There is a wedding taking place at the White House today and it involves Joe Biden’s granddaughter (and Hunter Biden’s oldest legitimate child) Naomi. There’s nothing really all that unusual about this event. White House weddings are in high demand and when one member of the couple is a blood relative of the President, well… that’s just one of the perks of being related to the power base in Washington, I suppose. To read CNN’s upbeat spin on this, the wedding of two twentysomethings will give an “air of youthfulness” to these events, even though Biden turns 80 tomorrow. That’s a growing concern for the Democrats, particularly when Biden’s “senior moments” seem to be growing more frequent and severe these days. But there is one question CNN doesn’t seem interested in and it’s tackled by the Free Beacon this week. Naomi Biden has reportedly been living at the White House for some time now along with her fiance. Why?
Naomi Biden, the oldest legitimate daughter of amateur adult film star Hunter Biden, lives at the White House with her fiancé and elderly grandfather, according to the New York Times.
The newsworthy revelation was included as an aside in a fawning piece about Naomi’s plans to marry her fiancé, former Hillary Clinton intern Peter Neal, at a White House ceremony on Saturday, which happens to be President Joe Biden’s last day as a mere septuagenarian. The hard-hitting journalists at CNN report that the wedding will offer a “youthful spin” for the president on his 80th birthday.
The news that one of Hunter’s legitimate daughters is living at the White House comes after House Republicans announced plans to investigate “all avenues” of Hunter’s shady foreign business arrangements, and the extent to which President Biden was aware of and helped facilitate his troubled son’s money-making ventures.
As the Free Beacon correctly notes, both Naomi Biden and her fiance, Peter Neal, a former intern for Hillary Clinton, are attorneys who come from very wealthy families. (Although her grandfather’s wealth is far more recent in nature for some curious reason.) They should clearly be able to afford an apartment in the DC area. So why are they living rent-free in a taxpayer-funded mansion in the Capitol?
I suppose that comes down to the definition of “living in.” In every administration, the First Family has guests who come to visit and are offered the opportunity to sleep over in one of the White House’s 16 guest bedrooms which are supported by a staggering 35 bathrooms. If the guests are only staying for a day or two, that’s no doubt convenient for them and it becomes a special memory. But how many nights does one “sleep over” before you’re no longer just an overnight guest and you’re “living there” for all intents and purposes?
I did a little digging and found an interview from October 5th where Jill Biden seemed to at least imply that Naomi was staying there and planning her wedding. (No reference to the fiance was made that I could find.) Other gossip reports about the couple’s engagement and wedding plans (such as this one) make reference to both of them being at the White House starting from her grandfather’s inauguration, but those events seem to have been visits, so it’s difficult to say when she actually moved in.
Presumably, the couple plan on moving out and having a home of their own after the wedding, or that certainly seems likely. And while a long-term arrangement of this sort would probably appear unseemly unless some of the costs to the taxpayers were being reimbursed, it doesn’t appear that there’s anything technically illegal about this. The White House website specifically says that “by tradition, the President and the first family live in the White House.” Other sources note that “other close relatives of the president and first spouse, such as parents, grandchildren, stepchildren, and in-laws, may be classified as members of the first family if they reside in the Executive Residence of the White House Complex.”
With that in mind, there may not be anything technically wrong with this arrangement. But it still seems kind of curious, doesn’t it? But then again, as he’s demonstrated pretty much since the day he took office, Joe Biden can mostly do whatever the heck he feels like and he doesn’t like being questioned about it.
