Jurors in Delaware federal court began deliberating on Monday afternoon over whether Hunter Biden should be convicted of illegally obtaining a gun five years ago while abusing drugs.
Biden, 54, has pleaded not guilty to three counts related to lying on an October 2018 gun application form. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted in the first case ever to be brought against a sitting president’s son.
The 12-person jury went home on Monday after 60 minutes of deliberation and will return on Tuesday around 9 a.m.
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In his closing argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise argued to jurors that while Biden has had a large show of support in court—including first lady Jill Biden and President Joe Biden’s brother James—it does not change the fact that Hunter illegally obtained a gun five years ago.
“All of this is not evidence,” Wise said as he waved around the courtroom where Hunter’s wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, sat among a coterie of supporters.
“People sitting in the gallery are not evidence,” he added.
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell rested his case on Monday, confirming that the president’s son would not take the stand in his own defense. In his closing argument, he said Biden didn’t knowingly lie on the form and prosecutors didn’t meet the threshold of proving their case.
“There was no actual witness” to Biden’s drug use around the time he bought the gun, Lowell added.
Over the last week, three of Biden’s exes testified about his years-long struggle with addiction. Their gut-wrenching testimony was the crux of the prosecution’s case to prove that Biden lied when asked whether he was addicted to drugs when buying a $5,000 firearm.
“The evidence was personal, it was ugly, it was overwhelming,” Wise said Monday. “He knew he was using drugs; that’s what the evidence shows.”
On Monday, shortly after the defense rested, prosecutors recalled FBI agent Erika Jensen to the stand to discuss some of Biden’s text messages about allegedly meeting a drug dealer at a 7-Eleven around October 2018. Jensen confirmed that she did not have location data showing where Biden was when he sent the messages. After her brief testimony, the prosecution concluded their case.
“We see in these messages him buying drugs, telling other people he was using drugs,” Wise said.
Lowell, however, argued that texts do not prove he actually went to the convenience store. “They want to give you the inference that what he was doing that morning was buying drugs,” he said. “Not a cup of coffee.”
The defense called just three witnesses in their case, including Biden’s eldest daughter, Naomi, who testified about her father’s attempts to get sober. Her mother and Hunter’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, testified days prior about finding a crack pipe in their D.C home in 2015.
“I knew that he was struggling with addiction,” Naomi Biden said, noting how “things got bad” after her uncle and Hunter’s brother, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer.
The New York Times reported Biden was upset about the prosecution’s tough questioning of Naomi, and he had considered taking the stand. That changed over the weekend after conversations with his attorney.
Biden’s sister-in-law and former paramour, Hallie Biden, told jurors last week that she found the firearm inside his truck a few days after he bought it. In a panic, she said, she put the gun in a brown leather pouch that a chemist testified had traces of cocaine. She put the pouch in a shopping bag before throwing it away at a grocery store near her house. Later, she filed a police report for the gun registered under Biden’s name after he told her to look for it.
“I didn’t want him to hurt himself or my kids to find it and hurt themselves. I was afraid to, kind of, touch it,” Hallie said. “I was just so flustered from the whole thing. I realized it was a stupid idea, but I was just panicking.”
The gun was eventually found by Edward Banner, a General Motors retiree who had a hobby of rummaging for recyclables in the area.
“Poor Hallie,” Lowell said on Monday about Hallie’s testimony, adding that she was “dragged through” a tragic period of her life.
