The widow of Hunter Biden’s brother told jurors in his federal gun trial about the moment she found the gun in his truck, describing how she put it into a leather pouch, stuffed it into a shopping bag and tossed it into a trash can outside a market near her home.
“I panicked, and I wanted to get rid of them,” she testified about finding the gun and ammunition in the vehicle’s console in October 2018. “I didn’t want him to hurt himself, and I didn’t want my kids to find it and hurt themselves.”
The purchase of the Colt revolver by Hunter Biden – and Hallie Biden’s disposal of it – are the fulcrum of the case against him. Federal prosecutors say the president’s son was in the throes of a drug addiction when he bought the gun. He has been charged with three felonies: lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application by saying he was not a drug user, and illegally having the gun for 11 days.
Hunter Biden, who has pleaded not guilty, has said the justice department is bending to political pressure from Republicans.
Hallie Biden, who had a brief romantic relationship with Hunter after Beau Biden died in 2015, testified that from the time Hunter returned to Delaware from a 2018 trip to California until she threw his gun away, she did not see him using drugs. That time period included the day he bought the weapon.
Much of her testimony focused on 23 October 2018 – 11 days after he bought the gun and when she threw it away. Hunter was staying with her and seemed exhausted, she said. Asked by the prosecutor if it appeared that Hunter was using drugs around then, she said: “He could have been.”
As Hunter slept in her home, Hallie Biden went to check his car. She said she was hoping to help him get or stay sober, free of both alcohol and cocaine. She said she found the remnants of crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia. She also found the gun Hunter purchased in a box with a broken lock that kept it from fully closing. There was ammunition too, she said.
Hallie said she considered hiding the gun but thought her kids might find it, so she decided to throw it away.
“I realize it was a stupid idea now, but I was panicking,” she said.
Hunter Biden watched expressionless from the courtroom during her testimony. She told jurors that she found crack cocaine at her home and saw him using it. She was with him occasionally when he saw drug dealers. Prosecutor Leo Wise asked Hallie about her own 2018 trip to California, where she visited Hunter at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, and asked her whether she was also using drugs.
“Yes, I was,” she said.
“And who introduced you to it?’”
“Hunter did,” Hallie said as Hunter rested his face on his hand and looked down.
“It was a terrible experience that I went through, and I’m embarrassed and ashamed, and I regret that period of my life,” she said.
Hallie testified she stopped using drugs in August 2018, but that Hunter continued smoking crack cocaine.
Much of the prosecution’s case has been dedicated to highlighting the seriousness of his drug addiction and showcasing to jurors moments with ex-girlfriends, infidelity and crack pipes – judgment lapses they believe prove he was actively using when he checked “no” on the form. Prosecutors say the evidence is necessary to show his state of mind when he bought the gun.
Surveillance footage played for jurors showed Hallie digging around in the trash can for the gun. It was not there. She asked store officials if someone had taken out the trash.
Hallie said Hunter told her to file a police report because the gun was registered in his name. She called the police while she was still at the store.
Jurors have also heard from the gun store clerk, who testified about how he walked Hunter Biden through a few options before he settled on the $900 gun. The clerk then watched as the customer filled out the firearms transaction record, a required document for the purchase of a gun, and saw him check off “no” to the question of whether he was “an unlawful user of or addicted to” marijuana, stimulants, narcotics or any other controlled substance.
“Everything he bought, he ultimately decided on,” Gordon Cleveland, the clerk, told jurors.
Cleveland said he saw Biden sign the form, which includes a warning about the consequences of submitting false information.
In his cross-examination Thursday, defense attorney Abbe Lowell pointed out that some of the questions on the form are in the present tense, such as “are you an unlawful user of or addicted to” drugs. He has suggested Hunter Biden did not believe he had an active drug problem.
The proceedings are unfolding after the collapse of a plea deal that would have resolved the gun charge and a separate tax case, and spared the Biden family the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election.
If convicted, Hunter Biden faces up to 25 years in prison, though first-time offenders do not get anywhere near the maximum, and it is unclear whether the judge would give him time behind bars.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
