Joe Biden ‘had an affair with my wife’
White House hopefuls says they met on blind date – but her ex claims pair had illicit relationship in ’70s
JILL Biden’s endorsement of her husband Joe was marred last night by her ex-husband’s claims that the aspiring White House couple had an extramarital affair.
A day after Michelle Obama delivered an unprecedented attack on Donald Trump, Ms Biden’s bid to follow in her footsteps as first lady was undermined by her ex, Bill Stevenson.
Mr Stevenson, who was married to Ms Biden from 1970 to 1975, accused the couple of lying about how they got together.
Contrary to their claims that they met on a blind date after her first marriage collapsed, Mr Stevenson insists they actually started their relationship while she was still married to him.
‘I don’t want to hurt anyone,’ said Mr Stevenson, 72, who revealed he was writing a book that includes the lurid claim. ‘But facts are facts and what happened happened.’
He told the Mail: ‘Everybody who meets Jill... falls in love with her immediately.
‘It’s hard not to. That’s why I don’t want to hurt her – but I also want the facts out.’
Mr Stevenson said he and his wife worked on Mr Biden’s first campaign for a Senate seat in 1972 and that he regarded the politician as a friend.
But in August 1974 – nearly two years after Mr Biden’s first wife, Neilia, died in a car crash – he began to suspect Mr Biden, then 31, was having an affair with Jill, then 23.
Mr Stevenson, who owned
The Stone Balloon music venue in Newark, Delaware, became suspicious when he went to pay Bruce Springsteen following a performance there.
When he asked Jill if she wanted to meet the star, she said she had to look after Mr Biden’s children instead. He said: ‘It was kind of a big deal to go meet Springsteen. I had no idea she and Joe were that kind of friendly.
‘Then one of her best friends told me she thought Joe and Jill were getting a little too close.’ Finally he heard that Mr Biden had crashed Jill’s car three months earlier with her in the passenger seat. Convinced they were having an affair, he threw her out of their home. Mr Stevenson, who later remarried, added: ‘I don’t want to harm Jill’s chances of becoming first lady – she would make an excellent first lady. But this is my story. ‘It’s not a bitter book. I’m not bitter because, if it wasn’t for my divorce, I would never have met my wife Linda, and she’s the greatest thing in my life. But it does have facts in it that aren’t pleasant to Jill and Joe.’ The Bidens, who wed in 1977, have yet to comment on the claims. Ms Biden, one of her husband’s closest political advisers, was scheduled to appear last night as the main speaker on the second night of the Democrats’ ‘virtual’ convention in support of her husband’s campaign as the party’s presidential candidate for the US election in November.
Michelle Obama has criticised Donald Trump as being ‘clearly in over his head’ and ‘the wrong president for our country’. In a video, she told Mr Biden’s supporters: ‘If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can... and they will if we don’t make a change in this election.’
Mr Trump tweeted: ‘Somebody please explain to Michelle Obama that Donald J. Trump would not be here, in the beautiful White House, if it weren’t for the job done by your husband, Barack Obama.’