Two of Hunter Biden’s former romantic partners took the stand in his federal gun trial on Wednesday, detailing to jurors his years-long drug use and attempts to get sober.
Kathleen Buhle, who was married to Biden for nearly two decades, testified about finding a crack pipe in an ashtray on the porch of their D.C. home in July 2015, leading her to confront her husband.
“He acknowledged smoking crack,” she said.
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Buhle said that while she moved out of the house shortly after finding the drug paraphernalia, she did not ultimately divorce Biden, with whom she shares three children, until February 2017—after “the infidelity,” NBC reported.
A year after their split, prosecutors allege, Biden lied on a 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 and was in a “deep state of denial” about his drug use at the time.
Kathleen Buhle, the ex-wife of Hunter Biden, departs from the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building.
Anna Moneymaker/GettyBuhle is one of three women expected to testify about their relationships with Biden, 54, and his struggles with addiction. Zoe Kestan, who dated Biden in December 2017 for 10 months also testified about watching him smoke crack “every 20 minutes or so” at one point and buy drugs throughout their relationship.
“He used cash for a lot of things,” Kestan told jurors. “I knew a good amount of it was for buying drugs.”
She added that Biden once gave her $800 to “buy clothes for his kids” from luxury stores.
As Buhle was sworn in Wednesday as the prosecution’s second witness, at least 10 of Biden’s friends and family members were in the packed Delaware courtroom—among them his current wife, Melissa Cohen-Biden, and first lady Jill Biden.
During her 30-minute stint on the stand, Buhle told jurors that she had suspected her husband had been using drugs before she found the crack pipe on the porch.
Biden was “angry, short-tempered” whenever he was using drugs, and she found other drug paraphernalia in his car afterward as their marriage disintegrated, she said.
“Did you see drugs in his car on more than one occasion?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise asked Buhle, according to NBC News. Buhle confirmed, saying that she once found a broken pipe, white power, and other drug items. She soon began regularly searching for drugs because their daughter would sometimes use the car, she said.
Kestan took the stand after Buhle, earning a wave and smile from the president’s son when prosecutors asked her to identify him, The New York Times reported. She said she met Biden when she was working as a dancer at a Manhattan gentleman’s club, and that she recalled Biden played a Fleet Foxes song when they went to a private room together because there was no music.
About 10 minutes into their first conversation, Biden went to the room’s balcony to smoke out of a pipe, Kestan said. “I remember thinking to myself [that] I didn’t notice a change in his behavior,” she said. “Nothing had changed, he was the same charming person.”
About a week later, she said she met up with Biden at the Soho Grand Hotel, where Biden smoked crack and offered her some. Kestan said that while she declined, the hotel room hangout led to a whirlwind romance. Kestan said that Biden often called her his “distraction” to crack, which he smoked frequently throughout the day.
She also discussed Biden’s attempts to get sober, including looking into one treatment that involved applying frog venom. “He was very stressed out, and he was talking about attempting and trying to get sober,” Kestan said.
Prosecutors showed jurors several photos Kestan took of Biden during their relationship, including one of him wearing a parody T-shirt with the word “addicted” adorned with a marijuana leaf logo. The shirt was funny, she said, because Biden “didn’t smoke weed.”
Under cross-examination, Buhle also mentioned that her ex-husband made three trips to rehab for alcoholism and that, between 2015 and 2019, she did not directly see Biden take drugs.
Kestan, however, undercut the defense’s argument when she revealed the last time she saw Biden smoke crack was in September 2018—just weeks before he purchased the gun on Oct. 12.
Defense lawyers claim that after completing a 12-day rehab stint in California in August, Biden only relapsed by drinking alcohol. Kestan clarified that she was not in contact with Biden around the time he bought the gun.
Delaware gun store clerk Gordon Cleveland testified that Biden entered the store looking for a revolver before settling on the Colt Cobra .38 Special, which was shown in court to jurors.
Cleveland said he told Biden to “take your time” on the required federal form before the president’s son paid in cash for the gun and ammunition. He said Biden was not confused when he checked the box that indicated he was not an active drug user, ABC reported.
But prosecutors “have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter knowingly violated the law,” defense attorney Abbe Lowell reminded jurors in his opening statement on Tuesday.
