WILMINGTON, Delaware — A judge instructed the jury in Hunter Biden‘s gun trial to begin deliberating late Monday afternoon after prosecutors and the first son’s defense team delivered their closing arguments.
The jury can take as much time as it needs, whether it be minutes, hours, or even days, to decide whether Biden committed the three felony charges he is facing related to a 2018 gun purchase.
The trial, which is on its sixth day, marks the first time the son of a sitting president is standing as a criminal defendant in court.
Special counsel David Weiss has alleged Biden, a recovering drug and alcohol addict, lied on a federal form about his use of crack cocaine to purchase a revolver on Oct. 12 that year. Weiss also alleged Biden unlawfully kept the gun for 11 days while he was a drug user or addict.
During closing arguments, prosecutors told jurors to use their “common sense,” based on the mountain of evidence they presented during the trial that Biden was using drugs from 2015 through early 2019, to conclude that he was a drug user around the time of the gun purchase.
Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee, decided ahead of the trial that prosecutors do not need to prove Biden was on drugs at the exact time he filled out the form and allegedly lied on it. Rather, prosecutors needed only to prove that he was on drugs “recently enough” to indicate that he was “actively engaged in such conduct,” Leo Wise, a government prosecutor, pointed out during his closing argument.
The form asked, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, [controlled substances]?”
Wise summarized the ample evidence his team had provided throughout the trial of Biden’s drug use around the general time of the gun purchase. He noted how prosecutors submitted into evidence text messages in 2018 of Biden arranging drug deals. He also noted how they called two of Biden’s ex-girlfriends as witnesses, who, testifying with immunity, said they saw him doing crack cocaine that year, including in September and November.
They displayed a slide that featured a side-by-side of Hunter Biden’s daughter Naomi Biden Neal’s testimony and that of his sister-in-law Hallie Biden, who is the widow of Hunter’s late brother Beau. Wise said their testimonies, when viewed together, were damning for the first son.
Biden Neal testified that she saw her father’s truck in New York on Oct. 19, 2018, and that it appeared clean and contained no drug remnants. Hallie Biden, with whom Hunter became romantic after his brother died, testified that she found the gun on Oct. 23, 2018, in the truck and saw remnants of crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia in it.
“What does that mean?” Wise asked the jury, noting that he believed it meant Hunter Biden used crack cocaine during those key days when he is also accused of unlawfully possessing a gun while being a drug addict.
Hunter Biden’s lead attorney, Abbe Lowell, delivered a roughly 90-minute closing argument during which he repeatedly emphasized that prosecutors’ claims were full of “conjecture and suspicion.”
Lowell said the “stubborn fact” for prosecutors was that their most substantive and conclusive evidence of his client’s drug use was from the earlier half of 2018 or earlier years.
“These are serious charges that would change Hunter’s life,” Lowell said.
His voice became loud as he read through slides his team had created titled “Reasonable Doubt = Not Guilty” that displayed what he felt were “gaping holes” in prosecutors’ evidence.
The government had used Hunter Biden’s memoir Beautiful Things as evidence, for instance, but “not even a full page” from the memoir accounted for October 2018.
At one point, Lowell played over the courtroom speaker some of Hunter Biden reading from his memoir’s audiobook about his recovery story. His half-sister Ashley Biden, seated in the first row, could be seen wiping away a stream of tears. Hunter Biden himself also appeared teary-eyed, blotting his face with a tissue.
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First lady Jill Biden and several other Biden family members were also present and seated behind the first son.
Noreika said she would check in with jurors at 4:30 p.m. to see if they wanted to keep deliberating or wait until Tuesday morning to continue.
