WILMINGTON, Del. Jurors will resume deliberations on Tuesday in the criminal case against Son of President Joe Biden over a gun Hunter Biden bought in 2018 when prosecutors say he was addicted to crack cocaine.
Jurors deliberate for less than an hour before leaving federal court in Delaware on Monday afternoon. They are evaluating whether Hunter Biden is guilty of three crimes in the case that pits the younger Biden against his father’s Justice Department, in the midst of the president’s re-election campaign.
Prosecutors spent the past week using testimony from his ex-wife and ex-girlfriendsphotos of Hunter Biden with drug paraphernalia and other tawdry evidence to prove he lied when he checked “no” on the form at the gun store that asked if he was “an illegal user of or addicted to” drugs.
“He knew he was using drugs. That’s what the evidence shows. And he knew he was a drug addict. That’s what the evidence shows,” prosecutor Leo Wise told jurors in his closing argument Monday.
Hunter Biden’s struggles with substance abuse following the death of his brother Beau in 2015 are well documented. But the defense argued that he did not consider himself an “addict” when he purchased the gun and marked “no” on the form that asked whether he was an “illegal user” of drugs or addicted to them.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers have sought to demonstrate that he was trying to change his life at the time of purchasing the gun, having completed a rehabilitation program in late August 2018. The defense called three witnesses, including Hunter’s Daughter, Naomiwho told jurors that his father seemed to be improving in the weeks before he bought the gun.
And the defense told jurors that no one actually witnessed Hunter Biden using drugs during the 11 days he had the gun before Beau’s widow, Hallie, found it in Hunter’s truck and threw it in a trash can. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell suggested prosecutors were presenting circumstantial evidence like a magician would present a card trick, trying to get jurors to focus on one side and ignore the other.
“With my dying breath in this case, I ask for the only verdict that will make prosecutors do what the law demands of them” — a not guilty verdict, Lowell said in his final presentation to jurors.
But prosecutors showed jurors text messages sent days after the gun purchase in which Hunter Biden told Hallie he was waiting for a drug dealer and smoking crack. Hallie and Hunter dated briefly after Beau’s death. Prosecutors also said they found cocaine residue in the bag Hallie put the gun in before throwing it in a trash can outside an upscale supermarket.
First lady Jill Biden, the president’s brother James and other family members watched from the front row of the courtroom as the defense rested its case Monday, without calling Hunter Biden to the witness stand. The first lady has been in court almost every day since the trial began last week.
Before the case went to the jury, the prosecutor asked jurors to focus on the “overwhelming” evidence against Hunter Biden and not pay attention to the president’s family members sitting in the courtroom.
“All this is not evidence,” Wise said, extending his hand and directing the jury to look at the gallery. “The people sitting in the gallery are not evidence.”
The defense tried to poke holes in the case by pressing prosecution witnesses about their recollections of certain events. Hunter Biden’s lawyer told jurors they should consider testimony from Hallie and another ex-girlfriend “very carefully and cautiously,” noting their immunity agreements with prosecutors in exchange for their testimony.
The process has ended in the president’s home statewhere Hunter Biden grew up and where the family is deeply established. Joe Biden spent 36 years as a senator in Delaware, commuting to Washington, and Beau Biden was the state’s attorney general.
Hunter Biden did not testify, but jurors heard his voice repeatedly as prosecutors played audio excerpts from his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things,” in which he talks about hitting rock bottom after Beau’s death and delving into drugs and alcohol before his eventual sobriety in 2019.
Hunter Biden had hoped last year to resolve a long-running federal investigation into his business dealings under a deal with prosecutors that would have avoided the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election. Under the deal, he would have pleaded guilty to tax crimes and avoided process in the gun case if it remained out of trouble for two years.
But the deal fell apart after U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee, questioned unusual aspects of the proposed deal, and lawyers were unable to resolve the issue.
Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed lead investigator David Weiss, U.S. attorney for Delaware, as special advisor last Augustand a month later Hunter Biden was indicted.
Hunter Biden said he was charged because the Justice Department bowed to pressure from Republicans who argued that the Democratic president’s son was receiving special treatment.
Under that agreement, prosecutors would have recommended two years of probation. In the weapons case, all three charges carry up to 25 years in prison, although the sentence is ultimately up to the judge and it is unclear whether she would put him behind bars if he were convicted.
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Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists Mike Catalini and Matt Slocum in Wilmington and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.
