Chapter 27 #2
In the stairwell, I leaned against the gritty concrete wall and took deep breaths.
On the other side of the door was a cacophony of reporters, lawyers, and onlookers.
After a minute in the quiet with my eyes closed, I reluctantly opened the door and returned to the loud hallway, then to the ice-cold courtroom.
Once the trial was over for the day, I went to the airport, where I took the thirty-minute flight back to DC for the Congressional picnic.
At the White House, I changed into a white floral dress.
After being briefed in the Diplomatic Reception Room, I stepped out onto the South Portico to give my remarks.
Standing there, I looked out at the South Lawn at about a thousand guests, including more than two hundred members of Congress, and smiled.
I gave a short speech introducing Joe, who then took to the lectern.
We worked the rope line, and then I flew back to Delaware, arriving home after nine p.m.
June 5
This day in court, the prosecution kept the narrative going about Hunter’s prolific drug use.
His former wife, Kathleen, mother of three of my granddaughters, testified about having found crack pipes in 2015.
She spoke plainly about having encouraged him to go to rehab.
A woman I’d never seen before, and who was identified as a girlfriend of Hunter’s from 2018, testified that she took his money and credit cards, stayed with him at various hotels, and got him drugs.
They granted her immunity for testifying.
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 were filming a nature documentary.
Around four that afternoon, I headed to the airport to fly to Paris to meet Joe for official business.
On the flight across the ocean, I picked at my chicken marsala and felt sorry that I’d be missing Beau’s widow, Hallie, testifying the next day.
Hallie’s mother had recently died, and she wouldn’t have her own mother there to lean on.
At least Hallie would have her new husband, John, by her side.
Just days before the trial, Hallie got married in Ohio.
I couldn’t bring myself to attend, but I went over to say goodbye before they left for the wedding weekend.
She and John were excited to start their new life together, and he seemed to be a good match for her.
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. I couldn’t bear to be reminded in such a powerful way that Beau really was gone forever.
In a way, the dynamic was déjà vu. When I married Joe in 1977, Neilia had been deceased for five years.
I wondered then about the impact of Joe’s remarriage on Neilia’s parents, the Hunters, but I could never have known their pain.
They were kind and gracious toward me when I saw them a few times a year when I picked up the boys after their visits.
Since Hallie’s remarriage, my grandchildren have acquired a new set of grandparents with whom to share holidays and birthdays and special trips.
John’s family has embraced my grandchildren with an abundance of love.
June 6
A year earlier, by coincidence, I’d been in France when I found out that Hunter’s plea deal had fallen apart.
In July 2023, Ashley and I were touring Mont Saint-Michel to celebrate the US rejoining UNESCO after the former president had pulled us out.
As I’d understood it, lying on a gun-purchase form was the kind of charge that was nearly always pleaded down.
But it seemed that someone wanted to make an example of Hunter, and Joe was not about to step in to use his influence to protect him.
On that day in 2023, with the First Lady of France, Brigitte Macron, and the press surrounding me, and one of the wonders of the world before my eyes, I couldn’t let on how crushed I was.
In the months that followed, somehow I didn’t believe that an offense of so little consequence would really go to trial. But it did.
Now, a year later, mid-trial, I arrived in Paris at six in the morning, facing a full day of state business.
I showered at an airport lounge, and as I was doing my hair and makeup, someone brought in a tray of the flakiest almond croissants I’d ever tasted.
I loved French pastries, and yet I wouldn’t sample much on that trip.
To make it back for the next day of the trial, I wouldn’t sleep a single night in France. The top of my schedule that day read:
Paris, France → Carpiquet, France → Colleville-sur-Mer, France → Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, France → Carpiquet, France → Orly, France → Wilmington, DE
By ten a.m., Joe and I were at the Normandy American Cemetery landing zone to celebrate the World War II D-Day American veterans on the eightieth anniversary of the invasion.
Steven Spielberg, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, General Mark Milley, presidential biographer Jon Meacham, and Tom Hanks were there, too, as were several dozen members of Congress and their guests.
The veterans’ average age was 101, but they were in good spirits, and so many warmly told Joe they supported him.
Joe gave an excellent speech. Straight from there, we put on mics and went to do an interview with David Muir of ABC News.
I think every single American feels moved by the site of Normandy Beach and the thought of how much those service members endured. Being there made me think of my father, who’d fought in World War II, and of Beau, who’d served many years later in Iraq.
After our time with the military heroes, we met with Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron.
We greeted one another as old friends against the backdrop of Omaha Beach.
Then we attended the D-Day Anniversary Commemoration Ceremony along with more than twelve thousand guests.
This international ceremony was longer than expected, about an hour and a half, but I loved the flyovers—all seven of them.
As the day wound down, we bid farewell to the Macrons, and I headed back to the airport to return to Delaware.
June 7
Back in Wilmington, watching the gun-store employee testify, I found myself confused.
Why didn’t the judge allow certain things for evidence that pointed to inconsistencies in the store’s account of the form’s completion and the background check?
I sat there mystified but kept quiet, willing myself to appear as much like a robot as possible.
But as my granddaughter Naomi took the stand, I felt anxiety flood my body. As a lawyer, she was not unfamiliar with court proceedings. Still, as a daughter, she had a vested interest in not hurting her father’s case if she could help it.
The lawyers asked if Hunter was doing drugs the month he bought the revolver. She said she didn’t remember.
“Have you ever done drugs?” they asked her.
What kind of a question is that to ask a young pregnant woman whose father is on trial? I thought.
She described introducing Peter, her boyfriend (by the time of the trial, he was her husband), to her father in 2018, and how she was proud of her dad for having gotten sober. She said he was much the same on another visit to New York that year.
Then the prosecution surprised her with texts she and her father had exchanged on the New York trip.
His texts, sent in the middle of the night, seemed confusing.
She seemed rattled, and as she left the courtroom, she gave her father a kiss goodbye and then wept on the way out.
From where I sat, I could see her hands shaking.
In the anteroom afterward, Hunter cried recalling the way the prosecution badgered Naomi. I tried to comfort him.
“Yes, it’s so hard to see your children attacked,” I said. “I should know.”
Hunter’s lawyers said they’d take the weekend to decide if Hunter should testify, too. In the meantime, I had to return to my duties as First Lady. I took a 4:30 p.m. flight back to France.
June 8
For the second time that week, I landed in Paris at dawn. I was whisked to the InterContinental Paris Le Grand. The first part of the day’s arrival ceremony was at the Arc de Triomphe to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier before the Macrons and close to a thousand invited guests.
From there, I traveled with Brigitte in the Champs-élysées parade procession to the palace, where we did a series of meet-and-greets in the courtyard and then a gift exchange in the Salon des Portraits.
Brigitte and I got to have lunch alone. We discussed how tough politics is on our children and grandchildren.
She mentioned that conservative US commentator Candace Owens made false claims that Brigitte was born male and transitioned.
Brigitte was right—anyone can say anything about you, and you have little recourse unless you sue.
(The Macrons did sue in July 2025—and won, offering medical records and photos of Brigitte pregnant, to prove that Owens’s claims were ridiculous.) Then there was a meeting with Bernard Arnault and Suzanne Pagé, with whom we saw the Matisse and Ellsworth Kelly exhibits at the Louis Vuitton Foundation.
I had about an hour to change into my gown—a blue velvet Schiaparelli that I was relieved to find fit in spite of the quick turnaround for alterations—before the dinner.
At the cocktail reception, I greeted dozens of French and American celebrities.
The Macrons had done an amazing job with the lavish state dinner for 230 guests.
I crawled into bed back at the InterContinental around eleven at night.
June 9