The mother of Hunter Biden’s 7-year-old daughter, Lunden Roberts, filed a motion in an Arkansas court Tuesday asking a judge to jail the former first son for failing to comply with their 2023 child support agreement.
“It’s because of Mr. Biden’s antics that we find ourselves back before this court,” the motion states. “Incarcerate him in the Independence County Detention Center as a civil penalty until he purges his contempt by complying with this court’s order.”
Hunter Biden has fought to keep his youngest daughter out of his life, repeatedly rebuffing Roberts’s requests to let the child, Navy Joan Roberts, use Biden’s last name and claiming he was too poor to afford child support payments.
Roberts and Biden originally struck a deal in 2023 that reduced his monthly child support from $20,000 to $5,000 and required him to transfer proceeds from specified art sales to support their daughter, according to the New York Post. The agreement also stipulated that Biden would give his daughter some of his paintings in lieu of cash payments.
In exchange, Roberts dropped her request that the child take the Biden surname—a concession she now says has not yielded the promised support. Roberts claims Biden has ignored their child and that the ensuing emotional trauma has been “baffling,” given Biden’s earlier expressions of remorse.
After years of refusing to recognize the child’s existence, former president Joe Biden publicly acknowledged Navy Joan Roberts as his granddaughter in July 2023. Biden told People magazine that he and first lady Jill Biden “only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”
“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” the former president wrote, adding that “this is not a political issue, it’s a family matter.”
The admission followed a wave of criticism highlighting the White House’s efforts to gloss over his seventh grandchild. Biden aides and staffers had been repeatedly instructed to avoid acknowledging the child in official statements and public remarks, even as the president regularly referenced his other grandchildren.
The New York Times published a detailed profile of Roberts and her daughter earlier that month, documenting the long legal battle that forced Hunter Biden to acknowledge paternity through court-ordered DNA testing. Days later, Times columnist Maureen Dowd excoriated Biden in a widely circulated column titled, “It’s Seven Grandkids, Mr. President,” accusing the president of ignoring his grandchild because it was politically inconvenient.
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