Hunter Biden ‘Crossed Line’ When He Purchased a Handgun

Hunter Biden was a crack cocaine addict when he drove his father’s Cadillac and illegally purchased a gun, his criminal trial heard, as US First Lady Jill Biden watched in court. The US president’s son was accused of willfully falsifying on a form when purchasing a handgun.

According to the defence, Mr Biden, 54, was in recovery at the time and was truthful when he stated on the application that he did not use illicit drugs. This is the first time a sitting US president’s son has faced trial.

If convicted of all three federal counts in the case, Mr. Biden faces up to 25 years in jail.

He is accused of lying to a federally registered gun dealer, making a false representation on the application that he was not a drug user, and illegally possessing the firearm for 11 days.

The jury will learn how Hallie Biden, the widow of the president’s late son, Beau Biden, became hooked to crack cocaine during her brief relationship with Hunter Biden.

She snatched the gun from him and dumped it in a grocery store bin 11 days after he purchased it, worried about what he would do with it.

“No-one is above the law,” prosecutor Derek Hines told jurors in his opening statement on Tuesday. “It doesn’t matter who you are or what your name is.”

Hunter Biden “crossed the line”

Mr Hines claimed Mr Biden “crossed the line” when he purchased the handgun and allegedly lied about a federal background check.

The prosecutor also told jurors that Mr. Biden was not accused of any violence, but that firearms were “pointed in his face” during cocaine dealings and that he had “learned how to defend himself”.

However, the defense said that this assertion had nothing to do with when Mr. Biden purchased the gun in Delaware.

In his opening speech, defense attorney Abbe Lowell stated that the Cobra Colt.38 revolver was purchased on impulse due to pressure from a demanding gun store owner.

He claimed his client drove his father’s Cadillac to a mobile phone store on the day in question before across the street to the guns business.

The defense’s central point is that the federal application form for a gun purchase merely asks if the buyer is a drug user, not if they “have ever been”.

Mr Lowell stated that Mr Biden was in recovery at the time, having attended a rehab clinic in California, and did not consider himself an addict.

“Hunter was not using drugs when he bought that gun,” he stated.

The US First Lady

Hunter Biden sat with his defense team, pen in hand, and put on his glasses several times to peruse documents. The Yale-educated lawyer frequently peered at the jury and seemed to be paying careful attention to the proceedings.

The US First Lady sat right behind him. President Joe Biden, who has always been quite protective of his son, was in the White House in Washington, DC.

Ashley Biden, the first lady and Hunter Biden’s half-sister, became distraught as she listened to courtroom recordings of Hunter discussing his spiral into addiction. The audio came from his narration of his 2021 memoir Beautiful Things.

Ashley Biden rested her head against the first lady’s, appearing to wipe her eyes.

Jill Biden once put an arm around Ashley Biden’s shoulder, after which he left the Wilmington court and did not return.
The defense claimed that Mr Biden did not dispute earlier drug usage, explaining that it was the product of recurring tragedy in his life.

This included the deaths of his mother and infant sister in a 1972 car accident when he was three years old, as well as his older brother, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

Melissa Cohen Biden, Mr. Biden’s wife, was also in court and approached a former Trump official in an angry manner. According to a CBS reporter, Mrs. Cohen Biden began a profanity-laced outburst at Garrett Ziegler in the hallway outside the courthouse.

According to other US media, she referred to Mr Ziegler as “a Nazi” after he distributed embarrassing communications and photographs from a laptop that had belonged to the president’s son.

Mr. Biden is currently suing Mr. Ziegler for disclosing material from the laptop. Hunter Biden will also face a trial in California in September on charges of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes.

Source: Yahoo News