WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) Federal prosecutors Hunter Biden The trial began Friday with the final two witnesses testifying to prove that the president’s son lied about having no illegal drug use or addiction on his gun purchasing documents.
Prosecutors called in FBI forensic chemist Jason Brewer to test residue found on the leather pouch that contained Hunter Biden’s gun. It tested positive for cocaine, but the amount was tiny, Brewer told the jury. A DEA agent testified about text messages Hunter Biden sent to his dealers.
Their testimony capped a week devoted to highlighting the severity of Hunter Biden’s drug problem through highly personal and often revealing testimony. His lawyer, Abe Lowell, said he would ask the judge for an acquittal, a common request in trials but rarely granted. He also said the president’s Brother James as a Witness.
Jurors heard testimony Thursday from Hunter Biden’s ex-wife and former girlfriend about his cocaine habit and failed attempts to get him off the drug. They saw images of the president’s son looking shirtless and disheveled in a dirty room, as well as one half-naked and holding a cocaine pipe. They also saw footage of his cocaine being weighed out on a scale.
Prosecutors say they need evidence to prove Hunter, 54, was addicted to drugs when he bought the gun and therefore lied when he checked “no” on a form that asked if he was an “illegal drug user or addict.”
Lowell claims Hunter did not consider himself an “addict” when he purchased the gun and had no intention of deceiving anyone.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has sought to walk the line between presidency and fatherhood, accepting the jury’s verdict in an interview with ABC, Denied pardon for sonEarlier this week, he released a statement saying, “I am president, but I am also a father. Jill and I love our son and are so proud of the man he is now.”
Biden visited France this week. D-Day commemorative event. First lady Jill Biden, who has been in court for much of this week, returned from France on Thursday to attend the trial again on Friday. She will return to France again for a state dinner.
Hunter Biden is 3 feloniesHe lied to a federally licensed gun dealer, falsely representing himself as a drug user on an application, and illegally possessed a gun for 11 days.
He has pleaded not guilty and was hoping to settle the gun case and a separate tax case in California. Last year’s plea bargain“The agreement, which follows a years-long investigation into his business dealings, would have allowed him to plead guilty to lower-level charges, resolving both cases and avoiding the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election. But it fell apart after Judge Mariel Noreika questioned unusual aspects of the proposed agreement, which his lawyers were unable to resolve.
Hunter Biden argued that the Democratic president’s son was receiving special treatment and said he was charged because the Justice Department bowed to pressure from Republicans who are escalating attacks on the criminal justice system. Since Donald Trump was recently convicted in New York City In the hush money case.
It’s not yet clear whether Hunter Biden will testify, but the jury has already heard him: Prosecutors have played lengthy audio excerpts of him in court. In her 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things,” The book documents his lifelong problems with drug addiction and his downward spiral after the death of his brother Beau in 2015. Written after he had overcome his addiction, the book mentions times when he owned a gun, but does not get specific.
Lowell said Hunter Biden was in a different frame of mind when he wrote the book than when he bought the guns, and that he didn’t think he was addicted at the time. He pointed out to the jury that some of the questions in the gun transaction records were written in the present tense, such as, “Are you an illegal drug user or an addict?”
She also suggested that while Hunter Biden may have had a drinking problem at the time, he did not believe he had a drug problem, and that alcohol abuse is not a precluder from purchasing a gun.
Police were curious about the revolver because Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden, found the gun, unloaded, in Hunter’s truck on Oct. 23, 2018, and in a panic threw it in a trash can at a nearby market. She testified about that incident on Thursday.
She told jurors she considered hiding the gun but decided to throw it away because she thought her children might find it.
“I know now it was a stupid idea, but I was panicking,” she said. “I didn’t want my son to get hurt, and I didn’t want my kids to find out and get hurt.”
After Beau’s death, Hallie Biden, who had a brief romantic relationship with Hunter, testified that she never saw him use drugs until after he returned to Delaware from a trip to California in 2018 and threw away his gun, including the day he bought it.
But much of her testimony focused on Oct. 23, 2018, 11 days after he bought it, when Hunter was with her and appeared exhausted. Asked by prosecutors if it appeared he had been using drugs around that time, she replied, “Maybe he did.”
While Hunter was sleeping at home, Hallie Biden went to check out his car. She said she wanted to help him get sober and get off alcohol and cocaine. She said she found crack cocaine residue and drug paraphernalia. She also found a gun Hunter had purchased in the box, but the lock was broken and it wouldn’t close all the way. There was also ammunition.
She placed it in a leather pouch, put it in her bag, and tossed it in a trash can at Janssen’s Market, when he noticed it was gone and asked if she had taken it away.
“Are you crazy?” he texted. He told her to go back to the market and look for it.
Security footage played to the jury showed her rummaging through the trash looking for the gun, but it wasn’t there. She asked the store clerk if someone had taken out the trash. Hallie testified that Hunter told her to file a police report because the gun was registered in Hunter’s name. She called the police while she was in the store.
Officers found and recovered the gun after it was mistakenly taken from a trash bin along with other recycling items, but the case was ultimately closed after the alleged victim, Hunter Biden, did not cooperate.
Jurors also heard from the officers who handled the case, the man who found the gun and the store clerk who sold Hunter the revolver.
If convicted, Hunter Biden faces up to 25 years in prison, but nowhere near that maximum for a first-time offender, and it’s unclear whether the judge will give him any prison time.
He is scheduled to face another trial in September. Indicted for failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes.
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Long report from Washington.
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