WILMINGTON, Del. (news agencies) — Jurors who will decide whether President Joe Biden’s son is guilty of federal firearms charges are hearing deeply personal testimony about a dark period for Hunter Biden.
The case playing out in Wilmington, Delaware, stems from a gun the younger Biden bought in October 2018, months before his father announced his bid for the presidency.
Prosecutors say Hunter Biden lied when he swore he wasn’t a drug user on a form he filled out at the gun shop. He had the gun for about 11 days before it was thrown in a trash can.
Hunter Biden’s attorney argues his client did not believe he was in the throes of addiction when he stated in the paperwork that he did not have a drug problem.
Hunter Biden was supposed to have avoided prosecution in the gun case altogether, but a deal with prosecutors fell apart last year. He was subsequently indicted on three felony gun charges. He also faces a trial scheduled for September on felony charges alleging he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes over four years.
Here’s a look at some key witnesses in the trial:
One of the prosecutors’ first witnesses was Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, who filed for divorce in 2016 after more than 20 years of marriage. They have three children together. In divorce proceedings, she accused him of squandering their money on drugs, alcohol, strip clubs and prostitutes.
On the witness stand, Buhle described learning about Hunter Biden’s drug use when she found a pipe used to smoke crack cocaine in an ashtray on their porch in July 2015, weeks after Hunter’s brother Beau died from brain cancer.
When she confronted Hunter, he “acknowledged smoking crack,” she told jurors.
Buhle testified that she suspected that Hunter was using drugs even before she found the crack pipe, given that he earlier had been kicked out of the Navy after testing positive for cocaine.
“I was definitely worried, scared,” said Buhle, who was subpoenaed by prosecutors.
She also recounted searching the family’s car for drugs whenever her children were driving it. But she acknowledged under questioning from Hunter’s attorney that she never actually saw him using drugs.
A key witness expected to take the stand for prosecutors is Beau’s widow, who had a romantic relationship with Hunter Biden after his brother’s death.
When their relationship became public in 2017, Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, said in a statement that the couple had their “full and complete support,” adding, “We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness.”
Hunter detailed their troubled romance in his memoir “Beautiful Things,” writing, “As much as we desperately thought we could be the answers to each other’s pain, we only caused each other more.”
Hallie Biden found the gun in Hunter Biden’s truck days after he bought it and threw it in a trash can near a grocery store in Wilmington. Hunter Biden told police in 2018 that she took the gun because she was concerned about his mental health, according to a police report.
Hunter got upset when he found out she threw the gun away, but it was no longer there when she went back to look for it. A man collecting recyclables found it and gave it to the police.
Jurors have already seen text messages between the pair that prosecutors are using to try to prove that Hunter Biden knew he was addicted to drugs when he said on the form he wasn’t.
In one late-night exchange shortly after he bought the gun, Hallie asked Hunter where he was. Hunter replied he was behind a baseball stadium in downtown Wilmington “waiting for a dealer.”
Kestan, another former romantic partner, was given immunity in exchange for her testimony for prosecutors.
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