In her upcoming memoir, Jill Biden expresses ongoing doubts about one of the women who provided testimony regarding Hunter Biden’s drug issues during his 2024 gun trial. She candidly reflects on the unsettling images of substance abuse that continue to trouble her.
The Daily Mail has obtained an advance copy of View from the East Wing, set to be released on Tuesday, where the former First Lady offers a detailed account of the events surrounding the trial.
Although she does not identify the woman by name, Jill Biden recounts the testimony from ‘a woman I’d never seen before’ who claimed to have lodged with Hunter in hotels in 2018 and supplied him with drugs.
This woman is Zoë Kestan, who first encountered Hunter in December 2017 at Vivid Cabaret in New York, a venue where she was a performer.
During the proceedings, prosecutors presented the jury with photographs taken by Kestan depicting crack pipes, including one showing Hunter in a bathtub with a pipe in hand.
Biden reflects on the situation with skepticism, noting, “I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but I was sitting there thinking, Do drug users often get their fellow drug users to pose with drugs?’
‘She had taken well-framed, well-lit pictures of the drug scale, of the drugs, of her and Hunter together with the drugs, almost as if she was filming a nature documentary,’ the former First Lady mused.
She didn’t reveal then-President Joe Biden’s views on the gun trial, which revolved around Hunter’s October 2018 purchase of a handgun and whether he lied about being addicted to drugs on the form.
In the book, Jill Biden admitted that the ‘horror of addiction’ was a ‘steep learning curve for me.’
‘Even now, I can barely say the words, “My son was a drug addict.” Barely,’ she said.
Former First Lady Jill Biden wrote extensively about Hunter Biden’s June 2024 gun trial in her forthcoming memoir, View from the East Wing, which arrives in bookstores Tuesday
Biden wrote in her book that she was suspicious of all the photographs Zoë Kestan (left) took of she and Hunter using drugs. Kestan is photographed arriving to testify at the gun trial. Hunter Biden is photographed arriving at the Wilmington courthouse with wife Melissa Cohen (right)
She revealed the Bidens often wouldn’t use the word when identifying what plagued Hunter, who became a crack cocaine addict in the aftermath of his brother Beau’s 2015 death.
Hunter Biden is photographed with a crack pipe in his mouth. The former First Lady said she was suspicious that some of these images existed but didn’t elaborate
The former First Lady also admitted she gets emotional when seeing items that remind her of Hunter’s worst days.
‘The other day, I was cleaning out a drawer and found one of Hunter’s lighters, and I was instantly triggered,’ she wrote. ‘How many times had I seen him using it, obsessively smoking cigarettes?’
Hunter marked seven years of sobriety on Monday.
‘Many people have asked why I never took on addiction as a cause as First Lady,’ she wrote. ‘I couldn’t.’
She said that while she had empathy for addicts and their family members, ‘I was raised to stay stoic and contained.’
‘Regardless of how bad it looked, I believed that Hunter would get it together on his own,’ she said.
Unlike other parts of her memoir, Dr Biden treats the days surrounding Hunter’s gun trial like diary entries – even sharing her official travel schedule, which included two official trips to France amid her days spent in the Wilmington courtroom.
She recalled how prosecutors used the audiobook version of Hunter’s 2021 memoir Beautiful Things.
First Lady Jill Biden has done a series of interview to promote, View from the East Wing, her memoir that discusses her years spent in the White House, which comes out Tuesday
‘In the section they shared, Hunter was on the road, strung out, and he got lost driving through the California desert. An owl flew overhead – he felt it was there to guide his car – and he followed the owl to where he needed to be,’ Biden wrote.
‘Beau, I thought. Whether the owl was real or a hallucination, I believed that the spirit of Beau was at work trying to guide his brother to safety,’ the former First Lady said.
She said the excerpt prompted Biden’s daughter, Ashley, to start crying in the courtroom.
Biden said her job was to keep Ashley and Hunter’s wife, Melissa, calm – though Melissa still got caught on camera accosting former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler, who was attending proceedings.
The former First Lady didn’t name Ziegler in her book – and rarely used President Donald Trump’s name when writing about her husband’s political rival.
She did write candidly about her feelings toward Hallie Biden – Beau’s widow, who then dated Hunter at the height of his crack cocaine addiction.
The former First Lady expressed happiness that Hallie had found a new love.
Hallie – who was also called to testify – married John Hopkins Anning amid Hunter’s gun trial.
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Hallie Biden, the widow of Beau Biden who also dated Hunter Biden, is photographed arriving at Hunter’s Wilmington gun trial. The former First Lady wrote about how she felt about Hallie getting remarried in June 2024
‘I couldn’t bring myself to attend, but I went over to say goodbye before they left for the wedding weekend,’ Biden recalled.
‘I was happy for them, but I found it overwhelming to see her starting a new life with someone else. In my mind, she would always be Beau’s wife, no matter her new marriage or what had occurred with Hunter,’ she said.
On June 11, Hunter was convicted on all three felony charges related to the illegal purchase of a firearm.
He never faced sentencing, as President Biden granted him a sweeping pardon in December 2024, after Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, lost the presidential election to Trump.
‘It was hard for me not to think about the role politics played in the matter going to trial in the first place,’ Biden wrote.
‘Attorney General Merrick Garland oversaw the Justice Department in its handling of Hunter’s case. In the end, it felt like in working so hard to be impartial, we guaranteed that Hunter would meet the worst possible legal fate,’ she said.
‘Joe might have gone too far, in my opinion, to show that his family was being treated with complete impartiality,’ Biden added.
