Before the jury began deliberating Monday on whether to find Hunter Biden guilty of illegally purchasing a gun while addicted to crack cocaine, federal prosecutors called out the elephant in the courtroom.
Seated in the front row were first lady Jill Biden, President Joe Biden's sister and brother, Hunter's wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and several other family members and associates.
“The people sitting in the gallery are not evidence,” said Leo J. Wise, senior assistant. Special lawyer. Jurors may have recognized the names in bold from the news and may have seen them react to evidence or testimony, Wise said. “Respectfully, none of that matters.”
“No one is above the law and this case supports that simple proposition,” Wise said.
So began closing arguments in Hunter Biden's criminal trial here in the Biden family's homeland of Delaware, capping five extraordinary days of testimony about the depths of the president's son's drug addiction as prosecutors seek to convict him of three crimes. serious: lying on a federal court background check form about his crack addiction to purchase a Colt revolver, giving a false statement to a federal gun dealer, and possessing a gun while using illicit drugs.
When defense attorney Abbe Lowell took the stand in the fourth-floor courtroom for his 90-minute closing argument, he lashed out at prosecutors for singling out Hunter Biden's mother, wife and sister.
“It's time to end this case,” Lowell said, urging jurors to focus on the holes in the evidence: that no witnesses saw Hunter using drugs during and around the 11-day period in which he had the gun, that his memoirs were published years later. was not a diary indicative of his mental state, and that text messages from months or years before or after he purchased the gun do little to elucidate how he “knowingly” filled out his background check form.
“We have had Hunter's life in our hands,” Lowell told the panel. “But now I have to give it to you.”
Jurors deliberated for about an hour before leaving and are scheduled to continue Tuesday morning. If he is convicted of all three charges, Hunter faces years in prison and steep fines, although first-time offenders typically spend little or no time in custody.
In his hour-long summary of the case, Wise, a longtime federal prosecutor, analyzed the evidence: that Hunter Biden had used crack cocaine for years and that he walked into a gun store in Wilmington, Delaware, on Oct. 12 2018. and bought a Colt revolver.
When a federal background check form asked if he was an illegal drug user, Biden checked “No.” The gun remained in his possession until October 23, 2018, when his brother's widow, Hallie Biden, said she found the gun in Hunter's truck, threw it in a leather bag and disposed of it in a dumpster. outside a high-end grocery store. store.
Once Hunter found out, he urged Hallie to call the police. The gun was recovered days later at the home of an elderly man who collects plastic bottles and other recyclable materials.
In an effort to prove the charges, prosecutors embarked on a detailed exhumation of Hunter Biden's drug use, drawing on his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things”; the text messages from him; bank records, including more than $150,000 in cash withdrawals in the months surrounding the gun sales; and testimony from his ex-wife, as well as from a former stripper turned girlfriend and Hallie Biden, who dated Hunter after her husband's death.
“To be clear, the evidence was personal, ugly and overwhelming,” Wise told the jury. “It was also absolutely necessary.”
Prosecutors noted that Zoe Kestan, the former stripper, had testified to witnessing Hunter use crack cocaine in September 2018, shortly before the gun purchase, including at the Freehand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles and at a rental home in Malibu.
“I had been in rehab over and over again,” Wise said. “I knew he had an addiction when he bought the gun.”
Wise also pointed to the days after the gun sale, when in text messages Hunter told Hallie Biden, cryptically, that he was “shopping” and, later, that he was “sleeping in a car smoking crack at 4th and Rodney.” ”, an intersection in downtown Wilmington, and adds: “There is my truth.”
“Take the defendant's word for it: That's his truth,” Wise said.
Lowell, however, reminded jurors of what Hallie Biden said on the witness stand: that Hunter often lied to her about his whereabouts and that their relationship was often tempestuous.
The defense attorney also reviewed the day his client purchased the gun at StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply, where salesman Gordon Cleveland had earned the nickname “whaler” for his ability to identify wealthy customers and sell them expensive guns.
Hunter Biden had been at a nearby AT&T store when he walked into the gun store and ultimately purchased a gun, a knife, a BB gun, ammunition and a speed loader.
And Lowell returned to the paperwork — the federal background check form — at the center of the case. The lawyer reminded jurors that the question about drug use was posed in the present tense: “Are you” an illegal user or a drug addict?
“This doesn't ask what Hunter thinks of himself in 2024,” Lowell said. Cleveland, the only gun store employee who interacted with Hunter, testified that Hunter was not glassy-eyed or under the influence, Lowell said.
Near the end, Lowell reframed how Hallie Biden had taken the gun from Hunter Biden's car, emphasizing that she was the one who threw it in the supermarket trash can, while Hunter told her to immediately call the police.
Noting how Delaware State Police reported the case when officers arrived at the supermarket, Lowell said Hunter was “the victim all along.”
