Joe, Jill and Hunter Biden go public, drawing attention to controversies Democrats hoped to bury

The Biden family has been voluntarily going public recently with explanations about past controversies: Jill Biden released a memoir about her experience as first lady. Hunter, President Biden's son, joined right-wing political commentator Candace Owens on her podcast for a nearly two-hour interview and the president filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department last week.

Hunter Biden

In an episode on Owens’ podcast “Candace” released May 21, Hunter – a nearly endless source of bad press for his father – discussed his extensive experience with drug and alcohol addiction, the infamous laptop incident, cocaine found in the White House, his Catholic faith and more.

The interview was amicable despite the two’s tumultuous past, with Biden thanking Owens multiple times for inviting him to have the conversation, and Owens, a far-right political commentator, apologizing for making fun of him “at the worst moment of his life” – referring to the discovery of a damaged laptop containing a hard drive with several photos and videos of Hunter smoking crack cocaine with prostitutes.

“I definitely thought you were on drugs while your father was in the White House,” Owens told him.

Biden replied: “I've heard you call me a crackhead many times, and the truth of the matter is, I was a crackhead,” Hunter said. 

Despite the two deciding to refrain from discussing former President Biden — Owens even pledged not to make the former first son talk about his dad “because that would just be completely demonic" – Biden compared his father to President Donald Trump when criticizing the U.S.’s current involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict.

President Biden "didn’t green-light to turn Gaza into a Trump golf course, you know, with the maître d' being Jared Kushner with $4 billion in Saudi money,” Hunter said during the interview.

He was convicted on nine total tax offenses and federal gun charges, facing up to 17 years in prison for the tax charges and up to 25 years for the latter, but was pardoned by his father before Trump officially took office in January 2025. While Hunter Bident didn’t specify each misconduct on Owens’ podcast, he attributed his transgressions to addiction.

“I've done horrible things in my addiction in terms of what I did, in terms of my relationships and decisions that I made,” he said. “I think I was on the cover of The New York Post in one year more than any, uh, anybody in the history of the paper. And none of it was good.”

(Biden also made headlines for his efforts when his father was vice president, to leverage the family name to make lucrative overseas business deals.)

At the podcast’s conclusion, Hunter told Owens that she has a lot of power because her audience trusts her and commended her “courage of speaking her mind,” specifically in terms of Owens’ ongoing investigation into the death of former Turning Point USA and political activist Charlie Kirk.

Jill Biden

The former first lady released a memoir, “View from the East Wing: A Memoir,” on June 2. Democrats such as New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, former House Rep. Susan Wild, several former White House staffers who worked under the Biden administration and more have expressed frustration with her memoir's claims, context and overall timing.

“I think that they need to sell books, and I think that Dr. Biden wants her story out there,” former special assistant to Joe Biden in the White House, Meghan Hays, said on C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire.”

Much of the criticism from both the left and right pertains to Biden's claims regarding her husband's health. She said in multiple interviews that she thought her husband was having a stroke during his 2024 presidential debate with Trump. Biden said he was checked out by a doctor after the debate and that he was fine. Still, his wife's former spokesperson, Michael LaRosa, amid the recent book tour interviews in accusing the former first lady of trying to “change the tape.”

On NBC's "Today" show with Craig Melvin, Jill Biden said that when her husband got off the stage after the debate, he asked Jill if he messed up — to which she replied, “Yes, you did.” Jill said her mind was racing while asking herself what she could truthfully tell her husband.

“So, I said, you answered every question,” she told Melvin.

Conservative columnist and talk show host Ed Morrissey said in a response to the "Today" show interview that if Jill Biden really thought her husband was having a stroke, she would have interrupted the debate and sought medical attention.

“For that matter, so would the White House medical team, and likely [host] CNN too,” he said. “No one interrupted the broadcast because no one was surprised by Joe’s performance, not even the audience.”

Joe Biden

The former president has also made his way back into the public eye alongside his wife and son with his recent lawsuit against the Justice Department. 

He’s seeking to stop the release of conversation recordings between him and author Mark Zwonitzer, with whom he worked to write Biden’s 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.”

In the book, Biden reflects on his experience as vice president in the Obama administration while considering running for the presidency and navigating his eldest son Beau’s cancer diagnosis and ultimate death.

“President Biden and Zwonitzer discussed a range of sensitive topics, including the role that Beau’s battle with cancer played in President Biden’s decision whether to run for President in 2016; the many other voices and events that factored into that difficult, highly personal decision; and the toll that Beau’s illness and eventual passing took on President Biden and his tight-knit family,” the lawsuit says.

The Justice Department obtained the records dating back to 2017 with former Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 investigation into Biden’s handling of classified records, which concluded that criminal charges were not warranted. However, the Heritage Foundation’s 2024 lawsuit to access the materials under the Freedom of Information Act claims the recordings contain evidence that Biden mishandled classified information. 

DOJ said it intends to present the recordings to the House Judiciary on June 15 unless a court order barring release is passed.