At Hunter Biden’s trial, Jill Biden can only watch (2024)

The source of the disembodied voice was the audiobook narration of “Beautiful Things,” his 2021 memoir, which prosecutors were playing to convince the jury that Hunter had been addicted to crack when he purchased a gun in 2018. It was Tuesday, the second day of his trial, where he stands accused of illegally buying and owning a weapon while abusing drugs.

As the recording played, Hunter sat silently with his attorneys. In the gallery, sitting in the first row directly behind Hunter, was the first lady of the United States.

None of the details echoing off the courtroom’s chestnut-paneled walls were new to Jill Biden, who read Hunter’s memoir before it was published in 2021 — and presumably, before any of the Bidens thought the text might become evidence in a federal case. One that has put the first family, and its matriarch, in a situation that seems as uncomfortable as it is uncontrollable.

Jill Biden, an intensely private first lady, has exercised near-perfect control over her image during her 3½ years in the White House. She grants few interviews, allowing her public appearances and prepared remarks to speak for her. She maintains a tight policy portfolio of her own — focused on military families, reproductive health and education — and prefers to shine the spotlight on her husband’s agenda and accomplishments. She enforces total privacy around her job as an English instructor at Northern Virginia Community College.

Even this week, the White House did not announce whether she would be at the courthouse. There were conspicuous holes in her public schedule, then an advisory noting that she would travel separately from the president for their state visit to France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

“She’s his mother; of course she would be there as much as possible to support him,” says Elizabeth Alexander, the first lady’s communications director. “As every mom knows, no matter how old your children get, you will do anything to show them how much you love them.

“The back and forth, the push and pull, of family responsibilities, of first lady duties, of her career, of the campaign — that’s just who she is,” Alexander adds.

Never let them see you sweat. Michael LaRosa, her former press secretary, recalls the first lady repeating that adage to him during his time in the East Wing. And she wasn’t sweating now. Jill stared at the back of Hunter’s head — her brow only occasionally furrowed, her lips only fleetingly pursed. Whatever she was thinking, her face didn’t betray it.

As Hunter’s voice-over described the power of his addiction, his half sister, Ashley Biden, began to silently cry, leaning into the shoulder of her mother’s blazer as she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. “Ash,” Jill cooed in a whisper, wrapping her arm around her daughter’s shoulders, pulling Ashley toward her with a gentle tug. She stayed that way — arm locked on her daughter, eyes locked on Hunter — as the recording continued. Ashley soon left the room, but Jill remained, eyes downcast as Hunter’s narration turned to how he checked into Los Angeles’s Chateau Marmont and learned how to cook crack.

Jill had been in court when the trial began the previous day, Monday, which happened to be the same day she turned 73. “Happy birthday — I got you a special event,” Hunter had joked when he greeted her that morning.

The defendant had lost his mother, Neilia, in a car accident when he was just 2 years old. Elsewhere in his memoir, Hunter wrote that Jill “did an amazing job of taking over the role of our mom” with him and his brother, Beau — that she showed “deep love” through “steadfast and undying loyalty.” Of Joe Biden’s two sons, “Hunt was more like me,” Jill wrote in her own 2019 memoir. They share a love of books and poetry, she explained — as well as a reluctance to discuss their feelings. “Though he’s my most courageous child, I also feel the most protective of him,” she wrote, “because I know he shares my guarded emotional side.”

When Hunter was in the depths of his addiction in early 2019, Jill had been the one to beckon him home for what turned out to be an intervention. Her efforts were poorly received. “I lashed out at my mother for deceiving me,” Hunter wrote in his memoir. She has seldom spoken publicly about Hunter’s struggle with drugs, other than to express her pride of how he’s “rebuilt his life after addiction,” as she told MSNBC in January.

