Hunter Biden’s exes testify about his history of drug use

Hunter Biden’s ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend took the witness stand to testify about the president’s son’s use of crack cocaine.

Hunter Biden arrives at court in Wilmington, Delaware. Picture: Getty Images via AFP.

Hunter Biden’s ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend took the witness stand Wednesday in his federal gun trial as prosecutors tried to convince jurors that he had lied about his drug use during a 2018 firearm purchase.

Zoe Kestan, a woman who dated Hunter Biden in 2018, testified about meeting Biden in December 2017 at a strip club in Manhattan where she was working. She said that, throughout their relationship, she saw him smoking crack cocaine – sometimes every 20 minutes.

She testified that she saw him smoking crack in September of that year, just weeks before the gun sale, and that she also helped him buy narcotics in November of that year.

Prosecutors used the testimony to chronicle Biden’s long history of addiction, aiming to bolster their central claim that he falsely certified on a background check form that he wasn’t a drug user.

Biden has denied knowingly lying on the form. His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said during his opening remarks on Tuesday that jurors should look carefully at the form and consider whether the questions on it were asked clearly.

Lowell told jurors the evidence would show that his client had just completed a stint in rehab and wasn’t using crack cocaine at the time of the gun sale. For this reason, it was reasonable for him to fill out the form the way he did, Lowell said.

While being cross-examined by Lowell, Kestan said Biden wasn’t in touch with her in October 2018, when he bought the gun.

Kathleen Buhle, who was married to Biden from 1993 to 2017 and has three daughters with him, testified for about half an hour earlier in the day. She said she received a subpoena requiring her to testify.

Buhle, a non-profit executive, testified about finding a crack pipe in the porch of their Washington, D.C., home in 2015, three years before the gun purchase at the centre of the criminal case. Buhle said she confronted her then-husband about the drug paraphernalia and that he admitted to using crack cocaine.

She also testified that her husband continued to be functional in professional and social settings while using drugs.

Federal prosecutor Leo Wise asked Buhle if her ex-husband ever referred to himself as a drug addict. Buhle testified that during marriage-counselling sessions his drug problem was spoken about as an addiction.

Kestan also said the younger Biden would often refer to himself as an addict and would talk about his desire to get sober. She said she was 24-years-old at the time and that Hunter Biden was twice her age.

“I commended him for being honest with himself about that,” Kestan said.

Dow Jones