Nadine Yousif,Bernd Debsmann Jr. takes to the court
ReutersHunter Biden’s former girlfriend told jurors that when they first met, he was abusing crack cocaine “about every 20 minutes.”
The US president’s son is on trial in Wilmington, Delaware, on charges of possessing a firearm while under the influence of drugs.
Zoe Kestan, who met Biden (54) during a “private dance” at a New York “gentlemen’s club,” testified in court that Biden frequently withdrew cash from her for drug transactions.
This will be the first criminal trial of the son of a sitting U.S. president.
He is accused of knowingly lying on federal documents about not being a drug user when purchasing a revolver and ammunition at a Wilmington gun shop on Oct. 12, 2018, and then illegally possessing a firearm for 11 days.
Biden could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted of all three federal charges in the case.
He has pleaded not guilty, and his defense team argues he was in recovery at the time he purchased the weapon.
Prosecutors are expected to wrap up the trial on Thursday after calling six more witnesses, including Hallie Biden, Biden’s former partner and his brother’s widow, a Delaware State Trooper, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent and a forensic expert.
Among the prosecution’s witnesses was Gordon Cleveland, a former employee of the gun shop that sold Biden a gun in 2018.
Cleveland said in his testimony Wednesday that he told Biden and all his other clients to fill out the forms “honestly.”
Prosecutors are trying to prove that Hunter Biden, who wrote a memoir about his drug addiction, was abusing crack cocaine at the time he bought the weapon.
In opening statements earlier this week, Biden’s lawyer, Abe Lowell, told jurors the revolver was an impulse purchase driven by the tactics of Cleveland, a pushy salesman.
In his testimony, Cleveland acknowledged his reputation as a “whaler” known for “selling whatever he had,” primarily expensive, high-quality guns.
But he denied ever “trying to sell big-ticket items” to Biden and claimed Biden came into the store and “brought up” the purchase of guns, specifically a revolver.
On Wednesday, the defendant’s stepmother, U.S. First Lady Jill Biden, appeared in court again.
She sat in the front row behind Hunter Biden with his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and a Secret Service agent.
President Joe Biden is in France for events marking the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings.
Also testifying on the third day of the trial were FBI agent Erica Jensen, Mr. Kestan and the defendant’s ex-wife, Kathleen Boulle.
ReutersKestan detailed Hunter Biden’s drug use during their relationship.
The first time they met at a gentlemen’s club in December 2017, she said, he started smoking crack cocaine “within 10 minutes.”
She said she saw the pattern play out over the course of their relationship in luxury hotel rooms in New York, New Jersey and California.
She said Biden “will wake up and immediately want to smoke a cigarette.”
Kestan also testified that she saw the defendant smoking crack cocaine over several days in Malibu, California in September 2018, a month before purchasing the gun.
Prosecutors showed jurors images of Kestan allegedly taking pictures of a crack pipe in the room where he stayed with Hunter Biden.
Another photo showed the defendant in the bath, holding a crack pipe in his hand.
Buhle, who was married to Biden from 1993 to 2017 and has three daughters with him, testified that she first learned of Biden’s drug use in 2015 after finding a crack pipe in an ashtray.
She also said that her husband’s drug use made him less of his “true self” and made him “short-tempered.” At the end of their marriage, she testified, “he didn’t want to go to rehab.”
ReutersHowever, when asked by Mr Rowell if she had seen the defendant using drugs in 2018, she replied: “No.”
That same day, FBI agent Jensen testified about text messages that were found on a laptop Biden left at a Delaware repair shop and that were never recovered.
The day after buying the gun, he texted his then-girlfriend, Hallie Biden, the widow of his late brother Beau Biden, saying he was “sleeping in his car smoking crack cocaine on 4th Avenue and Rodney Street.”
“This is my truth,” he added in another text.
Biden’s lawyers explained the emails by suggesting their client was lying to avoid meeting Hallie Biden.
During Thursday’s trial, jurors are expected to hear how Hallie Biden also became addicted to crack cocaine after the death of her husband Beau in 2015 and during her brief relationship with Biden.
She took Hunter Biden’s guns and threw them in a grocery store trash bin 11 days after he bought them because she was worried what he would do with them.
The laptop at the center of the testimony became a political grenade during the 2020 campaign because it contained explicit images of Hunter Biden and messages about his business activities.
Joe Biden claimed at the time that the data was Russian disinformation, but the laptop was later confirmed to be authentic by the FBI.
The Bidens have denied any wrongdoing in their overseas business dealings, which are the focus of the ongoing Republican impeachment investigation.
Hunter Biden is also scheduled to go on trial in California in September on charges he failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes.
