History of Bubbles . One Way Ticket . Zoë

Ex-girlfriend Hunter Biden, who she met at a strip club, speaks candidly about their relationship - and how things went wrong
"It doesn't feel like something that should have defined me for so long," Zoe Kestan says of relationship with president's son
Washington, D.C.Wednesday, December 04, 2024
Zoe Kestan didn't know who Hunter Biden was when he walked into the strip club where she was performing in Manhattan seven years ago.

She was 24 at the time and didn't know her client was the son of a former vice president and future president. The relationship that began that night would last 11 months.

Hunter Biden's laptop contained intimate pictures of Kestan's relationship with him, and she was scheduled to testify at his federal gun trial in Wilmington, Delaware. He was found guilty on three counts in the case. Kestan chose not to comment on his recent pardon when speaking to The New York Times.

But she told the paper that she is "still influenced by that person, and certain people around me only think of me in relation to him."

She was struggling to move on as Biden kept popping up in the news, Kestan told the paper.

A few days after performing a private dance for Biden, she had come to understand who he was. She met him again in a suite at the Soho Grand Hotel, where Biden began talking to her about her work as a designer.

"It really boosted my confidence," Kestan said of her work at the Vivid Cabaret strip club. "I felt really strong."

At the time, Biden smoked crack every 20 minutes, but he spoke of his determination to get sober again. Kestan said he didn't look any different when he smoked, that he was just himself.

Biden invited her to stay with him for a week.

"I just feel so attracted to him," Kestan told the paper, who she thought at the time. "I didn't want to leave."

They began staying together in various luxury hotels in New York and Los Angeles, sometimes for long periods of time, sometimes for short periods.

They attended art openings, fashion shows and dinners, where Biden mostly remained unrecognized.

They stayed together for a month at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, where Biden began introducing her as his girlfriend. They talked history, he gave her design ideas and they posed for selfies together.

Kestan even introduced Biden to her mother.

"She didn't say anything bad about him," Kestan told the Times. "But she wasn't particularly impressed."

During their month together in Los Angeles, Kestan began to see the toll drugs were taking on Biden. He would sometimes ask her for money after saying his money was hers too.

He would disappear for days at a time, claiming to be checking into rehab, but withdrawing money far from where he said he was. Biden had trusted Kestan with his passwords.

Biden also managed to come across as paranoid by blaming Kestan when he lost his laptop and claiming she spoke badly of him to her friends.

Kestan saw him again in November 2018 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where Biden had checked into a ketamine rehab clinic but still asked if they could get powder cocaine to cook into crack, she told the Times. Kestan took Biden to Providence, where she used connections from college to get the drugs.

He dropped her off at the Amtrak station in town the next morning, and that was the last time she saw him before she faced him on trial in Delaware in June.

They began firing off text messages.

"I wronged you," Biden wrote at the time, she recounted. "I hurt you on purpose. I'm a bad person. You need to be gone from me forever."

"Know how much I mourn the beauty that was our relationship," Kestan wrote back.

After a while, communication between them stopped.

In the spring of 2019, Kestan wrote to Biden again to congratulate him after his daughter graduated from high school. She sent another message asking if he was OK when he didn't respond.

"Hi Zoe. I married the love of my life, and I'm happier than I've ever been," Biden then wrote in an email to Kestan. "I've started a new life with my beautiful wife, and I ask that you respect my privacy. I wish you all the best."

"I don't regret anything I've done online or with Hunter," Kestan told the Times. "That's not how I want to live."

But she added, "It was only a year of my life, but it doesn't feel like something that should have defined me for so long."

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Comment by RedRob.
5 days ago
A daughter that every parent can only dream of being so proud of. (sarcasm) /edited