Hunter Biden privately settled child support dispute with mother of four-year-old
It came after Lunden Roberts turned up at first son’s deposition this month
The deal reportedly slashes payments from $20K a month to less than $5K
By BEN ASHFORD FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and ROB CRILLY, SENIOR U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
Hunter Biden and his Arkansas baby mama have settled their bitter, years-long paternity battle over the daughter the First Son refuses to meet.
Hunter and former flame Lunden Roberts submitted an agreed order to Independence County Circuit Court on Monday afternoon for Circuit Judge Holly Meyer to approve, DailyMail.com has learned.
The document will become public within the next 24 hours but with heavy redactions to keep the full financial arrangements of four-year-old Navy Joan Roberts’ upbringing a secret.
A New York Post report published last week suggested that Roberts, 32, had signed a deal agreeing to slash the $20,000 Hunter pays each month to just $5,000 after he pleaded financial hardship.
The face-to-face showdown comes after Roberts petitioned a judge to toss Hunter in jail for six months for failing to come clean about his wealth
However Roberts’ attorney Clinton Lancaster pushed back against the article, stating that no deal had been reached and refusing to confirm the figures involved.
The confidential settlement means Hunter, 53, will avoid the scrutiny of a public paternity trial where details of his murky finances were likely to feature heavily.
Details emerged soon after it was reported that President Joe Biden’s son will plead guilty to federal tax offenses as part of a deal to avoid a full prosecution on a separate gun charge.
Roberts sprang a surprise on her former lover earlier this month. She turned up in person to hear him being deposed for the first time in their paternity battle.
Things were resolved soon after, however.
Roberts is understood to have dropped her demand that daughter Navy change her surname to Biden, a request that had been rejected by Hunter’s legal team.
The former flames had settled the case in 2019 but Hunter abruptly asked a court last year to lower the $20,000 per month in child support he pays for their adorable four-year-old daughter, Navy Joan Roberts.
Roberts refused to budge until the first son handed over a trove of financial docs and sat for a videotaped deposition which was supposed to take place at the Arkansas office of her Donald Trump-supporting attorney, Clinton Lancaster.
The recovering drug addict switched the venue to the Stephens Building, which was teeming with Secret Service agents as his five-vehicle motorcade pulled in just before 9am via a private parking garage.
Roberts, a former DC bottle girl who once worked as Hunter’s PA, drove in unnoticed about five minutes later. She was deposed at the same high-rise office for seven hours on Wednesday, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.
The face-to-face showdown comes after Roberts petitioned circuit court judge Holly Meyer to toss Hunter in jail for six months for failing to come clean about his wealth. Meyer is yet to rule on the contempt accusation.
In round one of their four-year suit Hunter claimed he was ‘unemployed and had no monthly income’ despite living in a $12,000-per-month Hollywood rental and driving a Porsche.
Details emerged soon after it was reported that President Joe Biden’s son will plead guilty to federal tax offenses as part of a deal to avoid a full prosecution on a separate gun charge
Roberts is a former DC bottle girl who once worked as Hunter’s PA
But when ordered to produce his financial records he repeatedly failed to do so before agreeing a 2019 settlement that has seen him pay Roberts more than $750,000 to date.
Despite already facing congressional and federal probes into his financial affairs, Hunter unexpectedly reopened the case last September, claiming he had suffered ‘a substantial material change’ in his income.
Roberts refused to buckle and raised the stakes by petitioning the court to officially rename her daughter Navy Joan Biden to ‘benefit from carrying the Biden Family name.’
Her discovery request covers everything from Hunter’s business deals in Ukraine and China to the names of the mystery art lovers who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for his beginner paintings.
In his own filings, Hunter has opposed Navy Joan becoming a Biden, insisting he wants a ‘peaceful existence’ for her, free of the political scrutiny associated with his family dynasty.