Hunter Biden’s ‘choice to buy a gun is why we’re here,’ prosecutor says
Joe Biden’s son broke the law by checking a box to say he wasn’t addicted to or using drugs at the time he bought a gun, his trial hears.
Declaring “no one is above the law,” a federal prosecutor kicked off the Justice Department’s case Tuesday against Hunter Biden on gun charges, telling a jury that President Biden’s son chose to illegally own a firearm while using drugs in 2018.
“It doesn’t matter who you are or what your name is,” prosecutor Derek Hines told a jury in Wilmington, with first lady Jill Biden and other members of the president’s family looking on from the front row.
In his opening statement, Hines made allusions to the younger Biden’s status as the son of the president, telling jurors that criminal defendants are tried “because of the choices they make, not who they are.” When the younger Biden bought a revolver in October 2018, Hines said, he lied on a federal form by checking a box to say he wasn’t addicted to or using drugs at the time.
By checking that box, Hines said, the younger Biden had broken through the “only safeguard” for ensuring that drug users don’t unlawfully purchase firearms.
“No one is allowed to lie on a federal form like that, not even Hunter Biden,” he said Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the evidence would show that his client had recently come out of a rehab and wasn’t using drugs at the time of the gun purchase or in the preceding weeks. It made sense, Lowell said, to fill out the forms the way Hunter Biden did during that visit to a gun shop. He noted that the form didn’t define the term “addict.” “They have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter knowingly violated the law,” Lowell reminded jurors.
The younger Biden was indicted on the gun charges last year following the collapse of an agreement in which he had been set to plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanour tax charges and avoid prosecution on a gun charge. Biden pleaded not guilty to those charges and separate tax charges brought in Los Angeles by special counsel David Weiss.
Hines’s opening argument represented a remarkable moment in the prosecution of Hunter Biden by the Justice Department of his father’s administration.
The prosecutor previewed testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, and Hallie Biden, the widow of his late brother Beau Biden, that is expected to thrust into public view some of the inner dynamics of the president’s family during a turbulent period.
Prosecutors have said Buhle checked Hunter Biden’s car periodically because she didn’t want their children in a vehicle with drugs. On about a dozen occasions, prosecutors said, she found drugs or paraphernalia.
Buhle was spotted at a Wilmington hotel near the federal courthouse Tuesday in advance of her expected testimony.
Following Beau Biden’s death, Hallie and Hunter Biden had a romantic relationship. Hines said the testimony of Buhle and Hallie Biden, along with another woman who was also romantically involved with Hunter Biden, would provide an “inside look” into his addiction.
Drawing from text messages and Hunter Biden’s memoir, Hines set the stage for a prosecution that would wield the words of the president’s son against him. Prosecutors, he said, would show that Hunter Biden was acknowledging an addiction and using drugs around the time of the October 2018 gun purchase.
Hunter Biden used drugs “before, during and after” his possession of the gun in October 2018, Hines said.
At one point, Hines played Hunter Biden’s narration of his 2021 memoir, centring on an excerpt about his return to Delaware in 2018. It was later that month, he said, that Hunter Biden walked into a Wilmington gun store, surveyed the large inventory and selected a gun known for its reliability: a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver.
He said Hunter Biden also bought five cartridges of hollow-point bullets – a type of ammunition designed to expand on impact – and a speed loader. Hines said the salesman who helped with the purchase would testify that he saw Hunter Biden check a box on the federal form indicating he wasn’t using drugs.
For 11 days, Hunter Biden unlawfully owned the gun until Hallie Biden found it in a car, drove to a grocery store in the Wilmington suburbs and discarded it in a trash can, Hines said.
When Hunter Biden found out Hallie tossed the gun, he angrily told her to retrieve it, the prosecutor said. But the gun had already been found by a man who would pick through trash to find items to recycle, Hines said.
It was only because Hallie Biden took the gun, and not any steps by Hunter Biden, that he ceased to illegally own the revolver, Hines said.
“We would not be here today if he was just a drug addict,” Hines said. “The defendant’s choice to buy a gun,” he said, “is why we’re here.”
Dow Jones
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