As the federal government deepens its argument in opposition to Hunter Biden, prosecutors are anticipated to start out calling his former companions to the stand on Wednesday, inviting them to air sordid particulars of his life and the depths of his habit to crack cocaine.
The trial resumed at 9 a.m., with Mr. Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell attacking what he sees as a significant weak spot within the authorities’s case: The dearth of documentary proof, within the type of texts to drug sellers or the defendant’s written accounts, that show he was utilizing medication on the exact second he purchased a gun in October 2018.
On Tuesday, prosecutors introduced texts that confirmed Hunter Biden’s determined scramble to acquire crack cocaine within the spring and summer time of 2018. A day later, in his cross-examination, Mr. Lowell was capable of get an F.B.I. agent to confess that not one of the materials lined his exercise within the fall.
In his effort to show that Mr. Biden lied about his drug use on a federal firearms software in 2018, the particular counsel, David C. Weiss, has signaled that prosecutors will name Mr. Biden’s former spouse, Kathleen Buhle, who’s locked in a yearslong struggle with him over alimony funds. The 2 divorced in 2017 after almost a quarter-century of marriage and have three daughters.
Ms. Buhle is one in every of three ladies anticipated to testify about their relationships with Mr. Biden and his struggles with alcoholism and habit. The remaining witnesses will embrace Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother, Beau, who’s his onetime girlfriend, and Zoe Keston, who dated Mr. Biden from December 2017 to October 2018.
The presence of Mr. Biden’s household and pals, together with his mom, Jill Biden, who appeared on Wednesday in a pink pantsuit, has underscored how the trial is all however sure to be a painful and private ordeal for President Biden’s household.
Like Mr. Biden, Ms. Buhle revealed a memoir of her personal in 2022, detailing the toll of Mr. Biden’s yearslong habit.
Prosecutors have mentioned that even after her divorce from Mr. Biden, Ms. Buhle typically searched Mr. Biden’s vehicles and located medication and drug-related paraphernalia.
“I additionally discovered a number of crack pipes. I took them out as a result of our daughter was driving the automotive,” Ms. Buhle wrote in a textual content message to Mr. Biden in March 2018.
Mr. Biden is charged with three felonies: mendacity to a federally licensed gun supplier, making a false declare on the federal firearms software and possessing an illegally obtained gun in October 2018.
If convicted, Mr. Biden might withstand 25 years in jail and $750,000 in fines. However nonviolent first-time offenders who haven’t been accused of utilizing the weapon in one other crime not often obtain severe jail time for the costs.
Nearly all of the occasions lined within the trial occurred in 2018, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was out of workplace.
Prosecutors performed excerpts from the audiobook of Hunter Biden’s memoir on Tuesday to relate his spiral into habit. Mr. Biden, the primary girl, Jill Biden, and different members of the family sat in rapt consideration as his disembodied voice started to explain his drug abuse.
The federal government’s case activates a comparatively simple query: whether or not Mr. Biden was abusing medication when he crammed out the federal firearms software claiming he was not an “illegal consumer” of managed substances. “Habit is probably not a selection, however mendacity and shopping for a gun is a selection,” Derek Hines, a prime deputy to Mr. Weiss, informed jurors on Tuesday.
Mr. Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, mentioned he would disprove the federal government’s core competition that Mr. Biden “knowingly” broke the legislation by answering “no” on a query asking candidates whether or not they had been utilizing medication on the time they sought to buy a gun.
Mr. Lowell drew a pointy distinction within the dealing with of the gun. After Mr. Biden purchased the gun, he by no means loaded it, by no means eliminated it from its lock field in his truck and by no means used it throughout the 11 days he owned it, Mr. Lowell mentioned. It was his girlfriend on the time — Hallie Biden — who discovered the gun, eliminated it from the field, positioned it in a pouch that contained drug residue and tossed it in a trash can at a close-by grocery retailer.
The trial is one in every of two that Mr. Biden faces this 12 months. The opposite, anticipated to start in Los Angeles in September, facilities on a collection of tax offenses associated to Mr. Biden’s failure to file returns for plenty of years.
Zach Montague contributed reporting.
