Hunter Biden’s child support dispute touches on political discord

ARKANSAS – US President Joe Biden’s son, Mr Hunter Biden, appeared in an Arkansas courtroom on Monday as part of a bitter dispute with the mother of his four-year-old child over his request to have his child support payments reduced.

The proceedings have touched on many of the controversies surrounding Mr Hunter Biden, including his foreign business dealings, which have been heavily scrutinised by House Republicans and federal investigators.

The child’s mother, Ms Lunden Roberts, has accused Mr Biden, an attorney, businessman and artist, of ignoring court orders to provide information about his finances and has asked a judge to declare him in contempt and have him jailed until he complies.

One of Mr Biden’s lawyers has accused Ms Roberts of waging “political warfare” against Mr Biden and his family.

Republicans are watching the case closely. In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Representative James Comer of Kentucky, the chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said the proceedings had the “potential to be very helpful” in revealing the income Mr Biden has earned from selling his art and whether he owns any offshore accounts.

What’s behind the case?

The case began in May 2019 when Ms Roberts, who lives in Arkansas, filed court papers saying that she and Mr Biden had been in a relationship and that she had given birth to a child in August 2018.

She asked the court to establish paternity and affirm that Mr Biden was the father and that he must pay child support.

In his memoir, Mr Biden wrote that he had “no recollection” of his encounter with Ms Roberts and that he had engaged in “rampages” with women after his acrimonious 2017 divorce from his first wife, Ms Kathleen Buhle.

Their relationship had deteriorated as his problems with drug and alcohol addiction intensified.

DNA testing in 2019 established that Mr Biden was the father of Ms Roberts’ child, and he was ordered to pay monthly child support beginning in 2020, court records show. The case was then closed.

The child’s name was not disclosed in court filings.

In September 2022, Mr Biden’s lawyer filed a motion asking the court to recalculate his payments, saying that there had been a “substantial material change” in his financial circumstances, including his income.

Ms Roberts’ lawyers asked for further information about Mr Biden’s finances, citing what they called evidence of his “well-established history of a lavish lifestyle”.

In court filings, they indicated that they were seeking a list of his homes over the past 10 years and the cars he had owned or driven for the past five years, the income he had derived from the sale of his paintings and information about money that he had paid to or had received from his uncle James Biden, whose business dealings have also been under scrutiny by House Republicans.

Ms Roberts’ lawyers also mentioned in court filings

Mr Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company

that became a flashpoint in his father’s race against then president Donald Trump in 2020 and helped set off the events that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

And they mentioned that Mr Hunter Biden has been under federal investigation.

The Justice Department has examined, among other issues, Mr Biden’s international business dealings, his tax filings and whether he lied on a federal form that he filled out to buy a handgun in 2018 when he said he was not using drugs at the time.

A dispute over the Biden name

Ms Roberts asked the court in December to change the child’s last name to Biden, which her lawyers said was “now synonymous with being well-educated, successful, financially acute, and politically powerful”.

Her lawyers wrote that Mr Hunter Biden, Mr Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden and other members of the Biden family “remain estranged” from the child and that taking the Biden name would make the child “known to the world” as a “member of the prestigious Biden family”.

Mr Hunter Biden has opposed the request.

One of his lawyers, Mr Brent Langdon, wrote that Ms Roberts had not proved that it would be in the best interests of the child, and that the request was inconsistent with “disparaging comments” she has made about the Bidens in her court filings.

“The child should have the opportunity for input at a time when the disparagement of the Biden name is not at its height,” Mr Langdon wrote. “The notoriety would no doubt rob this child of peaceful existence.”

Accusations of ‘political warfare’

Mr Langdon has accused Ms Roberts of seeking to undo protective orders that she had once requested in the best interests of the child, writing in a legal filing that her interest in shielding information about the case had “dissipated in the interest of political warfare” against Mr Biden and his family.

Ms Roberts’ lawyers, Mr Clint Lancaster and Ms Jennifer Lancaster, have accused Mr Biden of disregarding court orders to provide information about his finances, which they said showed that he was “playing games” with the court.

In April, they asked the court to jail Mr Biden in Cleburne County, Arkansas, “until he complies with this court’s orders and answers discovery”, legal filings show.

As an alternative, they asked the court to “sanction” Mr Biden.

At Monday’s hearing, Judge Holly Meyer of the 16th Judicial Circuit in Arkansas did not immediately rule on the request.

She said that Mr Biden would have to answer questions under oath in June, and she criticised his lawyers for redacting more information than necessary from their filings, CNN reported.

One of Mr Biden’s lawyers, Mr Abbe Lowell, disclosed at the hearing that Mr Biden had been paying US$20,000 (S$26,700) a month in child support, for a total of US$750,000, CNN reported.

Roberts’ lawyers helped Trump’s 2020 election fight

The Lancasters are a husband-and-wife legal team who describe themselves on their law firm’s website as “active Republicans who believe in free, fair, open, honest, and transparent elections”.

According to their website, the Lancasters worked with Trump’s legal team in Wisconsin after the 2020 presidential election, when Trump’s lawyers sought unsuccessfully to invalidate more than 200,000 votes cast in two of the state’s Democratic bastions. Mr Joe Biden carried Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes.

One of the expert witnesses they are seeking to call is Mr Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump administration aide, who has claimed to have investigated the Biden family, including looking into a laptop that Mr Hunter Biden abandoned in a Delaware repair shop.

In 2022, Mr Ziegler went on a misogynistic rant during a live-stream after he sat for an interview with the committee investigating the Jan 6, 2021, assault on the United States Capitol, in which he refused to answer questions.

Mr Biden has recently added Mr Lowell to his legal team. He is one of the nation’s most prominent trial lawyers, who has represented a long list of prominent Democrats and Republicans, including Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ms Ivanka Trump and Mr Jared Kushner. He has also represented Mr Hunter Biden in Republican congressional inquiries. NYTIMES