Hunter BidenThe defense team is expected to wrap up arguments in his federal firearms trial Monday in Delaware, and the jury could begin deliberating by the end of the day barring dramatic moves — such as a last-minute decision by Biden to testify on his own behalf to give evidence.
Biden, who is that? President Joe Biden‘s son, was angered by the government’s harsh cross-examination of his daughter Naomi Biden Neal on Friday and told those close to him that he would consider testifying. But it now seems more likely that, after a weekend of consultations between Biden and his lead lawyer, Abbe Lowell, the defense will rest without taking the risky step of putting Biden on the stand.
Prosecutors and Lowell’s team will meet early Monday with the presiding judge to consider a defense request to dismiss the case.
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If the judge, Maryellen Noreika, denies Lowell’s motions, as expected, each side will present its closing arguments and Noreika will provide instructions to the jury.
The government has tried to show that Biden regularly used drugs in 2018 and 2019 and that he falsely claimed to be drug-free when he filled out a federal firearms form. His lawyers have offered a spirited, if more limited, defense focused on whether Biden was actually using crack cocaine at the time he bought the gun in October 2018, and have tried to undermine the prosecution’s witnesses by suppressing their memories to cast doubt.
Over two days, David C. Weiss, the special counsel on the case, summoned three of Biden’s former romantic partners, all of whom described in painful detail Biden’s relentless descent into crack addiction after his brother died of brain cancer. They included his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle; a one-time friend, Zoe Kestan; and Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother with whom he had an ill-fated romantic relationship.
Biden Neal is the only woman called by the defense so far.
In emotionally raw testimony, she gave an optimistic assessment of his drug use in the weeks before he bought the gun, saying he seemed “hopeful” and sober.
But under cross-examination that claim appeared to crumble, with prosecutors introducing text messages from that period that illustrated a tortured and excruciating relationship in which she told her father he had pushed her to the breaking point.
Still, Biden could offer only limited insights into the actions of Biden, who was often absent from her life for months at a time and erratic even when they were in the same city.
The prosecutor, who rested Friday morning, also pointed to hundreds of text messages and banking records, as well as the suspect’s own words, to illustrate Biden’s unyielding drug addiction in the months before and after October 2018.
Over the past week, Lowell has determined that no one saw Biden use crack cocaine in the month he bought the gun. Biden Neal’s testimony didn’t change that.
But two text messages retrieved from Biden’s phone damaged his defense from the start. A day after he bought the gun, he sent a text saying he was meeting a dealer named Mookie. A day later he said he was sleeping in a car and smoking crack.
The apparent confession came to a head Friday when Lowell questioned the prosecution’s final witness, Joshua Romig, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, who was asked to translate the drug jargon introduced in the government’s case against Biden.
Lowell made the point that although prosecutors had spent days examining Biden’s communications from earlier in 2018 and 2019, which included photos of him with a crack pipe and texts about buying drugs, there was nothing comparable to show before October 2018.
“No reference to Chore Boy?” Lowell said to Romig, referring to terms associated with crack use. “No talk of a ball?”
Romig replied: “With the exception of the October text we were talking about, where he said he smoked crack.”
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