In the same week Hunter got the good news he won’t be going to jail or even trial for any of his now-admitted crimes, he also settled with the mother of his now 4-year-old child, Navy Joan, in a prolonged fight. Using $800-an-hour lawyers and a $6 million private jet borrowed from a friend, Biden has flown back and forth to Arkansas since 2019 to attempt to deny his own child anything a father should give.

After stalling for almost a year, with all the class of a Maury Povich guest, a judge ordered Hunter to take a paternity test, which confirmed the child is his. Her paternity is not a rumor; it is an established fact. We have followed the science, so to speak. Since that 2020 revelation, Hunter has been forced to pay child support to the child.

But it was too much child support, he protests. You see, Biden says he has suffered financially from the fact that the general public got wise to his grift in which he coincidentally took on lobbying contracts with interests in his then-Senator dad’s committees and high-paying jobs with Delaware’s credit-industry titans, also coincidentally with interests in Sen. Biden-pushed legislation.

The son of the President of the United States, a man who has made countless shady, back-room deals, pleading poverty? Give me a break. But that’s not the bad part.

After his encounter with her Roberts and the subsequent birth of his daughter, Hunter got back on the road to recovery. During this time, he met a South African filmmaker, Melissa Cohen, in L.A., whom he married six days later. Their relationship has been the subject of soft-focus network profiles and produced another child, toddler Beau, born in 2020 and named for Hunter’s late brother. (That ABC story could use a correction on the paternity of Navy, which was disputed at the time of this friendly write-up.)

Beau is mentioned along with every other Biden grandchild in the dedication of his grandmother, Jill Biden’s children’s book, as he should be. He has a stocking on the White House Christmas mantle. But his half-sister gets neither. Melissa said her husband Hunter “very much cares about his country and his family and his friends and his children,” but the children part comes with an asterisk the size of a 4-year-old.

The Bidens never mention Navy Joan in public announcements, in any sort of talk about family. Joe and Jill Biden do not count her among their grandchildren. Navy has been denied the use of the Biden name, although in this case, the court may have been doing her a favor.

My RedState colleague Bonchie is likewise confused by the Bidens’ behavior. As Bonchie points out:

For years, Joe Biden has stated he only has six grandchildren. Some of that has been written off his senility flaring up. I suppose the excuse is that if he never sees his granddaughter, why should be expected to remember she exists?

But a new report is shedding light on just how deep the plot goes. Per two sources, reported on in The New York Times of all places, White House aides are being told specifically that the Bidens only have six grandchildren.

I can’t for the life of me understand this behavior.

Hunter Biden is the key figure here, of course; the only reason he isn’t in an alley sleeping in a cardboard box between crack-pipe hits is because of his father and the ability that brings him to be the point man for old Joe’s influence-peddling. And the fact that he has to be dragged into court, fighting bitterly at every turn to deny his own daughter, is just awful. But Joe and Jill Biden, not only ignoring their granddaughter but outright denying she exists? What kind of people do that?

I don’t give an ounce of rat droppings that Navy Joan is Hunter’s illegitimate child with a stripper. The whole “fruit of the poison tree” thing doesn’t apply to children. However unsavory that initial liaison may have been, the child that arose from it is innocent and deserves the love and care of her family — all of her family.

The child needs more than love, though. When people bring a child into the world, no matter how that happens, that child is the result of a decision those two people made, and they are responsible for that decision — for that child — no matter what, for the rest of their lives. In good time, they share responsibility to some degree for the next generation as well. As my father was fond of pointing out, you never stop being a parent. And the entire Biden family, in the case of Navy Joan, have completely abdicated that responsibility. They have denied her their love, their caring, and, to the greatest extent they could get away with, their support. That’s unspeakably horrible.

I’m Dad to four daughters. I’m Grandpa to six grandchildren. There isn’t a one of them I wouldn’t give my life for, without hesitation. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for them. I can’t imagine just dismissing any of them from my life. But that’s precisely what Hunter Biden has done with his daughter, an innocent child who has given him no reason for such action. That’s precisely what Joe and Jill have done with their granddaughter, who deserves love, care, and affection, not denial.

If we can judge a person, or a family, by how they treat their children — and I think we can — the only conclusion one can draw from this saga is that the Bidens are horrible people.