To show to jurors that Hunter Biden was an addict who lied about his drug use to purchase a gun, federal prosecutors have turned to the ladies closest to him.
His ex-wife recalled discovering a crack pipe on the porch a day after their anniversary. A former stripper turned girlfriend advised the jury about their monthlong keep in a Chateau Marmont bungalow, the place sellers squired cocaine by way of a non-public entrance.
Then there was Hallie Biden, who had been married to his brother Beau. In a stormy entanglement introduced on by grief over Beau’s loss of life, she briefly grew to become Hunter’s lover.
“I referred to as you 500 occasions prior to now 24 hours,” she texted Hunter two days after he purchased the gun. Hunter replied that he was “smoking crack” in downtown Wilmington, Del.
One other girl within the lifetime of President Biden’s son has listened intently by way of all of it, holding his hand as they arrived at and left the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Constructing in Wilmington every day final week: Melissa Cohen Biden, his spouse of 5 years.
All the time perched in the identical seat — second spot within the entrance row, subsequent to a Secret Service agent, a number of ft from her husband — Melissa has had a transparent view of the jury, her vast, blue eyes taking within the rehashing of her husband’s darkest chapter.
Surrounded by family members, together with First Woman Jill Biden, Melissa was the one member of the family whom protection legal professional Abbe Lowell referred to as out by title in his opening assertion. Gesturing towards her, Lowell stated Melissa helped Hunter face “the true depth of his trauma.”
Within the theater of the courtroom — particularly a trial the place the prosecution’s star witnesses have been three of Hunter Biden’s former lovers — Melissa’s position is singular and potent with the one viewers that issues now: the jury.
Hunter Biden and Melissa Cohen Biden depart court docket on Friday, June 7.
(Matt Slocum / Related Press)
Her blonde hair typically pulled again in a bun, Melissa hasn’t hesitated to point out emotion.
When the lead prosecutor concluded his opening assertion by urging the jury to search out Hunter responsible, she shook her head and mouthed, “No.” She shook her head once more when the prosecutor unsheathed a Macbook Professional 13 and held it as much as the jury — Hunter’s notorious laptop computer, seized by the FBI from a Delaware restore store. She shed a number of tears through the airing of her husband’s memoir.
One headline-grabbing outburst occurred outdoors the presence of the jurors, within the cramped, fluorescent-lit court docket hallway the place reporters mingle with Secret Service brokers and Biden family members.
There, Melissa confronted Garrett Ziegler, a former aide to Donald Trump whose nonprofit revealed a cache of Hunter’s emails, texts and nude photographs, alongside along with his sister Ashley Biden’s stolen diary. Hunter has sued Ziegler in L.A., saying his “unhinged and obsessed marketing campaign” towards the Biden household broke state and federal cyber-fraud legal guidelines. Ziegler has denied this.
“You haven’t any proper to be right here, you Nazi piece of s—,” Cohen advised Ziegler.
Ziegler later stated he was minding his personal enterprise through the trial.
Hunter Biden, left, arrives to federal court docket along with his spouse, Melissa Cohen Biden.
(Matt Slocum / Related Press)
“She knew about every part already, however to listen to it in court docket, that is tough as hell,” stated Bobby Sager, a pal of Melissa who sat in trial every day, at occasions clutching her hand, and dined every night time together with her and Hunter.
The Biden clan has proven up in power to a trial on prices which are nearly by no means filed as a standalone case — proof to many who he’s being made an instance as a result of his father is president.
The primary woman crisscrossed the Atlantic, leaving the president behind in France to be there for almost day-after-day of testimony, at all times sitting subsequent to Melissa. The president’s sister, Val Owens, alongside together with her husband and youngsters, have rotated by way of the courtroom with a coterie of pals. Melissa has embraced every, even blowing a kiss to the primary woman’s senior advisor, Anthony Bernal, throughout one break final week.
Attorneys and jury specialists who should not concerned within the case stated Melissa’s supportive presence may very well be a strong issue for jurors.
“The jury has to imagine that he’s reworked,” even “redeemed,” stated Julie Blackman, a trial technique marketing consultant and social psychologist who beforehand suggested Lowell in Sen. Robert Menendez’s first legal trial, which ended with the jury deadlocked.
“He has the proof — his spouse sitting there, standing by him and standing by him regardless of all of the issues the jury is listening to that he did,” she stated, noting that Melania Trump’s absence was conspicuous throughout her husband’s trial.
The Bidens’ assembly within the spring of 2019 was hardly auspicious.
Hunter had simply been kicked out of Petit Ermitage, an ivy-covered luxurious lodge in West Hollywood, however continued lounging by the pool and smoking crack each 20 minutes, he recalled in his memoir, “Lovely Issues.”
Folks he met there launched him to their pal Melissa by scribbling her cellphone quantity on his hand. The pair met the following night time on the restaurant on the Sundown Marquis lodge.
“You’ve gotten the very same eyes as my brother,” Hunter advised Melissa. “I do know this in all probability isn’t a great way to start out a primary date, however I’m in love with you.”
That night time, Hunter divulged his crack dependancy. She didn’t balk.
“Nicely, not any extra. You’re completed with that,” she advised him.
In a matter of days, Melissa reworked his life, Hunter wrote. She confiscated his cellphone, laptop and automobile keys, deleted each contact whose title wasn’t Biden and reset the password on his laptop computer. Likening her to a jailer, he stated she disposed of the medicine and enforced strict compliance.
