WILMINGTON, Del. Photos of President Joe Biden’s son with drug paraphernalia and bare chest in a bubble bath. Text messages between Biden Hunter and drug traffickers. Testimony from Hunter’s exes about relationships destroyed by drug use.
Hunter Biden trial on gun charges brought by his father’s Department of Justice aired tawdry and embarrassing details about the president’s son while first lady Jill Biden watches from the courtroom in Wilmington, Delaware.
Prosecutors on Friday closed the case accusing Hunter Biden of lying when he swore he was not a drug user on a federal application to buy a gun in October 2018. The defense could call at least one more witness when the trial resumes on Monday, before lawyers present their final arguments.
Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty and accused the Justice Department of bowing to political pressure from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans to open the case and separate tax charges after a deal with prosecutors fell through last year. Hunter Biden said he has been sober since 2019.
Here are some key takeaways from the first week of testing:
Jill Biden has watched the proceedings in federal court almost every day since the trial began on June 3. She missed Thursday’s testimony because she was in France participating D-Day anniversary events with the president. She flew back to appear in court on Friday.
She sat silently in the front row of the courtroom, behind Hunter Biden, and listened intently, showing no emotion, as prosecutors he painted as deceitful and driven by vice. During breaks in testimony, Jill Biden occasionally spoke briefly with Hunter, leaning over a courtroom railing to hug him 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 given a statement and it is unclear whether he will. Jurors have already heard his own words about the depth of his drug and alcohol addiction following his brother, Beau, died in 2015.
A centerpiece of the prosecution’s case is Hunter Biden’s memoir “Beautiful things,” in which the president’s son talks about his crack addiction, stints in rehab and struggle to stay sober.
Jurors heard in detail the details of Hunter Biden looking for crack in different places and learning how to smoke it. In a long excerpt played in court, he described how he drove to a treatment center and saw a huge owl, which may have been a hallucination, flying over his windshield.
In another excerpt presented in court, Hunter Biden described at one point accidentally leaving his wallet, which contained his late brother’s Delaware attorney general badge and a Secret Service business card, in a rental car. An employee at the car rental company discovered this, 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 were filed in connection with this. In his book, Hunter Biden wrote: “Despite speculation to the contrary in right-wing media outlets, the police were not strong-armed into abandoning the case.”
Biden Hunter ex-wife and two other former romantic partnersincluding his brother’s widow, appeared on the witness stand so prosecutors could 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 the porch in July 2015, the day after his birthday.
Beau’s widow, Hallie, described beginning drug use during her short, troubled romantic relationship with Hunter Biden, telling jurors, “I regret that period of my life.” Hallie Biden testified about the discovery of crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia in her 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?” asked the prosecutor.
“Because I didn’t want him to get hurt and I didn’t want my kids to find out about this and get hurt,” Hallie Biden responded. She put the gun in a bag and threw it in the trash can of a nearby supermarket. A man collecting recyclable materials found it and ended up handing it over to the police.
A third woman, Zoe Kestan, told jurors about meeting 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 he had no contact with him in October 2018, the period in which he purchased the weapon. But she told jurors that Hunter Biden was using drugs the following month. Prosecutors also showed jurors several highly personal phone photos of her, Hunter Biden sleeping, in a bubble bath and, in some, unclothed or censored with a black box.
The defense argued in a court filing Friday that prosecutors did not present evidence that Hunter Biden was actually using drugs in the 11 days he owned the gun.
“It was only after the gun was thrown away and the stress that followed…that the government was able to find the same type of evidence of its use (e.g., photos, use of drug jargon) that it had a drug relapse,” defense attorney Abbe Lowell wrote.
Throughout the trial, the defense tried to doubt the memory of the prosecution witnesses, pressuring them about their recollection of the events.
Lowell raised other possible reasons for large cash withdrawals to counter the implication that his client was using the money to buy drugs. Lowell asked investigators whether Hunter Biden could be receiving money to pay for his children’s tuition, housing or child support, pointing out that authorities had not performed a forensic financial examination to trace the money.
The defense on Friday called Hunter Biden’s daughter, Naomi Biden, to the witness stand, who testified about how she visited her father while he was in rehab in August 2018, months before the gun purchase, and said that she was proud of him. The statement detailing a lunch with her boyfriend, her father and her sober living partner appeared to be intended to show that Hunter Biden had overcome his addiction during that period.
But prosecutors quickly pressed Naomi Biden about the details she testified about his addiction and her father’s behavior when she saw him briefly in October after purchasing the gun. Prosecutors read highly personal texts between father and daughter, including a plea she made to see him and her response that she was being unfair, leaving them both emotional as she left the witness stand.
The defense had already said it planned to call him as a witness. Joe Biden’s brother, James. On Friday, Hunter’s lawyer did not rule out calling another witness, but it was unclear who that might be. Testimony from other family members can open the door for more personal messages to be presented to the jury.
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Richer reported from Washington.
