Where's Melissa?

People have been commenting on the photos of Hunter boarding Marine One on the way to Camp David with his dad or at the state dinner with Prime Minister Moti, which are taken as a tacit signal that Hunter has been fully rehabilitated following his guilty pleas to various misdemeanors and settlemenmt of his child support case with Lunden Roberts. The question I have, though, is if this is meant to show that things are back to normal with the First Crackhead, where are the First Crackhead's wife and three-year-old son? They were notably absent from the past week's events, as far as I can tell.

The most recent sighting I've beem able to find is in the UK Daily Mail from May 11, where they were in LA together:

The president's son had his little boy in his arms and his wife Melissa Cohen trailing close behind as he left the children's playground and got into a black Suburban under the supervision of security personnel.

But every indication has been that Hunter's been in Washington and not LA, possibly living in the White House, during the past several weeks as he's dealt with his tax case in Delaware, and reports have also indicated that Kevin Morris flew him back and forth to Arkansas from Washington to deal with the child support case in his corporate jet. Are Hunter and Melissa basically living separate lives?

This brings me to the question of Hunter's current lifestyle. Under the plea deal,

the president’s son would plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay income taxes, and the government would recommend a sentence of probation. He also would be permitted to enter a pretrial diversion program for a serious gun charge, which would be dismissed if he successfully completes the program.

As far as I can tell, pretrial diversion programs, especially if they involve drug offenses (Hunter's violation was lying on a gun form that he wasn't addicted to a drug) require drug testing, although under federal rules, each US Attorney develops policies for his district. By his own admission, Hunter is an addict, and under normal circumstances, he should be subject to drug testing as part of his diversion program. This almost certainly will be waived as yet another feature of his deal.

Indeed, if Hunter is still using drugs, this would be a problem for LA child protection authorities if Hunter were in the household and using drugs.

But this raises the question of Hunter's past performance when he's been close to Joe. The most recent pair of text mssage revelations involve two instances while he was in Delaware in the summer of 2017. On July 30, he sent sent a WhatsApp message demanding payment from a Chinese businessman while he was "sitting with his father". On August 3, he asked a second Chinese associate, Gongwen “Kevin” Dong, for $10 million in another WhatsApp text, noting the Biden family is best at “doing exactly what the chairman wants.”

While the Biden defense so far against these imputations, insofar as there is one, claims that Hunter might not have been literally sitting in the same room with Joe, and indeed Joe was unaware of what Hunter was doing in his name, this raises at best another question: Hunter's four-year crack-and-hooker binge, which began with his brother beau's death in May 2015, was well under way by the summer of 2017. Whatever the specifics of Hunter's claim literally to be sitting with Joe, photographic evidence places him at the Biden family compound in Delaware at the time these messages were sent.

Among other things, this raises for me the question of how Hunter was getting drugs into the Biden compound during these and other periods, and how he was satisfying his extreme sexual needs while in the family residences. In part, he was continuing his affairs with Hallie and her sister, but these were by no means exclusive, and his affair with Lunden Roberts, a Washington, DC stripper, appears to have begun during late 2017 as well.

It's hard to avoid thinking Joe was at least aware of these issues while he and Hunter were working closely on their business deals and also, at least in part, living in close proximity. But now we have a situation with Hunter rehabilitated, at least in Joe's mind, apparently now often in the White House, and closeted with Joe at Camp David as well -- with Melissa nowhwere to be seen. What, if anything, has changed between the summer of 2017 and the new, rehabilitated, presumably clean, presumably sober, presumably chaste family-man Hunter of 2023? And where's Melissa if things are so great?

I can't help but think there's always beeN a strange pattern of codependency between Joe and Hunter, revealed in periodic messages that show up on the laptop where Joe pleads, "I love you. I need you". The question is how long this can be covered up. Hunter is an addict. His relationship with his father seems to have this factor baked in, and I see no reason for Hunter to change a thing, at least as long as Joe can keep covering for him.