Hunter Biden Gun Case Goes to Jury as Prosecutors Wrap Up Closing Arguments

WILMINGTON, Del. — Jurors in Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial began deliberations late Monday after prosecutors concluded their case with an exhaustive inventory of evidence they presented over the past week in hopes of proving that Biden knowingly falsified a firearms application in 2018.

During an hourlong closing argument, Leo J. Wise, the lead prosecutor in the case, connected dozens of evidentiary dots seeking to show that Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s deeply troubled son, lied when he filled out the gun form by claiming to be drug-free when he was addicted to crack cocaine, tearing his family apart in the process.

Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, countered with a 90-minute closing argument that attacked the credibility of the government’s main witnesses. He accused prosecutors of peddling “suspicion” and “conjecture,” and suggested that the trial had less to do with justice than punishing a remorseful and sober man for the crime of drug addiction.

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It was an intense coda for an extraordinary weeklong trial that made painfully public the private struggles of the Biden family. The trial was also an enervating experience for Joe Biden in the midst of a bitter reelection campaign against former President Donald Trump, whose own federal trials remain on hold.

The personal stakes of the proceedings, often seen through the lens of electoral politics, were evident on the strained faces of the defendant’s family.

Hunter Biden’s half sister, Ashley Biden, was so moved during Lowell’s closing argument that she could be seen weeping and wiping away her tears with a tissue at one point. She moved from the front row of the gallery to a seat in the second row, where she looked down at the floor for the rest of the proceedings.

Hunter Biden, for his part, gazed at the jurors, sometimes resting his face on his clasped hands, as they thumbed through thick packets of handouts, appearing to struggle at times to follow the procedural pingpong between lawyers and the judge.

The jurors began deliberations in the afternoon, after Maryellen Noreika, the judge in the case, delivered a second round of instructions to them. They left for the day around 4:30 p.m.

People around Hunter Biden see the jury, which includes several members whose families have been affected by addiction, as providing additional hope for acquittal.

The government, by contrast, views the case as relatively straightforward. Lawyers working for the special counsel overseeing the case, David C. Weiss, made that pointedly clear in their closing, practically demanding that the jury find Hunter Biden guilty.

Wise, in remarks that raised eyebrows in the packed courtroom gallery, admonished jurors to “bring your common sense into that jury box, use your common sense” — pointing to hundreds of text messages and bank records, as well as to the defendant’s own memoir.

(Lowell would later leap on the common-sense remark, telling jurors, “Of course that’s what you will bring to all of your deliberations.”)

Wise, a longtime federal prosecutor in Baltimore known for an incisive and dispassionate style, said there was no question that Hunter Biden knew he used drugs. “The defendant knew what he was doing” when he answered “no” on the form, Wise said.

Wise added that, more than anything else, Hunter Biden’s repeated stints in rehab before and after the gun purchase proved that he knew he was addicted to crack cocaine.

“If this evidence did not establish that Hunter Biden was a crack addict, and an unlawful user, then no one is a crack addict or an unlawful user,” Derek Hines, Wise’s deputy, added in wrapping up the government’s case.

Wise, quickly set about trying to demolish a central pillar of Hunter Biden’s defense: that the government needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter Biden was taking drugs on the exact day he signed the application in October 2018.

“There is no requirement” that prosecutors prove Hunter Biden even used drugs during “the month of October,” he said, standing a few feet away from Jill Biden, the first lady, who appeared riveted by every word.

Even before Wise spoke, Noreika told the jury that prosecutors needed to demonstrate only that Hunter Biden was “addicted to controlled substances” or was an “unlawful” user around the time he bought the gun — a sharp but not unexpected setback for the defense.

That did little to discourage Lowell, who continued to argue that the government had failed to establish that his client was addicted to drugs at the time, as opposed to abusing alcohol or dealing with the devastating emotional aftermath of his brother Beau’s death in 2015.

He slammed the prosecution for introducing a handful of pictures — including images of drug residue, crack pipes and measuring scales — dating from before October 2018, but none taken during that critical month.

Speaking in measured but adamant tones, Lowell criticized the government’s “grant of immunity” to two key prosecution witnesses — Hunter Biden’s onetime girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, and Hallie Biden, his brother’s widow, with whom he had a romantic relationship at the time he was abusing crack.

Lowell urged jurors not to internalize what he described as the government’s “accordion” strategy, compressing years of addiction and rehab attempts into a reductive story about a helpless addict.

Hunter Biden was angered by the government’s tough cross-examination of his daughter Naomi Biden Neal on Friday and had told people in his orbit that he would consider taking the stand. Lowell called the cross-examination by prosecutors “cruel.” Hines later pointed out that prosecutors had not called Biden Neal to the stand — “the defendant,” Hines said, had called Hunter Biden’s daughter.

The defense, after a weekend of consultations between Hunter Biden and Lowell, rested without taking the risky step of calling the defendant himself to the witness stand.

In emotionally raw testimony, Biden Neal gave an upbeat assessment of her father’s drug use in the weeks before he bought the gun, saying he seemed “hopeful” and sober.

But under cross-examination, that claim seemed to crumble, with prosecutors introducing text messages from that period that illustrated an anguished, and excruciating, relationship in which she informed her father that he had driven her to the breaking point.

Biden Neal could offer only limited insights into the actions of Hunter Biden, who was often absent from her life for months and erratic even when they were in the same city.

Over the last week, Lowell has established that no one saw Hunter Biden doing crack cocaine in the month he bought the gun. Biden Neal’s testimony did not change that.

But two text messages retrieved from Hunter Biden’s phone have hurt his defense from the start. One day after he purchased the gun, he sent a text saying he was meeting a dealer named Mookie. A day later, he followed up to say that he was sleeping in a car and smoking crack.

The apparent admission came to a head on Friday as Lowell questioned the prosecution’s last witness, Joshua Romig, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, who was asked to translate drug lingo introduced in the government’s case against Hunter Biden.

Lowell made the point that while the prosecution had spent days examining Hunter Biden’s communications from earlier in 2018 and 2019, showing pictures of him holding a crack pipe and texts about buying drugs, there was nothing comparable to show for October 2018.

“No reference of Chore Boy?” Lowell said to Romig, referring to terms related to crack use. “No mention of a ball?”

Romig responded, “With the exception of the October text that we talked about, where he said he was smoking crack.”

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