Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden arrive for his gun crime trial in federal court on June 7, 2024 in Wilmington, Delaware.
Hannah Beier | Reuters
Jurors in Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial were dismissed Friday afternoon after prosecutors rested their case and lawyers for President Joe Biden’s son began laying out their defense.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers called three witnesses to the stand, including his eldest daughter Naomi Biden, who testified that she visited her father in the summer of 2018 while he was in rehab in Los Angeles.
Naomi Biden said he seemed “hopeful” in October 2018, the month prosecutors said he lied about his crack cocaine addiction to buy a revolver, NBC News reported.
Under cross-examination, Naomi Biden told prosecutor Leo Wise that she did not see any drug paraphernalia in her father’s truck when she borrowed it in October 2018.
As Naomi Biden testified, her father wiped tears from his eyes.
Hunter Biden, 54, the president’s only surviving son, is charged with three counts related to the purchase and possession of a Colt Cobra revolver while using illegal drugs.
Prosecutors said the evidence was “overwhelming” that Hunter Biden was addicted to crack cocaine at the time he bought the gun and that he lied about it on a form used to conduct a federal background check related to the purchase. Defense attorneys have sought to cast doubt on whether Hunter Biden was on drugs at the time.
The trial in U.S. District Court in Delaware is expected to conclude next week. It’s unclear whether Hunter Biden’s team plans to call his client to testify in his own defense. One of his lawyers said they would decide on their “final witness” at the weekend.
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Jurors heard testimony Thursday from Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter’s late brother Beau Biden.
In 2018, Hallie Biden discovered and disposed of the weapon at the center of the case.
She also had a romantic relationship with Hunter Biden after Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015. While dating Hunter Biden, she learned he was using crack cocaine and told the jury she found out, and then she “Googled it because I didn’t know what it was.”
She testified that she found the revolver in Hunter Biden’s truck on Oct. 23, 2018, and threw it behind a grocery store.
“I didn’t want him to hurt himself or for my children to find it and hurt themselves,” she told the jury.
The president said in an interview with ABC News on Thursday that he would not pardon his son if convicted and that he would accept any verdict from the jury.
The trial of the sitting president’s only surviving son began just days after former President Donald Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Trump has baselessly claimed that his case, filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and heard in New York state court, was initiated by Joe Biden to hurt Trump’s chances in the 2024 presidential election.
The presumptive Republican nominee and his allies have continued to spread that claim and raise funds even as Joe Biden’s son faces charges in two separate federal Justice Department courts.
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2024-06-07 18:49:05
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