The widow of Beau Biden took the stand in Hunter Biden’s federal trial on Wednesday, detailing her whirlwind romance with her brother-in-law that included extensive drug use and her decision to hide his gun in 2018.
Speaking in a nervous tone, Hallie Biden told jurors in Delaware federal court that she began dating President Joe Biden’s son Hunter about two years after Hunter’s brother, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015. She said she didn’t know Hunter was using crack until she found the drug in her Wilmington home after they started dating—and she had to “Google it” before she confronted him.
“I didn’t know what it was,” Hallie said, adding that he admitted to using it and soon began to smoke “occasionally” around her, NBC News reported.
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Soon, she said, she would accompany Hunter to buy drugs, and his purchases would range from a piece smaller than a marble to multiple ping-pong ball-sized chunks. The drug usage led to several fights, and Hunter would range from admitting he had a problem to telling her to leave him alone.
“This can’t go on, we can’t do this,” she testified telling him during one argument.
Then, she said, she started using crack cocaine with him after visiting him in Los Angeles in the summer of 2018.
“It was a terrible experience that I went through, and I’m embarrassed and I’m ashamed of that period of my life,” she told jurors.
Prosecutors allege that during their relationship, Hunter lied on an October 2018 federal form to buy a $5,000 gun when he was asked whether he suffered from drug addiction. He has pleaded not guilty to three counts of owning a firearm while using narcotics, and his defense attorneys have argued he may not have knowingly broken the law as he was in a “deep state of denial” about his drug use at the time.
Hallie is the third woman in Hunter’s life to have taken the stand as prosecutors seek to prove he knowingly lied on his application because he was actively using drugs. On Wednesday, Hunter’s ex-wife and ex-girlfriend both provided harrowing details about his extensive drug use—including that at one point he was smoking crack every 20 minutes.
Hallie’s testimony also came just days after she married her new husband, John Hopkins Anning, who told NBC News her time on the stand has been “very hard on her” emotionally.
Hallie told jurors she found a gun in Hunter’s truck a few days after he bought it. Hunter had not responded to her calls in weeks and was “tired, exhausted, [and] looked like he hadn’t slept,” she said. While he was asleep, she went into his car to clean up in hopes “to help him start anew and deal with stuff.”
Inside, she testified, she found “trash, clothes, some remnants of crack... oh, and the gun, obviously.” (During cross-examination, she testified that she didn't see Hunter using drugs around October 2018.)
Hallie told jurors she “panicked” when she saw the gun and ammunition and wanted to dispose of them immediately. “I didn’t want him to hurt himself or my kids to find it and hurt themselves,” she said. “I was afraid to, kind of, touch it.”
Hallie said she put the gun in his leather pouch, put the pouch in a shopping bag, and threw it away at a grocery store near her house.
“I was just so flustered from the whole thing,” she admitted. “I realize it was a stupid idea now, but I was just panicking.”
When Hunter found out she threw away the gun, she said, he initially told her to go back to look for it before insisting that she file a police report because the gun was in his name. Security footage shown in court depicted Hallie returning to the store to unsuccessfully look for the firearm before she filed a police report outside.
During cross-examination, Hallie admitted her relationship with Hunter turned “more tense” after the gun incident.
“The fucking FBI Hallie. It’s hard to believe anyone is that stupid // so what’s my fault here Hallie that you speak of. Owning a gun that’s in a locked car hidden on another property? You say I invade your privacy. What more can I do than come back to you to try again. And you do this???? Who in their right mind would trust you would help me get sober?” Hunter texted Hallie amid the gun debacle.
Days later, she texted him to not return to their shared house.
“Don’t come back to the house, obviously you have something in New York more important to you than me,” she wrote in what appears to be a reference to Zoe Kestan.
