WILMINGTON, Del. — Guilty, guilty, guilty.
Hunter Biden was convicted by a federal jury on Tuesday of lying about his drug use to buy a gun, making him the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a crime.
After deliberating for three hours over two days, the jury of six men and six women found the 54-year-old guilty of making a false statement in connection with the purchase of a firearm, making a false statement regarding information required to be kept by a federally licensed firearms dealer and possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of or addict to a controlled substance.
Prosecutors from Special Counsel David Weiss’s office had alleged that President Biden’s son knowingly lied about not using controlled substances on a gun application before emerging from a Wilmington store on Oct. 12, 2018, with a Colt Cobra .38-caliber revolver.
In fact, Hunter Biden was addicted to crack cocaine at the time, a fact he acknowledged in his 2021 memoir, and prosecutors used it as evidence against him.
“Hunter’s son stared intently at the jury as the jury foreman read the verdict, showing no visible reaction. Hunter’s wife, Melissa, sat in the gallery behind Hunter, next to her husband’s “brother-in-law,” attorney Kevin Morris.
The eldest son faces up to 25 years in prison, but because he has no criminal record he is likely to receive a lighter sentence.
The ruling isn’t the end of the eldest son’s legal troubles.
He is scheduled to go on trial in Los Angeles federal court on September 5th on charges of evading $1.4 million in federal income taxes from 2016 to 2019.
Prosecutors from Special Counsel David Weiss’s office used witness testimony, Hunter’s own communications, data obtained from his infamous laptop and excerpts from his book “Beautiful Things” to prove that he was using crack cocaine around the time he bought the guns.
Judge Marylen Noreika ruled before the trial that prosecutors did not need to prove Hunter was high on the day he bought the weapon.
Jurors heard extensive excerpts from the audiobook of Hunter’s memoir, narrated by his eldest son himself, which described his struggle with drug addiction and his “supernatural ability to find crack cocaine anywhere, anytime.”
Jurors also saw numerous messages from Hunter that appeared to be plotting drug deals, in which he talked about being high and how he was using drugs, including a text message in spring 2018 in which Hunter asked a drug dealer, “Can I get some baby powder, the real soft kind?”
Jurors heard testimony from witnesses including Biden’s successor’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhl, his former girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, and his sister-in-law and girlfriend, Hallie Biden, to whom Hunter Biden’s brother Beau was married until his death from brain cancer in 2015.
Buhle testified that she learned Hunter had been using crack when she found her then-husband’s pipe on the porch of their Washington, D.C. home the same year as Beau’s death. She said he “wasn’t himself” and “angry” when he was using. [and] “Short-tempered.”
Kestan told jurors that she dated Hunter for about nine months in 2018 and that their wild times meant she had a front row seat to him smoking crack cocaine “every 20 minutes or so”.
Harry testified about finding the gun inside Hunter’s Ford Raptor pickup truck on Oct. 23, 2018 – 11 days after he purchased it – and hastily discarding the weapon at a Wilmington grocery store.
A few minutes later, Hunter became enraged when he discovered she had thrown away her .38-caliber gun and ordered her to get it back, Harry recalled.
But when she returned to the store about 30 minutes later, the gun was gone (an older man who was rummaging through the trash looking for recyclables later found it and turned it in).
Hunter’s defense team, led by attorney Abe Lowell, told jurors their client did not knowingly lie on his gun application and argued he was in “deep denial” about his drug addiction.
Lowell also described Gordon Cleveland, a salesman for StarQuest Shooters and Survival Supplies, as a “whaler” who pressured Hunter into buying the weapon.
The defense also tried to poke holes in the prosecution’s timeline of Hunter’s addiction, trying to show he was not quitting drugs but was instead struggling with alcoholism.
Hunter had pleaded not guilty to all charges in the case and was scheduled to plead guilty in June 2023. But the deal with prosecutors fell apart in court after Hunter’s team learned he would not receive blanket immunity from possible future charges.
