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Hunter Biden “crossed the line” when he bought a firearm while addicted to drugs, a Delaware jury was told on Tuesday as a criminal trial that will delve into the pathos and tragedy of the Biden clan got under way.
The case, brought by a special counsel in President Joe Biden’s justice department, centres on a seemingly spur-of-the-moment purchase in October 2018 of a handgun from a Wilmington dealer by the president’s younger son while he was awaiting the delivery of a new smartphone.
At issue is whether he broke a federal law when responding to a question in a federal background check about whether he was a drug addict or drug user.
Hunter Biden checked “no”, which prosecutors allege was a deliberate lie. His attorneys argued that he did not knowingly lie at the time because he was not then using drugs.
In legal terms, the trial is likely to parse the definition of what constitutes an addict. In political terms, it threatens to distract from the president’s attempts to invigorate his re-election campaign by airing the painful and ugly family episodes that followed the death of his older son, Beau, in 2015.
Hunter Biden’s trial has become inextricably linked with that of Donald Trump, who on Thursday suffered the ignominy of becoming the first former president convicted of a felony after a jury found him guilty of falsifying business records stemming from “hush money” payments to a former porn actress.
Hunter Biden’s trial will focus on events following Beau’s death from cancer, which plunged his brother back into addiction and spawned a doomed romantic relationship with Beau’s widow, Hallie.
Derek Hines, a federal prosecutor, said in his opening argument on Tuesday that Hallie herself became addicted to crack cocaine because of Hunter, and would testify about the experience.
It was Hallie Biden who discovered the gun in Hunter’s pick-up truck 11 days after he bought it, and tried to dispose of it in a rubbish bin at a local market, setting in motion of a chain of events that led to police involvement.
“We will show you overwhelming evidence that he knew he was a drug user,” Hines said, telling jurors that Hunter Biden was not on trial for drug use but for lying about it while purchasing a firearm. “He crossed the line when he bought a gun and lied on a federal background check.”
Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s attorney, dwelled on the precise language of the background check, which asks if someone “is” an addict — not whether they “have been”. In Hunter’s own mind, he said, he was not addicted to drugs at the time of the purchase — although he was an alcoholic.
“He was not using drugs when he bought that gun,” Lowell said. “Times before and times after, but not during”.
Lowell also faulted Hallie Biden for overreacting when she discovered the gun, which he said had been locked in a steel box within the truck and had never been loaded. “To use a phrase,” Lowell said, “she freaked out”.
The trial in a federal court in Delaware, in the president’s home state, follows the collapse last year of a plea deal relating to Hunter Biden’s tax affairs. The deal would have spared him prosecution for his felony gun charge, but it unravelled at the eleventh hour.
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As the opening arguments began, first lady Jill Biden sat stoically in the courtroom behind her stepson, as did Hunter’s new wife, Melissa. The president travelled to Wilmington earlier this week in a show of support.
Along with the jury, Jill and Hunter Biden listened as prosecutors sought to turn Hunter’s 2021 addiction memoir, Beautiful Things, against him. The government played extensive clips from the audio book, in which Hunter narrated his experience of smoking crack for days on end with strangers and drug dealers.
Prosecutors are also promising to introduce lurid photos and text messages as part of “overwhelming evidence” proving Biden was a drug user during the time in question. One text message to Hallie that they cited on Tuesday read: “I’m off Md Avenue, behind Blue Rock Avenue, waiting for a dealer named Mookie.”
