Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, and his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, arrive at the federal court for his trial on criminal gun charges in Wilmington, Delaware, on June 7, 2024.
Hannah Beier | Reuters
Jurors in the federal gun trial of Hunter Biden were dismissed Friday afternoon, after prosecutors rested their case and lawyers for the son of President Joe Biden began laying out their defense.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys called three witnesses to the stand, including his eldest daughter Naomi Biden, who testified that she visited her father while he was in rehab in Los Angeles in the summer of 2018.
Naomi Biden said that he seemed “hopeful” in October 2018, the month when prosecutors say he lied about his crack cocaine addiction to purchase a revolver, NBC News reported.
On cross-examination, Naomi Biden told prosecutor Leo Wise that she did not see any drug paraphernalia in her father’s truck when she borrowed it in October 2018.
As Naomi Biden testified, her father wiped tears from his eyes.
The 54-year-old Hunter Biden, the president’s sole surviving son, is charged with three counts related to his purchase and possession of a Colt Cobra revolver while using illicit drugs.
Prosecutors said the evidence is “overwhelming” that Hunter Biden was addicted to crack at the time he bought the gun, and that he lied about it on a form used to conduct a federal background check related to the purchase. Defense attorneys have sought to raise doubts about whether Hunter Biden was on drugs at that time.
The trial in U.S. District Court in Delaware is expected to wrap up next week. It is unclear if Hunter Biden’s team plans to call their client to testify in his own defense. One of his lawyers said they would make a decision over the weekend on their “last witness.”
Jurors on Thursday heard testimony from Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter’s late brother, Beau Biden.
In 2018, Hallie Biden discovered and disposed of the gun at the heart of the case.
She also had a romantic relationship with Hunter Biden after Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015. She learned while dating Hunter Biden that he was using crack cocaine, and told the jury that she found out and then “Googled it because I didn’t know what it was.”
She testified that she found the revolver in Hunter Biden’s truck on Oct. 23, 2018, and threw it out behind a grocery store.
“I didn’t want him to hurt himself, or my kids to find it and hurt themselves,” she told the jury.
The president said in an ABC News interview Thursday that he will not pardon his son if he is convicted, and that he will accept whatever verdict the jury delivers.
The trial of the incumbent president’s sole surviving son began just days after former President Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Trump has baselessly claimed that his case, which was brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and tried in New York state court, was masterminded by Joe Biden to hurt Trump’s chances in the 2024 presidential election.
The presumptive Republican nominee and his allies have continued to spread and fundraise off that claim, even as Joe Biden’s son faces prosecution by the federal Department of Justice in two separate courts.