Hunter Biden trial: Jury resume deliberations in federal gun case
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Jurors will resume deliberations 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 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.
Hunter Biden arrives to federal court with his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, Monday, June 10, 2024, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
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. And he knew he was addicted to drugs. That’s what the evidence shows,” prosecutor Leo Wise told jurors in his closing argument Monday.
Hunter Biden’s substance abuse struggles after the 2015 death of his brother Beau are well-documented. But the defense 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 defense called three witnesses, including Hunter’s daughter Naomi, who told jurors that her father seemed be improving in the weeks before he bought the gun.
And the defense 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. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell suggested that prosecutors were presenting circumstantial evidence like a magician might present a card trick, trying to get jurors to
