WILMINGTON, Del.– Photos of President Joe Biden’s son wearing drug paraphernalia and bare-chested in a hot tub. Text messages between Hunter Biden and drug dealers. Testimony from Hunter’s exes about relationships destroyed by his drug use.
Hunter Biden’s trial on gun charges brought by his father’s Justice Department has exposed tawdry and embarrassing details about the president’s son in full, as first lady Jill Biden watches from the courtroom in Wilmington, Delaware.
Prosecutors Friday rest their case he accused Hunter Biden of lying when he swore on a federal gun purchase form in October 2018 that he was not a drug user. The defense could call at least one more witness when the trial resumes Monday before lawyers make their closing arguments.
Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty and has accused the Justice Department of bowing to political pressure from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans to bring the case. separate tax levies after a The deal with prosecutors fell apart last year. Hunter Biden says he has been sober since 2019.
Here are some key insights from the first week of the trial:
Jill Biden has attended the proceedings at the federal courthouse almost every day since the trial started on June 3. She missed Thursday’s testimony because she was in France to attend the trial. D-Day anniversary events with the president. She flew back on Friday to appear in court.
She sat quietly in the front row of the courtroom behind Hunter Biden and listened attentively without showing emotions like prosecutors painted him as deceitful and driven by addiction. During breaks in testimony, Jill Biden occasionally spoke briefly to Hunter, leaning over a courtroom railing to hug and kiss him on the cheek.
Other family members who showed up throughout the week to show support included Hunter Biden’s sister Ashley, the president’s sister Valerie Biden and Jill Biden’s sister Bonny Jacobs.
Hunter Biden has not taken the witness stand and it is not clear whether he will. Jurors have already heard his own words about the depths of his drug and alcohol addiction after him brother, Beau, died in 2015.
A central part of the prosecution’s case is Hunter Biden’s memoir “Beautiful things,” in which the president’s son opened up about his crack cocaine addiction, his stint in rehab and his struggle to get sober.
Jurors heard Hunter Biden explain in detail how he looked for crack in various places and learned how to smoke it. In a lengthy clip played in court, he described driving to a treatment center and seeing a huge barn owl, which may have been a hallucination, fly over his windshield.
In another clip played in court, Hunter Biden described that at one point he accidentally left his wallet in a rental car, which contained his late brother’s attorney general badge and a Secret Service business card. A rental car employee found it along with paraphernalia and white powder residue on the armrest. A manager called the police, who called the Secret Service, who called Joe Biden, Hunter wrote.
No charges have been filed for this. In his book, Hunter Biden wrote: “Despite right-wing media speculation to the contrary, police were not strong-armed into dropping the case.”
Hunter Biden ex-wife and two other former romantic partnersincluding his brother’s widow, took the witness stand for prosecutors to explain in detail their knowledge of his drug use.
His ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, said she learned her husband was using drugs when she found a pipe used to smoke crack cocaine in an ashtray on their porch in July 2015, a day after their anniversary.
Beau’s widow, Hallie, described beginning to use drugs herself during her brief and troubled romantic relationship with Hunter Biden, telling jurors, “I regret that period of my life.” Hallie Biden testified about finding the remains of crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia in his car, along with the gun at the center of the case.
“I panicked and wanted to get rid of them,” she said of the gun and ammunition she found.
“Why did you panic?” the prosecutor asked.
“Because I didn’t want him to hurt himself, and I didn’t want my kids to find out and hurt themselves,” Hallie Biden responded. She put the gun in a bag and threw it in a trash can at a nearby convenience store. A man collecting recyclables found it and eventually handed it over to police.
A third woman, Zoe Kestan, told jurors she met Hunter in December 2017 at a New York strip club where she worked. She said Hunter Biden smoked crack maybe every 20 minutes when she stayed with him at a hotel.
Kestan acknowledged that she had no contact with him in October 2018, when he purchased the gun. But she told jurors that Hunter Biden used drugs the following month. Prosecutors also showed jurors several deeply personal photos from her phone showing Hunter Biden sleeping, in a hot tub and, in some cases, unclothed or censored with a black box.
The defense argued in a court filing Friday that prosecutors failed to present evidence that Hunter Biden actually used drugs during the 11 days he owned the gun.
“It was only after the gun was discarded and the resulting stress … that the government was able to find the same type of evidence of his use (e.g., photographs, use of drug jargon) that caused him to relapse with drugs,” attorney Abbe Lowell wrote.
Throughout the trial, the defense attempted to question the memories of the prosecution’s witnesses by pressuring them about their recollection of events.
Lowell has raised other possible reasons for large withdrawals to counter the implication that his client used the money for drugs. Lowell asked investigators whether Hunter Biden could have obtained money to pay for his children’s college tuition, housing or alimony, noting that authorities had not done a forensic financial investigation to track down the money.
The defense called Hunter Biden’s daughter, Naomi Biden, to the witness stand on Friday, who testified about how she visited her father while he was in rehab in August 2018, months before the gun purchase, and told him she was proud of him used to be. The testimony about a lunch with her boyfriend, her father and his sober living roommate seemed intended to show that Hunter Biden had turned around his addiction during that period.
But prosecutors quickly pressed Naomi Biden about details she saw about his addiction and her father’s behavior when she saw him briefly in October after his gun purchase. Prosecutors read deeply personal texts between the father and daughter, including a plea she made to see him and his response that he was dishonest, causing both of them to become emotional as she left the witness stand.
The defense had previously said they planned to call as a witness Joe Biden’s brother James. On Friday, Hunter’s lawyer did not rule out calling one more witness, but it was unclear who that might be. Testimony from other family members can open the door for very personal messages to be presented to the jury.
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Richer reported from Washington.