When Biden declared for president in 2019, his family was plagued by addiction, grief and soap opera levels of drama, the legal cases involving his son Hunter and daughter Ashley have shown.
His family's struggles - along with the still raw personal grief over his son Beau's death in 2015 - can manifest with tears and an "impenetrable sadness," as one person close to Biden called it.
It's affected the president: Aides know to tiptoe around him when there's bad family news, and he's often angry or distracted about the legal and political attacks on them, according to five people familiar with the dynamic.
Hunter was still in a spiral of addiction to crack and alcohol when he left D.C. for California in the 24 hours surrounding his father entering the presidential race on April 25, 2019.
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