, middle and end. That’s the Irish of it. The beginning, the middle and end.”