Hunter Biden Is Married? This is New.

Yesterday morning I opened my phone to find a headline in the UK Daily Mail: EXCLUSIVE: Living her best life! Hunter Biden's wife Melissa Cohen, 35, flaunts her toned body on Ipanema Beach in Rio as her husband faces grand jury probe into his murky finances thousands of miles away. I've got to think Hunter's second marriage is one of the under-reported events of our time.

Hunter Biden's wife Melissa Cohen was spotted going for a swim on a beach in Brazil while her husband is thousands of miles away facing a grand jury probe into his murky finances and business deals.

. . . The mother-of-one appeared to enjoy the waves solo in her yellow top and navy blue-patterned bottoms, but several Secret Service agents were nearby at all times, costing US taxpayers thousands.

South African-born Melissa is in town for the Orphaned Starfish Foundation's benefit for the LGBTQ+ community, orphans, indigenous children and victims of trafficking and abuse. She is the guest of honor at Thursday night's event.

So I went looking for more and came up with some interesting context. In brief,

In 2018, a stripper named Lunden Roberts gave birth to a child out of wedlock and named Hunter the father in a paternity suit. The baby was conceived while he was still dating [Beau's widow] Hallie. Hunter initially denied the claim, but a DNA test proved otherwise. In January 2020, he agreed to pay Roberts an undisclosed amount of monthly child support.

In 2019, shortly after breaking up with Hallie, Biden began dating Melissa Cohen. To date, they are still an item. [cough, cough.]

Melissa Cohen is a South African activist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She moved to the US at 21 after earning an interior design degree from Greenside Design Center College of Design in South Africa.

She was previously married to an American entrepreneur Jason Landver between 2012 and 2014. In March, she gave birth to a son with Hunter. The child is reportedly named after his deceased uncle, Beau.

Hunter and Cohen’s relationship moved at warp speed. A few days after their first date, he had the word “shalom” tattooed on his left bicep to match her ink. A few days after that, he proposed. They were married within 24 hours [in May, 2019].

Cohen apparently comes with her own bizarre baggage. According to the Daily Mail, the 33-year-old, who is adopted, claims she spent the first few years of her life being raised by African tribeswomen. The self-described “jungle girl” says her native tongue is Xhosa, a tribal dialect. Friends believe “she may have embellished some aspects of her background in order to raise money for her various conservation projects.”

Sources also revealed unsavory details about her former marriage to Landver. “She decided she wanted to stay in America so she gave him an ultimatum,” said an insider. “She said we need to get married to get my visa or she would have to leave. It was very manipulative.”

Despite living a lavish lifestyle on Landver’s dime, the two ultimately called it quits. She accepted a $50,000 payment, kept her two-and-a-half carat ring, and even had her ex-husband finance a one-month trip to Europe “to ease the pain of their split.”

It's worth noting that Hunter's May 2019 marriage to Cohen came at the end of the extended binge that culminated in his dropping the now-famous laptop off for repair just a month earlier, that April. Hunter's relationship with his late brother Beau's widow Hallie ended in that same period, while the best information I've been able to find is that Hunter's employment as a Burisma board member ended about April or May 2019 as well, corresponding roughly to Zelensky's election as President of Ukraine on April 21, 2019 on an anti-corruption platform.

At the same time, Hunter's dad, Joe, appears to have been starting to set his presidential campaign in motion and may have wanted Hunter to tone thngs down.

Hunter had been financially squeeezed since Joe left the vice presidency. According to the New York Post,

From May 2014, Burisma Holdings Ltd. was paying Hunter $83,333 a month to sit on its board, invoices on his abandoned laptop show.

But in an email on March 19, 2017, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi asked Hunter to sign a new director’s agreement and informed him “the only thing that was amended is the compensation rate.”

. . . After the email, the amount listed on Hunter’s monthly Burisma invoices was reduced to $41,500, effective from May 2017.

An extended summary of Hunter's autobiography in the Forward gives further detail on how his relationship with Melissa Cohen developed:

Just after getting the boot from the Petit Ermitage, a swanky Los Angeles hotel, and while sitting on the rooftop pool figuring out where to go next, a drunk and high Hunter struck up a conversation with a group of hipsters, who all seemed to think that he needed to meet one of their friends: Melissa Cohen. Late that night he texted her, asking to meet up for drinks. She countered with an offer to meet for coffee the next morning — but didn’t show up until dinnertime.