On Tuesday morning, she glided into the courtroom in a pale-green skirt suit and stilettos, just before proceedings began, and took a seat between Ashley and Melissa Cohen Biden, Hunter’s wife. A Secret Service agent slid into the end of their row; Anthony Bernal, Jill’s top adviser, took a seat in the row behind. Jill spoke with her daughter and daughter-in-law in whispers, occasionally covering her mouth as she spoke. The younger Bidens couldn’t match Jill’s steely countenance: Ashley teared up several times, while Cohen Biden shook her head at every mention of Hunter’s now-infamous laptop, which had been the subject of intense scrutiny during the 2020 presidential campaign and provided evidence for Hunter’s drug use in this case.

Abbe Lowell, Hunter’s defense attorney, approached the first lady during Tuesday’s morning break and gave her a warm hug. Yes, she told him, she would return to the courthouse Wednesday, even though she had duties in Washington on Tuesday evening. (She was due to host the White House’s annual congressional picnic — “a celebration of what brings us all together — family, friends, our love of country and our belief in a better tomorrow!” as she would later describe it to the attending lawmakers and their families.) And yes, she told Lowell, if the trial was still going after her trip to France, she would come back to the courtroom again.

As first lady, Jill is accustomed to privacy: shielded seating, cleared walkways, choreographed movements. As the mother of the defendant, those privileges disappeared. She sat on the gallery bench among the other court watchers and moved among the throngs exiting the courtroom during recess. And yet, it’s impossible to miss the power of the presidency in her presence. Jurors craned their necks as they entered the courtroom on the first day of arguments, lingering on the famous face as they settled into their seats.

But Jill, of course, isn’t the president, which enables her to be a crucial surrogate for her husband — not in a political capacity but a family one.

“It would be more politically damaging — and a logistical nightmare — for President Biden to attend the trial,” said Lisa Burns, a professor of media studies at Quinnipiac University who studies first ladies. “So Dr. Biden is there as much for her husband as she is for herself. She’s showing that Hunter has his parents’ support.”

The first lady’s presence in the courtroom, for her child’s criminal trial, has no parallel in modern American history. (The closest approximation — which, to be sure, is quite far off — might be when George W. Bush’s daughters received citations from Texas police for underage drinking in 2001; the consequences were a fine, community service and alcohol counseling, and whatever humiliations the family endured, it did so behind closed doors.) And yet, for all of the unorthodoxy of a first lady sitting in a courtroom gallery, Jill’s presence is in keeping with the position’s traditional role as “cheerleader in chief,” says Katherine Jellison, a history professor at Ohio University.

“Americans expect to see their first ladies as supportive wives and mothers, and Dr. Biden is fulfilling that role,” she said.

Demonstrations of such support are particularly essential to the Bidens, who have built a half-century brand on supporting one another through triumph and tragedy, Jellison adds. And within that brand, Jill has been their protector, marrying Biden as a widower and single father to two sons and embracing them as her own.

On Wednesday, Jill arrived for her third day at the courthouse in a hot pink pantsuit. Ashley wasn’t there this time, but Jill’s sister, Bonny Jacobs, sat beside her on the gallery bench. The day opened with the cross-examination of an FBI special agent about Hunter’s bank statements, before turning once again to vivid descriptions, in Hunter’s memoir, of “smoking every fifteen minutes,” of “nonstop depravity,” of “full-blown addiction.”

During a morning break, Jill followed her son to the attorney’s conference room. She kissed him on the cheek, then she passed through the throng of reporters into an elevator. She left the courthouse before Kathleen Buhle, Hunter’s ex-wife, took the stand and described the toll of Hunter’s drug abuse in her own words. But by the afternoon, the first lady was back in her usual perch in the gallery, catching the last of the testimony from Zoe Kestan, an ex-girlfriend of Hunter’s who met him while performing for him as an exotic dancer and is nearly half his age.

Then, around 4:30 p.m., just before court adjourned for the day, she left the courtroom again. It was time, once again, for the matriarch of an embattled American family to become the first lady, and join the president in Paris. By Thursday night, she would be headed back to Wilmington.

Matt Viser contributed to this report.