Lawyers Offer Dueling Narratives of Addiction and Recovery in Opening Statements

WILMINGTON — In a cadence that at times evoked a fish gasping for air, Special Counsel Derek Hines on Tuesday worked to flesh out the government’s narrative that Hunter Biden was a high-functioning drug addict who lied to friends and family and ended up breaking the law by checking a box on a government background check form that he wasn’t a drug user during his 2018 gun purchase.

Hines relied heavily on Hunter’s own words to characterize his habits and addictions before and after the alleged crime, later bringing in the prosecution’s first witness, an FBI special agent, who explained how the government authenticated key evidence, including excerpted files. from a laptop Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in Wilmington.

Several jurors took notes as the prosecution played excerpts from Hunter Biden’s 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things, including a retelling of his first attempt to buy crack from a homeless woman in Franklin Park in Washington, D.C.

However, this narrative has suffered repeated tensions.

Tensions also rose earlier in the day outside of the proceedings when Hunter’s wife, Melissa Cohen-Biden, approached Trump’s former White House adviser, Garett Ziegler, in the hallway outside the courtroom. Gesturing toward him, Cohen-Biden pointed his finger and said, “You have no right to be here, you Nazi idiot.”

Ziegler released data from a laptop belonging to Hunter that documented, in vivid detail, scenes from the agonies of his addiction – some of which have now materialized as evidence against him.

Here’s what you missed on day 2 of the test:

Duel narratives

Arguing that the prosecution’s tight timeline focused on all but the critical period — just over a week — during which Biden possessed the gun, and whether he knowingly lied when he testified that he did not use drugs, his defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, repeated key events from Hines’s account by offering a counter-narrative that delicately unpicked the government’s stitching and turned it into the story of a recovering man who was goaded into hastily purchasing a firearm at the center of the historic case against him.

Lowell spoke directly to the jurors as he accompanied them in these moments: Bored while waiting for a new cell phone to be processed, Hunter Biden walked into a store with “an interesting name,” where a salesman who called himself a “whale hunter” approached, and finally “led” the president’s son to buy a Colt Cobra revolver; as well as ammunition, a rapid loader (to alleviate the “disadvantage” of having to load each cartridge individually) and even a compressed air gun.

Lowell indicated that Hunter was rushed to finalize the sale, which required filling out the background form, with more than a dozen check boxes, at the heart of the case.

The seller’s associate “also wanted to complete the sale as quickly as possible,” Lowell explained.

Days later, upon learning that his brother’s widow had recovered the firearm from his truck, throwing it in a trash can “in front of the Janssen warehouse,” Biden immediately sought to recover it.

Lowell argued that Hunter’s decision to store the truck at his home overnight, rather than at the Best Western where he was staying, showed foresight as he prepared drive to Washington the next day to see his daughter, Maisy Biden.

“This is not a place where you would consider leaving a nice truck to be broken into, especially if you knew there was a gun locked in its steel box,” Lowell said. Lowell later said Hunter only opened the safe once after purchasing the gun.

According to the government, Biden was still an addict when the gun was purchased and thrown in a trash can, and Hines showed the jury how Hunter texted an incredulous Hallie: “The fucking FBI… It’s hard to believe someone would be like that.” . stupid…who in their right mind would trust you to help me get sober?

By Lowell’s account, when Hunter texted Hallie the day after purchasing the gun, he was “off MD Avenue…waiting for a drug dealer named Mookie,” and a day later, he was “sleeping in a car smoking crack at 4th Street and Rodney,” was because the relationship was strained and, Lowell implied, not that he was necessarily doing those things.

Lowell also explained that it was not uncommon for Hunter to withdraw large sums of money. And he worked to distance Biden from prosecutors’ discovery of cocaine in the bag in which the gun was discovered.

“It was Hallie,” with whom Hunter was in the midst of an “intense” relationship, “and not Hunter” who placed the gun, bullets and magazine in a bag in her home that, when prosecutors tested it years later, showed cocaine residue, he said.

Tensions over evidence

Noreika dealt the defense blow after blow in quick succession, overruling Lowell to admit into evidence several pieces of evidence that appeared to question the defense’s account of events, including a video taken from Biden’s phone

The first, a text message from Hallie to Biden, explained how she discovered the gun.

“It was opened, unlocked and with the windows down, and the children searched his car,” Hines read from the court record.

Noreika also admitted to an edited version of a video showing Biden “undressed,” which the defense argued should be withheld because it was dated after the alleged crime.

“No need for comment,” she said. “Okay, it’s admitted.”

Moments later, the judge admitted a message from December 2018 in which Biden proclaimed Hallie as “a selfish and hypocritical person.” [*C-word*] that actually works against me getting sober,” before adding, “I’ll get sober when I want to get sober.”

Lowell later pressed the prosecution’s first witness, FBI special agent Erika Jensen, about whether Biden had the same angry exchanges with drug dealers that Hines had shown the jury during Biden’s binges. The witness could not say.

The jury-disputed exchange “was four or five months” before Biden purchased the gun, Jansen said.

“On the 13th, before changing to a different date, that doesn’t say anything about drugs on that day, does it?” Lowell said, referring to messages between Biden and Hallie the day after the gun purchase. “I’m just looking at the 13th as an example.”

Special Prosecutor David Weiss watched the proceedings from the corner of the room, his eyes fixed on Lowell.

During cross-examination, the defense attorney also probed prosecutors’ reliance on Biden’s account in his memoir of a “relapse” to suggest he was using drugs again. Jansen couldn’t say for sure whether Biden was talking about a drug or alcohol relapse and said so. She agreed that Biden made a lot of purchases at liquor stores during October 2018.

Still, Biden appeared upbeat, greeting one reporter in court with a fist bump and then joking with another that she was a “troublemaker.”

Biden and his wife hugged and kissed each time they passed each other during breaks in the proceedings.

Jurors give testimony about addiction

Lowell reminded jurors that they “promised to be fair and impartial, to carefully consider all evidence, and to follow the law and rules.”

You should listen to every piece of evidence before making a decision, “and not just start with the idea that if prosecutors brought these charges, they might be right,” he said.

He said they would have to check “not guilty” on the verdict form today because of the presumption of innocence.

One juror was surprised when Hines gave the prosecution’s opening statements. That expression disappeared after more than an hour of repeating an excerpt from Biden’s memoirs that he read aloud and detailing his drinking. Other jurors held their faces in their hands. A woman closed her eyes and another man looked at the ceiling.

Elsewhere in the room, defense allies, closer to President Joe Biden’s age than his son’s, looked straight ahead or at the floor.

Biden’s Abandoned Laptop

Cohen-Biden began shaking her head as soon as Hines lifted the laptop, and at times exchanged whispers with Kevin Morris — an entertainment lawyer who is helping pay Hunter Biden’s legal fees and who was sitting next to her. She continued to shake her head as Jensen explained how the FBI extracted data from the laptop and what the data showed.

Biden showed little emotion as images and text messages taken in the midst of his addiction appeared before him.