Hunter describes his first glimpse of Melissa, who arrived with “oversized sunglasses pushed atop her honey-blond hair,” as a “bell-ringer.” Within a few minutes, he told her she had the same blue eyes as Beau, his brother. Then, he announced he was in love with her. An hour later, he confessed to his drug addiction.

Melissa, in his recollection, was unfazed. “Not anymore,” she said. “You’re finished with that.”

“Beautiful Things” details a slew of rehab programs that never quite worked. Instead, it took Melissa’s care to catapult Hunter into his current sobriety. A day after meeting him, she disposed of all his drugs. She confiscated his car keys, wallet, computer, and phone, deleting all contacts except immediate family members. When drug dealers knocked on the door, she “turned to steel” and dispatched them unceremoniously.

After a difficult period of withdrawal — Hunter doesn’t specify how long this lasted, but credits Melissa with putting up with “my whining and crying and scheming” — he slept for three days. On the fourth day, Hunter popped the question “like a trial balloon, light and breezy: ‘We should get married!’” That night, the two visited destination tattoo parlor Shamrock Social Club, where Hunter got the tattoo the Schmooze can’t stop talking about: The word “Shalom,” inked on his left bicep, which matched one of Melissa’s preexisting tats.

“Shalom” tattoos tend to usher in major life decisions, and the next morning Hunter and Melissa decided to get hitched — that day. Wedding preparations were slapdash: Hunter located a “marriage shop” and paid its owner to hurry to Melissa’s apartment in rush-hour traffic. Yet, he said, there was no sense of haste: “The decision never felt rash or harebrained or reckless. It felt urgent. I felt like I’d been given a reprieve.”

The story glosses over the fact that this all occurred -- first date through rehab struggle to marriage -- within ten days. I bet that rehab really worked, huh? As far as I can tell, Cohen herself had few or no financial resources, and whatever she got in her divorce settlement we must assume had long since been spent. She seeems to have cast an effective spell on the desperate Hunter, but I would assume that any other potential suitor with the means to support her lifestyle would likely have seen her as an aging gold-digger. Given her own sketchy background, he was the best she could manage. It's probably no coincidence that she got pregnant around the time they first met.

Curious about their utlimate living arrangements, I found this story, also in the New York Post, dated last July:

Hunter Biden has a new Malibu rental with an art studio, according to reports.

The 51-year-old, who detailed his battle with cocaine and alcohol addictions in his book “Beautiful Things,” moved into the pad with his wife, South African model and filmmaker Melissa Cohen, and their 1-year-old son, Beau Jr., he told Artnet earlier this month.

The rental was listed for $20,000 a month in April, and the listing was removed on May 10, two months ago, signaling that a rental agreement had been reached (though TMZ reported that the rental began four months ago when the property was first listed).

. . . The 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-bathroom home was purchased in 2019 for $3.34 million. The house has an open floor plan, solid oak floors, French doors and 180-degree ocean views, according to Realtor.com.

. . . Hunter recently left a $5.4 million Venice Beach house — which was guarded by the Secret Service — that cost an estimated $25,000 per month and which he found after living in Hollywood Hills, The Post reported. The new rental is also guarded by the Secret Service, TMZ has reported.

So Hunter's current home is 20% less expensive, presumably allowing for his diminished prospects as an investor and board member, but not all that less. I've got to assume Melissa, currently jet-setting in Brazil, isn't there all that often, and I also suspect young toddler Beau must be looked after elsewhere, as it would not be prudent to leave him in the care of his cokehead father.

We know someone just paid a million-dollar tax bill for Hunter as the prospect of his indictment looms. I've got to think the cost of maintaining Melissa's lifestyle, including charitable donations that make her a guest of honor, is not inconsequential, and you know she doesn't fly coach. Not to mention nannies and minders for little Beau. The one bright spot is the Secret Service pays for the limos. The cost of minders for Hunter himself is presumably out of the Secret Service budget as well. Do the agents run out for his drugs? How do they vet the hookers?

Asking for a friend.