WILMINGTON: Jurors will resume deliberations, on Tuesday, in the criminal case against President Joe Biden’s son over a gun Hunter Biden bought in 2018 when prosecutors say he was in the throes of a crack cocaine addiction.
Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before leaving the federal courthouse in Delaware on Monday afternoon. They are weighing whether Hunter Biden is guilty of three felonies in the case pitting the younger Biden against his father’s Justice Department in the middle of the president’s reelection campaign.
Prosecutors spent last week using testimony from his ex-wife and former girlfriends, photos of Hunter Biden with drug paraphernalia and other tawdry evidence to make the case that he lied when he checked ‘no’ on the form at the gun shop that asked whether he was ‘an unlawful user of, or addicted to’ drugs.
“He knew he was using drugs. That’s what the evidence shows,” prosecutor Leo Wise told jurors in his closing argument.
Hunter Biden’s substance abuse struggles after the 2015 death of his brother Beau are well-documented. But the defence has argued that he did not consider himself an “addict” when he bought the gun and checked “no” on the form that asked whether he was “an unlawful user” of drugs or addicted to them.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers have sought to show he was trying to turn his life around at the time of the gun purchase, having completed a rehabilitation program at the end of August 2018. The defence called three witnesses, including Hunter’s daughter Naomi, who told jurors that her father seemed to be improving in the weeks before he bought the gun.
And the defence 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. Defence attorney Abbe Lowell suggested that prosecutors were presenting circumstantial evidence like a magician might present a card trick, trying to get jurors to focus on one hand and ignore the other.
“With my last breath in this case, I ask for the only verdict that will hold the prosecutors to what the law requires of them” — a verdict of not guilty, Lowell said in his final pitch to jurors.
But prosecutors have shown jurors text messages sent in the days after the gun purchase in which Hunter Biden told Hallie he was waiting for a dealer and smoking crack. Hallie and Hunter briefly dated after Beau’s death. Prosecutors have also said they found cocaine residue on the pouch in which Hallie put the gun before tossing it in a trash can outside an upscale grocery store.
First lady Jill Biden, the president’s brother James and other family members watched from the first row of the courtroom as the defence rested its case 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 urged jurors to focus on the “overwhelming” evidence against Hunter Biden and pay no mind to members of the president’s family sitting in the courtroom.
“All of this is not evidence,” Wise said, extending his hand and directing the jury to look at the gallery. “People sitting in the gallery are not evidence.”
The defence has tried to poke holes in the case by pressing the prosecution’s witnesses on their recollection of certain events. Hunter Biden’s lawyer told jurors they should consider testimony from Hallie and another ex-girlfriend “with great care and caution”, noting their immunity agreements with prosecutors in exchange for their testimony.
The proceedings have played out in the president’s home state, where Hunter Biden grew up and where the family is deeply established. Joe Biden spent 36 years as a senator in Delaware, commuting daily to Washington, and Beau Biden was the state’s attorney general.
Hunter Biden did not testify but jurors repeatedly heard his voice when prosecutors played audio excerpts of his 2021 memoir ‘Beautiful Things’, in which he talks about hitting bottom after Beau’s death, and descending 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 misdemeanour tax offenses and avoided prosecution in the gun case if he stayed out of trouble for two years.
But the deal fell apart after District Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was nominated by Trump, questioned unusual aspects of the proposed agreement, and the lawyers could not resolve the matter.
Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed top investigator David Weiss, Delaware’s US attorney, as a special counsel last August, and a month later Hunter Biden was indicted.
Hunter Biden has said he was charged because the Justice Department bowed to pressure from Republicans who argued the Democratic president’s son was getting special treatment.
Under that deal, prosecutors would have recommended two years of probation. In the gun case, the three counts carry up to 25 years in prison, though the sentence would ultimately be up to the judge. It’s unclear whether she would put him behind bars if he’s convicted.