Jurors conclude day 1 of deliberations in Hunter Biden's federal gun trial
FILE-Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, arrives to the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building on June 06, 2024 in Wilmington, Delaware. The trial for Hunter Biden's felony gun charges continues today with additional witnesses. (Photo by Kevin Di
Jurors deliberated for less than an hour in Hunter Biden's gun trial before leaving the courthouse for the day. Deliberations were to resume Tuesday morning.
The jury will decide whether Biden is guilty of federal gun charges over a revolver he purchased when prosecutors claim he was addicted to crack cocaine.
He is charged with three felonies stemming from the October 2018 purchase of a gun he had for about 11 days. Prosecutors say he lied on a mandatory gun-purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers rested their case Monday in the federal criminal trial of President Joe Biden's son, who's accused of lying about his drug use when he bought a gun in 2018.
The defense rested without calling Hunter Biden to the witness stand. According to the Associated Press, defendants are not required to testify and are often advised by lawyers not to do so because it opens them up to questioning by prosecutors on cross-examination.
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Prosecutors argued the evidence is clear that Hunter Biden was struggling with addiction when he checked "no" on the form at the gun shop that asked whether he was "an unlawful user of, or addicted to" drugs, the Associated Press reported.
President Joe Biden said last week that he would accept the jury’s verdict and has ruled out a pardon for his son.
Defense lawyers argued that prosecutors failed to prove Hunter Biden was using drugs in the 11 days that he possessed the gun.
Hunter Biden has said he has been sober since 2019, but his attorneys have said he did not consider himself an "addict" when he filled out the form.
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Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty and has accused the Justice Department of bending to political pressure from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans to bring the gun case and separate tax charges after a deal with prosecutors fell apart last year.
The case has put a spotlight on a rough time in Hunter Biden's life after the death of his brother, Beau, in 2015.
Hunter Biden’s daughter Naomi took the stand for the defense Friday, telling jurors about visiting her father while he was at a California rehab center weeks before he bought the gun. She told jurors that he seemed "hopeful" and to be improving, and she told him she was proud of him. As she was dismissed from the stand, she paused to hug her dad before leaving the courtroom.
Jurors have heard emotional testimony from Hunter Biden's former romantic partners and read personal text messages. They viewed pictures of him holding a crack pipe and partly clothed, and video from his phone of crack cocaine weighed on a scale.
His ex-wife and two former girlfriends testified for prosecutors about his routine crack use and their failed attempts to help him get sober. One woman, who met Hunter Biden in 2017 at a strip club where she worked, described him smoking crack every 20 minutes or so while she stayed with him at a hotel.
The AP noted that jurors have heard him describe at length his descent into addiction through audio excerpts played in court of his 2021 memoir, "Beautiful Things." The book, written after he got sober, covers the period he had the gun but doesn’t mention it specifically.
A key witness for prosecutors is Beau's widow, Hallie, who had a short, troubled relationship with Hunter after his brother died of brain cancer. She found the unloaded gun in Hunter’s truck on Oct. 23, 2018, panicked and threw it into a garbage can at a grocery store in Wilmington, Delaware, where a man inadvertently fished it out of the trash.
The federal gun case is the first of two trials Hunter Biden is facing. He is also charged with failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes in a case scheduled for trial in September.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.