Opinion: The sad, secret life of Ashley Biden

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

At times tragic, at others tawdry, the turbulent history of the Biden clan was one that the mainstream US media was long happy to ignore. But even on those occasional moments when the family couldn't avoid unflattering attention, the one consolation for other Bidens was that at least they weren't Hunter. With his crack addiction, passion for internet [adult film], and his illegal gun purchase, there was a family scion who could be relied on to hog the headlines and leave his relatives in peace. And that was particularly true of his half-sister Ashley whose own issues – including chronic drug abuse, [sexual] addiction, extra-marital affairs and becoming 'hyper-sexualized' in her youth – were revealed in a stolen diary that, while jaw-dropping, only briefly made waves in 2020 before the world's attention was once more back on the squalid saga of Hunter.
This was accompanied by a burst of Lauryn Hill's song Freedom Time. Ashley also deployed another inspirational quote – 'let your smile change the world, but don't let the world change your smile' – but wrongly attributed it to reggae star Bob Marley. It has yet to emerge what prompted the couple's split – although Dr Krein was still sufficiently close to Ashley last year that he was with her in the Oval Office as President Biden dramatically announced his decision that July to abandon his re-election bid. However, cuts forward to November, when the Bidens gathered for Thanksgiving in Nantucket, he was not in a group photo – and Ashley was not wearing her wedding ring. They have no children.
Ashley Blazer Biden, now 44, began dating Dr Krein, who is 58, in 2010 after they were introduced by her late brother Beau. He proposed to her on a cliff in Big Sur, California, in late 2011 after reportedly getting her father's permission. Biden, who was then vice president, told People magazine: 'This is the right guy. And he's getting a helluva woman.' A practicing Catholic, Ashley married the Jewish doctor in an interfaith ceremony at a Catholic church in Delaware in 2012. The couple then flew largely under the radar as they lived in Philadelphia where she was a social worker and he worked at a local hospital.
Although she had little involvement in her father's campaign she was, inevitably, wheeled out come election time last year. As the only child of former First Lady Jill Biden, and only living daughter of Joe (whose other daughter by first wife Neilia died aged 13 months in a car crash in 1972 along with her mother) Ashley was always going to be politically valuable – chiefly in providing the obligatory touching family anecdotes and tributes that, in the circumstances, were much better coming from her than from troubled Hunter. Her other half-brother, Beau, had died of brain cancer in 2015, leaving a widow, Hallie, who went on to have a relationship with Hunter and develop her own crack cocaine addiction.
In a speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Ashley really pulled out all the stops as she brought 'Dad' to tears after introducing him – astonishingly – as 'one of the most consequential leaders ever in history'. Ashley recalled how 'OG Girl dad' Biden had become 'very emotional' at her wedding reception in her parents' backyard. 'I thought that I would be a mess, but he was the one crying and I was the one who had to comfort him,' she said. So far so good; Ashley certainly looked like the wholesome antidote to her troubled half-brother. However, disaster would soon strike for her public image
Back before the 2020 election, Ashley's private diary had been stolen and sold for $40,000 to the conservative activist group Project Veritas. At first, the Biden family didn't explicitly deny the diary's authenticity but – as with the sordid leaked contents of Hunter's infamous laptop – allowed some media outlets to speculate that it may be fake and another cynical attempt to damage the Biden name. James O'Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, said they never published the diary's contents because Biden's lawyers refused to confirm it was genuine. Snopes, a fact-checking website, initially assessed the contents of the diary as 'unproven' and only changed it to 'true' four years later.
Although its contents were later published by another website, the diary got little media traction. In the event, it seems Ashley and her family got off very lightly as the diary's contents were at times deeply revealing. In the tome – whose entry dates ran from January to September of 2019 when Ashley was in her late 30s and in various drug addiction programs – she revealed she'd been in out-patient rehab in Florida and occasionally relapsing at the time. She also wrote near the beginning of the diary about her [sexual] addiction.
'I have always been boy crazy,' she wrote. 'Hyper-sexualized @ a young age... I remember somewhat being sexualized with [her first cousin] Caroline; I remember having [sexual relations] with friends @ a young age; showers w/ my dad (probably not appropriate).' Two months later, she turned to drugs, writing: 'I relapsed. [expletive] again. The difference this time around was that I told Elizabeth, Mom + Dad this morning. Mom + Dad worried but incredibly supportive. I am so lucky to have them on my side.' But four months after that, she revealed her continued drug abuse had left her on the brink of financial ruin and reduced her father in tears. 'My dad cried on the phone saying he has the debate in a week + 'now has to worry about you',' she wrote in an entry for July 2019.
'Maybe he knows what he is doing + it's worked but my feelings of guilt often are overwhelming.' The diary also detailed how she was having serious problems in her marriage. 'Here I am talking about another man when I am married! It all feels strange,' she wrote in February 2019. 'Started hanging out with a new guy… It's been refreshing to be able to kiss another man.' Just as her half-brother Hunter carelessly forgot to collect his telltale laptop from a computer repair shop, Ashley had left the diary in a small house near Palm Beach, Florida, where she'd been staying after coming out of rehab. It was later found by Aimee Harris, who stayed in the same property and sold it to Project Veritas.
Although news reports were claiming the diary was genuine as early as 2021, it was only last year that Ashley herself admitted it was real. In a statement to the court over the sentencing of Harris for the theft, Ashley described it as 'my personal private journal' containing her 'innermost' and 'stream-of-consciousness thoughts' which, she claimed, had been 'distorted'. Ashley added: 'I will forever have to deal with the fact that my personal journal can be viewed online.' Harris was sentenced to a month in prison and three months of home confinement. In fact, the diary's publication wasn't the first time that Ashley's problems with drug and alcohol abuse had been revealed.
In 2009, the New York Post reported that she'd been arrested for possession of marijuana in 1999, when she was a student at Tulane University in New Orleans where she was regarded as a 'party girl'. She was never prosecuted. In 2002, she was arrested for allegedly obstructing police officers trying to break up a bar fight in Chicago. The charges were dropped. The Post said it had also been approached by someone claiming to be a friend of Ashley offering to sell the newspaper a hidden-camera video showing her snorting cocaine. The Post said it declined to buy the footage.
President Biden has reportedly confessed to friends about feeling guilty over Hunter and Ashley's addiction plights and frets continually about them relapsing. They in turn, were determined not to be the reason he didn't run again for president and urged him to stand last year. Of course, they no longer have to worry about that. But the Bidens must now contend with the dissolution of a marriage – Ashley's – that once provided one of the few bright sparks in a crushingly dark family history.