WILMINGTON, Del. – Three new witnesses testified in Biden Hunterfirearm trial on Wednesday, recalling in vivid colors the defendant’s trial spiral into drug addictionfailed attempts to enter rehab and fateful purchase of a firearm in late 2018, a year in which his crack use spiraled out of control.
Joining Biden on day three were First Lady Jill Biden; his wife, Melissa Cohen-Biden; close ally Kevin Morris; and other longtime friends and family.
Hunter Biden watched intently as his ex-wife testified how he left the family home after she discovered his drug use, and an ex-girlfriend told how he smoked crack “every 20 minutes” and about the pain and disappointment that she felt it when he started smoking. disappear for nights on end. Biden’s missing gun was also shown to the jury.
David Weissthe Trump-appointed U.S. attorney and named special counsel investigating Biden by Attorney General Merrick Garland last year has set his sights on witnesses and prosecutors, occasionally turning his gaze to Abbe Lowell, Biden’s lead defense lawyer, and Biden’s ranks. supporters who filled the ranks behind him.
That night, Biden, wearing a light blue denim shirt, and his wife walked into a downtown Wilmington food hall. A handful of employees and customers cautiously approached him for photos and kind words. Secret Service agents circulated around the room as Biden reviewed the offers.
Quickly, more friends arrived, including Rob Buccini and Kevin Morris, who had been in court every day with Biden.
After spending the day in court closely watching the proceedings, Cohen-Biden lightened up, calling for her husband and talking to the team.
“There’s Naomi,” Biden’s wife said, apparently referring to Biden’s daughter with Buhle. Cohen-Biden, who was wearing sweatpants and a gray sweater, walked to a high table in the corner, where Biden joined two police officers and the rest of the group.
Others soon appeared.
“Abbe,” Buccini, a longtime friend of Biden, called out to Lowell as another friend approached Lowell’s legal team, greeting David Kolansky and saying he didn’t recognize the group, who were dressed in sweatshirts and other sportswear.
Most people either didn’t notice Biden or didn’t seem to care, although when they did, he displayed the laid-back charm that his ex-girlfriend said attracted her to him, even as Biden disappointed her by spending night after night chasing drugs.
The relaxed nature of Biden and his entourage was evident throughout the trial, walking in and out of the courtroom with reporters, with one ally even waving to a journalist from the middle of a court bench for a private conversation out of earshot while the process was underway on Tuesday. . Biden gave another reporter a friendly pat on the arm as he left during his afternoon break.
Later, the defendant appeared to make eye contact with an ex-girlfriend as she left the witness stand, and Cohen-Biden flashed a soft smile as the woman passed by.
It’s a dynamic that Judge Maryellen Norieka appears to fear could compromise the integrity of the jury.
During a sidebar, Norieka said that three of the jurors encountered Cohen-Biden in the bathroom during a break that morning, briefly crossing paths. Norieka instructed her team that the jury should not be left unattended, she said.
Here’s what you missed on day 3:
Witnesses
While Kathleen BuhleBiden’s ex-wife said she never witnessed him using drugs, she explained that in 2015, after finding what turned out to be a crack pipe in their Washington home, he confessed to her that he had started smoking the drug.
Buhle testified that she continued to find drug paraphernalia and even drug debris over the next few months, including in her then-husband’s car, which she began cleaning periodically to ensure her children didn’t drive with drugs when they borrowed it. She testified that he used drugs in 2018.
Buhle and Biden’s relationship began to crumble amid drug use, and she later alluded to a vindictive streak, such as when he refused to release her phone number from a family phone plan after their divorce — and began to use the number himself.
Then Zoe Kestan, Biden’s girlfriend, took the stand and went over in granular detail Biden’s near-incessant crack use from when the two met in late 2017 through September 2018, a period that took them from dinners at Lucien and Fannelli’s Cafe to a stay of more than a month at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, on Airbnb and other hotels.
Kestan said his efforts to give up drugs, including through an experimental treatment with toad venom, were unsuccessful, and she watched as he began looking for powder cocaine and turning it into crack when he lost confidence in his drug dealer. She explained a system that allowed Biden to give a dealer access to his bank account without handing over his debit card, and that Biden sometimes used with her to give her money.
Kestan spoke movingly about how his feelings for Biden grew over time. She hoped he would give up drugs and tried to help him.
But she also described long periods in which Biden seemed intent on delving deeper into addiction. The two were in a romantic relationship throughout much of 2018, spending time together in New York and Los Angeles, and later in Massachusetts.
In late 2018, Biden was smoking crack when Kestan came to stay with him while he underwent experimental treatment for depression in Newburyport.
Although Kestan said she did not use crack herself, she testified that she helped Biden find drugs in Providence, Rhode Island, where she graduated from art school just a few years earlier. Lowell later delved into the details of an immunity deal she had reached with prosecutors.
“Your immunity isn’t because you should worry about lying, right? It’s because you told prosecutors things you did that violated the laws for which they gave you immunity, right?” Lowell said.
During an argument that could not be heard by the jury, Special Counsel prosecutor Leo Wise said it was a question Kestan did not need to answer.
“Whether she needed it or he requested exposure, for what, I don’t know,” Wise said.
Like Buhle, Kestan was called to testify under subpoena.
The final witness was the gun dealer who sold Biden the gun at the center of the case and who testified that he saw Biden fill out the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives form in which he said he was not a drug user. The defense team questioned the integrity of the form and its custody after Biden purchased the gun, but Gordon Cleveland, the clerk, provided a detailed account of the transaction and said he witnessed Biden fill it out.
Hallie Biden, the widow of Beau Biden and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, will take the stand Thursday, one of six remaining witnesses the prosecution plans to call before resting its case later in the day, Assistant Special Prosecutor Derek Hines said Wednesday.
Sowing doubts
It is difficult to prove whether Biden was a drug user at the time of purchasing and possessing the gun, and the defense worked to sow enough reasonable doubt in the government’s narrative about the case to help sway the jury.
Lowell continued to investigate prosecutors’ allegations that Biden knowingly lied when he purchased the firearm in October 2018 and checked a box to say he was not a drug user, questioning his handling of the form before and after filling it out.
Although Kestan recalled weeks and months of Biden’s drug use in excruciating detail, she had little to offer the prosecution in the period that matters most: the period between Biden’s Oct. 12 purchase and when Hallie Biden found the gun on Oct. 23. of October.
Earlier in the day, jurors took notes as Erica Jensen, an FBI special agent, talked about the government’s handling of the gun form and ultimately claimed she had no direct knowledge of how it was filled out by Biden. Jensen, under questioning from Lowell, said months passed before the government obtained Biden’s laptop after he abandoned it at a repair shop in Wilmington.
If convicted, the president’s son could face up to 25 years in prison.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
