WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – Federal prosecutors have concluded their gun case against Hunter Biden Friday with two final witnesses in an effort to prove the president’s son lied on a mandatory gun purchase form when he said he was not illegally using drugs or addicted to drugs .
Prosecutors called an FBI forensic chemist, Jason Brewer, who tested a residue found on the leather pouch containing Hunter Biden’s gun. He tested positive for cocaine, although the amount was minimal, he told jurors. A Drug Enforcement Administration agent testified about text messages Hunter Biden sent to suspected dealers.
Their testimony capped a week largely devoted to highlighting the severity of Hunter Biden’s drug problem through highly personal and often revealing testimony. Defense lawyers can now call witnesses.
Jurors heard Thursday from his ex-wife and a former girlfriend of Hunter Biden who testified about his habitual crack use and their unsuccessful efforts to help him get clean. They saw images of the president’s son shirtless and disheveled in a dirty room, and half-naked holding crack pipes. And they watched a video of his crack dose being weighed on a scale.
The prosecutor says the evidence is needed to prove that Hunter, 54, was in the grip of an addiction when he bought the gun and therefore lied when he checked “no” on the form that asked if he he was “an illegal or dependent user of” drugs.
His attorney, Father Lowell, argued that Hunter did not consider himself a “drug addict” when he purchased the gun and did not intend to deceive anyone.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden worked to cross the line between president and father, telling ABC in an interview that he would accept the jury’s verdict and exclude a pardon for his son. Earlier this week, he released a statement saying, “I’m the president, but I’m also a dad. Jill and I love our son and are very proud of the man he is today.
Biden is in France this week to D-Day anniversary events. First lady Jill Biden, who attended court most of the week, returned from France on Thursday to attend the trial again on Friday. She will return to France for a state dinner.
Hunter Biden has been accused of three crimes: lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false statement on the application that he was not a drug user, and illegally possessing the gun for 11 days.
He pleaded not guilty. He had hoped to resolve the gun case and another separate California tax case with a plea deal last year, the result of a several-year investigation into his business relationships. The deal resulted in him pleading guilty to lower-level charges that would have resolved both cases and spared him the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election. The deal collapsed after Judge Maryellen Noreika questioned unusual aspects of the proposed deal that lawyers could not resolve.
Hunter Biden said he was charged because the Justice Department bowed to pressure from Republicans who said the Democratic president’s son was getting special treatment and who stepped up their attacks on the criminal justice system. since the recent conviction of Donald Trump in New York in a secret money affair.
Lowell said he would call the president brother Jacques as witness, but it is not yet known whether Hunter Biden will testify.
But the jurors have already heard his voice. Prosecutors played lengthy audio clips in court of his 2021 memoir “Beautiful Things,” in which he writes about his lifelong addiction issues and his spiraling descent after the death of his brother Beau in 2015. The book, written after he got sober, covers the period when he had the gun but didn’t not mention it specifically.
Lowell said Hunter Biden’s mindset was different when he wrote the book than when he bought the gun, when he didn’t believe he had an addiction. He emphasized to jurors that some of the questions on the gun transaction record are in the present tense, such as “are you an illegal user of or addicted to” drugs.
And he suggested that Hunter Biden might have thought he had a drinking problem at the time, but not a drug problem. Alcohol abuse does not prevent the purchase of a firearm.
The reason law enforcement raised questions about the gun is because Hallie Biden, Beau’s widow, found it unloaded in Hunter’s truck on October 23, 2018, panicked and threw it in a trash can from a nearby market. She testified about the episode Thursday.
She told jurors she considered hiding the gun, but thought her children might find it, so she decided to throw it away.
“I realize it was a stupid idea now, but I was panicked,” she said. “I didn’t want him to get hurt, and I didn’t want my kids to find out and get hurt.”
Hallie Biden, who had a brief romantic relationship with Hunter after Beau’s death, testified that from the time Hunter returned to Delaware after a trip to California in 2018 until she threw away his gun, she did not see him using drugs. This period included the day he purchased the gun.
But much of his testimony focused on October 23, 2018, 11 days after his purchase. Hunter stayed with her and seemed exhausted. Asked by the prosecutor if it appeared Hunter was using drugs at the time, she replied, “He could have been.”
While Hunter was sleeping at home, Hallie Biden went to check on her car. She said she hoped to help him get or stay sober, free of alcohol and cocaine. She said she found remains of crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia. She also found the gun Hunter purchased in a box with a broken lock that prevented it from closing all the way. There was also ammunition.
She put it in a leather pouch, put the pouch in a bag and threw it in the trash at Janssen Market. He noticed it was missing and asked her if she had taken it.
“Are you crazy?” he texted. He told her to go back to the market to get it.
Surveillance footage played for jurors showed her rummaging through the trash looking for the gun, but it wasn’t there. She asked store managers if anyone had taken out the trash. Hallie testified that Hunter told her to file a police report because the gun was registered in his name. She called the police while still at the store.
Officers located the man who had inadvertently taken the gun and other recyclable materials from the trash and recovered it. The case was ultimately dismissed due to lack of cooperation from Hunter Biden, who was considered the victim.
Jurors also heard from the officers who handled the case, the man who found the gun and the store clerk who sold Hunter the gun.
If convicted, Hunter Biden faces up to 25 years in prison, although first-time offenders do not reach the maximum, and it is unclear whether the judge would give him time behind bars.
He will also face a separate trial in September for charges of non-payment of $1.4 million in taxes.
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Long reported in Washington.
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Follow AP’s coverage of Hunter Biden at https://apnews.com/hub/hunter-biden.
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