Who Is Lunden Roberts? All About the Mother of Hunter Biden's Daughter Navy

Lunden Roberts welcomed Hunter Biden's youngest daughter, Navy Joan Roberts, in August 2018

Hunter Biden made headlines in November 2019 for secretly fathering a child with Arkansas woman Lunden Roberts.

Roberts welcomed a daughter, Navy Joan Roberts, in August 2018. However, her identity was only revealed to the public in 2019 after a paternity test proved President Joe Biden's son to be the father.

After a court settlement in which the younger Biden agreed to pay child support in June 2023, President Biden publicly acknowledged Navy as one of his seven grandchildren for the first time in an exclusive statement to PEOPLE.

“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 president said.

"This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter," the statement continued. "Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”

Related: Hunter Biden’s 5 Children: All About His Son and Daughters

Now, Roberts is speaking out for the first time with the release of her memoir, Out of the Shadows: My Life Inside the Wild World of Hunter Biden.

"I've gone through the craziest things being said about me to the point where it's worth telling my story, getting it out there, and people can either take it or leave it," Roberts told PEOPLE ahead of the book’s release. "It's up to them, and I'm okay with it either way."

So who is Lunden Roberts? Here’s everything to know about the woman raising Hunter Biden's daughter and how she became involved with the president’s son.

She is from Arkansas

Roberts was born on March 5, 1991, and grew up in Arkansas as the daughter of a gun manufacturer who has hunted with Donald Trump Jr., per The New York Times. Her father taught her how to hunt turkeys and alligators, which are hobbies she’s continued to this day.

The Arkansas native graduated from Southside High School in Batesville and attended Arkansas State University where she played basketball. Per her athlete bio page, she enjoys hunting and shooting skeet.

Roberts met Biden while she was a student in Washington D.C.

After graduating from college, Roberts chose to pursue an advanced degree in crime scene investigation at George Washington University. She never completed the program, but it was during her time in Washington D.C. that Roberts met Biden.

She writes in her memoir that they first crossed paths at a party in the fall of 2016, the year after Biden's older brother Beau died. At the time, Biden was struggling with his crack cocaine addiction.

"He was in a very, very dark place," Roberts told PEOPLE in August 2024. "I saw him during that time and I empathized with him and I loved him."

Roberts started working as Biden’s assistant and the two began a sometimes-sexual friendship

Soon after meeting, the two began a friendship that included occasional sex. In her book, Roberts detailed how Biden spoiled her and her friends with lavish things and how she became embroiled in his day-to-day life, even spending time at Joe and Jill Biden’s home in Delaware while they were out of town. Roberts said she eventually began working as Biden's assistant and stayed on his payroll after she became pregnant.

However, she admitted that while the nature of their relationship was casual, she fell in love with Biden at some point.

She became pregnant with his child in 2018 and moved back home to Arkansas

In January 2018, Roberts found out she was expecting Biden’s child. While she said Biden — who was already a father to three daughters with his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle — at first expressed support at the news, she said he soon stopped responding to her as often and drifted from her.

Roberts decided to move back to Arkansas to have the support of her family and raise his child.

"You can see throughout the book that I come back to Arkansas thinking that I'm going to keep this secret and not tell anyone who the child's father is — I want to protect him," she told PEOPLE.

She sued Biden for child support in May 2019

In May 2019, nearly eight months after Navy was born in August 2018, Roberts sued Biden, seeking to establish paternity and earn child support.

She told PEOPLE that she realized her priority was taking care of her daughter, and that required bringing her father to court.

While Biden initially denied ever knowing or having sex with Roberts, a paternity test in November 2019 showed that Navy was his child.

“My client has never doubted the paternity of this child, has never equivocated,” Roberts’ attorney, Clint Lancaster, told PEOPLE at the time. “She has never wavered. She has never doubted the results.”

According to Roberts' book, the proceedings for determining child support were ongoing in January 2020 when Biden agreed to pay $20,000 per month and health insurance in child support to avoid getting deposed, plus smaller retroactive payments dating back to November 2018.

In June 2023, after Biden had revived litigation to lower his child support payments, the two concluded their case in an Arkansas state court, reaching a settlement agreement that Biden would pay Navy $5,000 per month as well as provide her with one of his original paintings each month, according to Roberts' book.

Roberts also dropped an earlier attempt to change Navy’s legal last name to Biden.

Ultimately, Roberts told PEOPLE, she just wanted Biden to take accountability for the child he fathered.

"Everything made a full circle when I was able to sit there and talk to [Biden], eye to eye and face to face, and look him in the eyes and tell him, 'I've hated you for so long and I've been so mad at you,' " she said. "And that day I was able to let that hate go, because that's something that I had held onto."

Part of the settlement also included Biden telling Roberts he was ready to meet Navy over Zoom.

"Seeing her and him on Zoom calls and being able to see that look on her face and when she's able to actually talk to him ... it's worth giving all the grace in the world," the mother of one said. "I'll always care about him, he's my child's father. I want what's best for him."

However, a year after President Biden and first lady Jill Biden publicly acknowledged Navy, the child has still yet to meet her grandparents, and Navy's father allegedly paused Zoom calls with her after learning about Roberts’ book.

Roberts wrote a memoir about her experiences with Biden

In August 2024, Roberts released a memoir detailing her relationship with Biden and what the first five years of her daughter’s life looked like as she battled Biden in court for child support and built a new life in Arkansas.

She told PEOPLE that she wanted to write the book so people could see her experience from her perspective — and so that her daughter would be able to do the same one day too.

"At the end of the day, my daughter will have it to hold and read one day, and I know that she'll know me, she'll know the person that I am and that I was, and she'll take it," Roberts said.

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