Hallie Biden, the widow of President Joe Biden’s eldest son Beau, testified Thursday that Hunter Biden was in the throes of his drug addiction when she found a gun in his truck in October 2018—testimony key to prosecutors’ case that Hunter Biden illegally purchased a firearm despite being a drug user.
Hallie Biden, daughter in-law of U.S. President Joe Biden, arrives to the J. Caleb Boggs Federal ... [+]
Hallie Biden, 50, was married to Hunter Biden’s older brother, Beau, from 2002 until Beau’s death from brain cancer in 2015.
She and Hunter Biden formed a relationship in 2016, bonding over their mutual grief, Hunter Biden has said, and dated for two years.
A former school counselor who now chairs a non-profit named after her late husband and is dedicated to preventing child abuse, Hallie Biden met Beau when the two were growing up in Delaware, and she remained close with the president and his family after Beau’s death (Joe Biden visited Hallie at her home last week at her Delaware home on the ninth anniversary of Beau’s death).
Hallie Biden testified Thursday that she found a gun and “some remnants of crack” in Hunter Biden’s truck on Oct. 23, 2018, after he had been missing “for weeks” and turned up to her Delaware home looking “tired, exhausted” and “like he hadn’t slept,” NBC reported.
She said she placed the gun and ammunition inside a leather pouch, then drove to a grocery store and threw it away in a nearby trash can, where it was later reportedly discovered by an older man who regularly rummaged through the grocery store’s trash cans.
She also detailed Hunter Biden’s drug use, testifying that he had in his possession, at any given time, pieces of crack ranging from the size of a marble to a ping pong ball during their relationship, and that she also became a user after Hunter Biden introduced her to drugs, but she has since gotten clean.
Prosecutors also reportedly showed surveillance video from the grocery store of Hallie Biden discarding the gun, and presented evidence of text messages Hunter Biden sent Hallie Biden telling her about a drug deal with a dealer named “Mookie” and that he was sleeping on a car and smoking crack. Hunter Biden’s attorneys argued Hunter Biden often lied to Hallie Biden about his whereabouts because he didn’t want to see her.
Hallie Biden said she threw the gun away because “I didn’t want him to hurt himself or my kids to find it and hurt themselves,” adding “I realize it was a stupid idea now, but I was just panicking,” according to NBC.
The president’s youngest son, who has said he’s since become sober, is on trial in Wilmington, Delaware this week on three felony charges related to the 2018 gun purchase. Prosecutors allege he lied on the required form to purchase the .38 Colt Cobra revolver by checking a box that he was not a drug user at the time, then illegally possessed the gun for 11 days. Hunter Biden’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, his ex-girlfriend Zoe Kasten and the gun store employee, Gordon Cleveland, also testified in the trial. Prosecutors are expected to rest their case as soon as Thursday, and the trial could conclude in a matter of days. If convicted, Hunter Biden faces a maximum sentence of up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Hunter Biden’s exes have revealed sordid details of his alleged drug use in their testimonies as prosecutors have sought to prove to jurors that he was in the throes of addiction when he purchased the gun. Buhle told jurors she discovered Hunter Biden used crack in 2015, when she said she found a pipe in an ashtray outside of their home and confronted him. Kasten, who said she met Hunter Biden while she was working at a New York City strip club in New York, said he would smoke crack “every 20 minutes or so” when they first met, and also said she witnessed him smoking crack at a hotel in California in September 2018, weeks before he allegedly purchased the gun. Cleveland testified that Hunter Biden displayed no evidence of being under the influence when he sold him the gun, but said he specifically recalls him checking on the required form that he was not a drug user.
Hunter Biden also faces nine felony counts of failing to pay more than $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019. The trial is set to begin Sept. 5 in Los Angeles. Both cases stem from a failed plea deal prosecutors and Hunter Biden’s attorneys negotiated last year that would have required him to plead guilty to a separate set of tax charges and enter a diversion program to avoid the gun charges.
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