It's been almost a year since President Joe Biden finally acknowledged the existence of his seventh grandchild, Navy Joan Roberts, in a short statement to People magazine. Maureen Dowd gets all the credit for her July 2023 column in the New York Times—"It's Seven Grandkids, Mr. President"—but the Washington Free Beacon was covering the scandal since November 2019, when a court-ordered paternity test confirmed that Hunter Biden was the father.
Now we finally get to hear "the story that everyone's been asking for." That's how Navy Joan's mother, Lunden Roberts, describes the contents of her new memoir, Out of the Shadows: My Life Inside the Wild World of Hunter Biden. It is certainly the most reliable account we're ever going to get of this sad and sordid saga, which is to say the author is neither a filthy liberal journalist nor a degenerate lying crackhead. She's just a former high-school basketball star from Arkansas with horrible taste in men and a seemingly limitless tolerance for toxic behavior.
Roberts is also the victim of a cold-blooded smear campaign that drove her to consider suicide, a campaign that was aided and abetted, at least in part, by the sitting president of the United States, a career politician who has never missed an opportunity to praise himself for always putting family first. She doesn't explicitly criticize her daughter's grandfather in the book, but she didn't stop her publicity team from setting a release date during this Democratic National Convention, days before Biden's keynote address, and promising "revelations that could well impact the outcome of the 2024 election." Well, so much for that. The media wouldn't have cared much anyway if Biden was still the nominee. Now they can ignore it forever.
Needless to say, Roberts's version is dramatically at odds with what you might have read in the media about strippers and one-night stands. That includes Hunter Biden's bestselling memoir, Beautiful Things (2021), in which he never mentions Roberts by name but describes her as "the woman from Arkansas who had a baby in 2018," one of dozens if not hundreds of women he bedded during his post-divorce "rampages" who were "hardly the dating type." He claimed, in the book and in Arkansas family court, to have no recollection of a lone "encounter" with the mother of his child.
According to Roberts's more credible, less crack-addled account, that was a malicious and provably false claim, almost certainly grounds for a successful defamation lawsuit. Almost as ridiculous as all the Democrats who went on television to insist that Joe Biden was mentally sharp and fit to serve. She documents their months-long "relationship"—she was also on his payroll and health insurance—as well as their drug-fueled adventures together, which included hanging out with Hallie Biden, one of Hunter's other lovers and his brother Beau's widow, at the 11,000-square-foot Virginia mansion Joe and Jill were leasing "from a friend of the Obamas."
There's not a lot of meaningful self-refection in Out of the Shadows, and at times, Roberts appears to be in the throws of addiction herself, defenseless in the face of Hunter's so-called charm, desperate to be needed and to mend his broken soul. (Her next boyfriend was an MMA fighter and raging alcoholic who kept breaking into her house to call her a whore.) It's as if she wrote an entire book about a codependent relationship without ever Googling "codependency." Roberts's tone in recounting her relationship with Hunter is one of whimsical nostalgia, along the lines of "LOL remember when my boyfriend couldn't stop smoking crack isn't that crazy?"
Nevertheless, Roberts and her daughter are the only real victims in this story. Hunter isn't even the worst of the villains. It was Joe Biden who insisted on running for president while his only son was in the throes of addiction, lucky to be alive, a wrecking ball who funded his reckless hedonistic lifestyle by selling access to the family name. It was Joe Biden who lashed out at reporters for asking about the granddaughter he refused to acknowledge and did nothing to stop his son from disparaging the child's mother as a gold-digging stripper slut he didn't even remember. It's Joe Biden, the guy who loves all his grandchildren, who still hasn't spoken to Navy Joan.
It was unseemly at the time, disgraceful in retrospect, especially now that Roberts had told her side in the book, which includes one of the most bonkers conception stories that you will ever read.
It's December 2017, less than a year after Joe Biden stopped being Barack Obama's vice president. He is considering whether or not to run for president a third time. Meanwhile, Hunter Biden had some "meetings" in New York City for his job as a preposterously successful crack addict who dabbles in international corruption. He asks his sort-of girlfriend/personal assistant, Lunden Roberts, to tag along. On the way to Union Station, they make a "pit stop" at one of Hunter's favorite strip joints, Archibald's, where everybody knows his name.
They board a train and find seats near the bathroom so Hunter can snort cocaine. They start chatting with an old black lady who is on her way to Newark. It's late, and the woman doesn't have a phone, so Hunter is kind enough to escort her from the train to where a relative is supposed to pick her up. He barely makes it back before the train pulls out, only to realize they aren't in Newark. He orders the train to stop. "I'm on the board of Amtrak!" he yells. It doesn't work. When they reach the next station, Hunter runs off into the night.
Lunden proceeds to the luxury penthouse loft in Manhattan with their suitcases and Hunter's backpack full of drugs. Hunter makes it there eventually, but not before losing his phone, wallet, and Beau Biden's dog tags. It's morning now, and he's off to conduct business in the city. Hours later, he calls Lunden, claiming to be stuck in a meeting. It's FaceTime so she can tell he's in a strip club. Hunter returns to the hotel at midnight with two "friends," including possibly the daughter of some sketchy foreign oligarch. They're picking up something in the closet. A little hanky panky, then another round of "meetings" in the morning when Hunter tells Lunden it's time to leave. His business partner has been taken by the CIA.
Lunden took a pregnancy test a few weeks later. The rest is history, just like the media's interest in talking about Joe Biden, who selflessly surrendered power for the sake of American democracy. The noble family man who loves his family. Grandpa Joe. "This baby is a Biden," a Democratic attorney friend of Roberts told her after she found out she was pregnant with Navy Joan. "The Bidens are known for loving their family and being so family-oriented. They can turn a scandal into something to be proud of. It’s what makes them who they are." Is it, though?
Alternatively, as Roberts told her own lawyer after Hunter's legal team offered $250,000 if she dropped her paternity suit and signed a nondisclosure agreement: "Eat s—t, motherf—er."
Out of the Shadows: My Life Inside the Wild World of Hunter Biden
by Lunden Roberts
Skyhorse, 312 pp., $32.99