“I couldn’t go to the lavatory with out her following me inside,” Hunter wrote.
She fended off the sellers who wished their “money cow” again, modified his cellphone quantity and located a mid-century fashionable rental excessive within the Hollywood Hills the place they may begin their new life.
On Might 17, 2019, they have been married in a rooftop ceremony by the proprietor of On the spot Marriage L.A. They’d identified one another lower than two weeks.
“Honey,” Hunter stated his father advised him, “I knew that if you discovered love once more, I’d get you again.”
By then, Melissa was 32 and had lived in L.A. for greater than a decade, pals recalled. Born in South Africa, she had been positioned in a “kids’s house” as a toddler earlier than Zoe and Lee Cohen, a Jewish couple in Johannesburg with three sons, adopted her.
She got here to L.A. on a spot yr and deliberate to go to India, Hunter wrote, however as an alternative married Jason Landver, who was from a Westside household within the jewellery enterprise. He filed for divorce in 2014 after three years.
In his ebook, Hunter described Melissa as an activist and “aspiring” documentary filmmaker who spoke 5 languages. Earlier than assembly him, she had tried unsuccessfully to boost $30,000 for a documentary, “Tribal Worlds,” which a web-based crowdfunding profile described as a “sequence on the previous current & way forward for humanity advised by way of the lens of African tribal communities.”
“She’s such a candy lady, so good, so current,” stated Melissa Curtin, a journey author and former instructor who has identified Cohen for about 18 years. After they met within the aughts, Cohen was single and a part of a bunch of pals who hit the Hollywood golf equipment and headed to Malibu for the Fourth of July. Curtin stated Cohen radiates vitality that’s “magnetic” and cares about animals and conservation.
“In actual life, she is good, dynamic, enjoyable and humorous — I miss hanging out together with her,” Curtin added.
President Joe Biden along with his grandson, Beau Biden, and First Woman Jill Biden in 2022.
(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Related Press)
Seven weeks shy of her first anniversary with Hunter, shortly after stay-at-home orders have been imposed in March 2020, Melissa gave delivery to their son at Cedars-Sinai. He’s the namesake of each Hunter’s late brother and the president: Joseph Robinette Biden IV, or Beau.
Curtin stated she final noticed Melissa on the Malibu Farmers Market through the pandemic, ensconced by Secret Service brokers wearing plainclothes “as Malibu guys.”
“She has a cheerful life and a cheerful child, and it appears nice, minus all the opposite stuff,” Curtin stated.
Melissa stated as a lot in 2019, telling ABC Information, “Issues haven’t been simple externally, however internally, issues have been superb.”
Since their marriage, the couple has been within the eye of a storm: Hundreds of thousands in unpaid alimony to Hunter’s first spouse, Kathleen Buhle. Affirmation that previous to their marriage, he had fathered a daughter with a former stripper who labored as his assistant. An impeachment inquiry centered on his abroad enterprise dealings. Each day assaults by Trump and his allies. After which, the revelation of reams of Hunter’s private information, purportedly from the laptop computer he dropped off on the Delaware restore store — eliminating no matter privateness he had left.
All through, paparazzi have trailed them strolling within the Grove at Christmastime, getting lunch on the Waldorf-Astoria, climbing, purchasing at Entire Meals in Malibu, consuming pizza.
Hunter Biden, left, with protection legal professional Abbe Lowell.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Related Press)
Nothing has in comparison with the trial, the place press from all over the world snap Melissa’s each transfer from the doorways of the courthouse to the black SUVs that chauffeur the couple.
“It’s tough to be put by way of this and listen to varied folks testifying,” stated Sager, the pal of the couple. He singled out prosecutors’ questioning of Zoe Kestan, the previous stripper who detailed a bicoastal love affair by which she helped Hunter purchase cocaine in Rhode Island whereas he was present process drug therapy.
Leo Sensible, one of many prosecutors, requested Kestan to state how outdated she was on the time of the connection: 24.
“How outdated was he?” requested Sensible.
“Twice my age, so 48,” Kestan stated. She had earlier famous that Hunter’s daughters have been near her age.
Afterward, in describing the change, Sager made some extent that many Biden allies have made in regards to the effort to prosecute Hunter: “What’s the purpose of that? It simply appears merciless.”
The jury will start deliberating this week as as to whether Hunter must be convicted of three felonies: for mendacity on a federal background test type to purchase a gun in October 2018, mendacity to a firearms supplier and proudly owning a gun for 11 days when he was an illegal drug person. Prosecutors are unspooling Hunter’s sordid previous in an try and show he was a bootleg drug person, opposite to what he wrote on the shape.
A second trial is scheduled for September in Los Angeles on alleged tax crimes, with prosecutors accusing Hunter of failing to well timed pay taxes on greater than $7 million in revenue and misclassifying life-style bills as enterprise prices. (He has since paid all his taxes and penalties.)
In all issues, Melissa’s presence can solely assist Hunter, stated jury knowledgeable Lee Meihls, who has consulted for the protection or prosecution on 500 trials, together with the acquittals of Robert Blake and Michael Jackson and the current convictions in L.A. County of Danny Masterson and Robert Durst.
“It’s a approach of creating an emotional connection between Hunter Biden and the jurors — as a result of that is private,” Meihls stated, including that some jurors want that connection as they filter proof and decide. “That is his spouse. He’s having his soiled laundry being uncovered, and she or he’s nonetheless there — she’s not working away from him.”
