You’ve got to hand it to the Bidens – they know how to make headlines, right? Hunter Biden, the president’s son, is now under the microscope for a felony gun charge, and the jury started deliberating Monday afternoon after hearing some pretty damning closing arguments.
Federal prosecutors Leo Wise and Derek Hines didn’t pull any punches. They told the jury that the evidence was crystal clear: Hunter Biden was addicted to crack cocaine when he claimed otherwise on a federal gun-purchase background check form back in October 2018. Wise emphasized that the evidence of Biden’s two false-statement charges was “undisputed.”
Hunter Biden, who pleaded not guilty, now faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted. However, he’ll probably get a lighter sentence as a first-time, nonviolent offender.
Wise reminded everyone of the mountain of evidence against Hunter – witness testimonies, texts, images, videos, bank records, and even snippets from Hunter’s memoir. It’s all there to show his drug addiction. The law, as Wise explained, doesn’t need the prosecution to prove Biden was smoking crack the exact second he bought the gun. It just needs to show he had a recent pattern of drug use.
And boy, did Wise lay it out. Hunter’s texts about a drug dealer named Mookie and his admission that he smoked crack and slept in his car were just the beginning. The prosecutors even showed evidence of Hunter’s late-night trips to 7/11s, suggesting he was meeting drug dealers there. Hunter himself wrote in his memoir about waiting for dealers at 7/11. You can’t make this stuff up.
Hunter’s ex-girlfriend, Hallie, found drug paraphernalia in his car the day she found his gun and threw it in a grocery store trash can. Zoe Kestan, another ex, testified that Hunter was smoking crack in September 2018, right after a rehab stint. It’s almost like a bad soap opera, but this is real life, folks.
Hunter’s defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, tried to poke holes in the prosecution’s case, arguing that they relied more on suspicion and conjecture than hard evidence. He claimed Hunter was getting clean by October 2018 and didn’t lie on the gun form. But let’s face it: the defense had an uphill battle.
Lowell also tried to discredit witnesses like Kestan, suggesting her testimony was rehearsed and casting doubt on her credibility. He did the same with Hallie Biden, questioning her memory of the day she found the gun. He even argued that texts and other evidence lacked context and that Hunter’s behavior was misinterpreted.
But Wise wasn’t having it. He countered that for the jury to believe Lowell, they’d have to think everyone else was lying – from Hunter’s exes to his admissions in his book.
After all the back-and-forth, the jury deliberated until 4:30 PM before being dismissed. Now, we wait to see if Hunter Biden’s chaotic past will finally catch up with him.
