On Monday, on the first day of Hunter Biden’s federal firearms trial, after seven hours of jury selection, there was a brief moment when his eldest son and special prosecutor David Weiss came face to face in the courtroom.
To say the showdown was frosty is an understatement: Hunter was out the door with his lawyers discussing which jurors to remove from the 28-potential pool in 10 summary dismissals, while Weiss popped out from behind the courtroom to confer with jurors at the front.
The Hunter charged straight ahead, expressionless, and Weiss, pale-faced, swerved around him to avoid a collision, neither of them noticing the other.
Hunter blames his predicament on Weiss, a timid former federal prosecutor in Delaware who delayed a criminal investigation of Hunter for five years, allowed the statute of limitations on the worst charges to expire and turned a blind eye to obstruction by the Department of Justice.
But when their sweet plea deal fell apart due to IRS whistleblower revelations, Weiss chose to protect himself, and Merrick Garland followed suit by appointing him as special counsel.
Weiss, 67, is a life inmate in Delaware who has worked for the U.S. attorney’s office since 1986. If anyone understands Biden’s power, it’s Weiss, and his nervous body language explains it: hand over mouth, hand under chin, tapping foot, whatever it was, as if he was screaming, “Get me out of here!”
The Biden family’s power in that court was nearly full force.
First Lady Dr. Jill, 70, was hard to miss, sitting front row in a vibrant purple pantsuit and sparkling blonde locks.
She made a point of turning to face the jurors as they filed in to take their seats on the other side of the courtroom, flanked on either side by the elegantly dressed Melissa Cohen, 38, Hunter’s second wife, and Ashley, 42, Hunter’s half-sister and Jill’s daughter.
Sitting alongside the women were Hollywood lawyer “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, who has spent more than $6 million on Hunter’s taxes, paintings and living expenses, Washington, D.C. lawyer Peter Neal, the husband of Hunter’s daughter Naomi, and Delaware lawyer John T. Owens, the husband of Joe Biden’s sister Val.
All that was gone was the family patriarch, the president, holed up in his lakeside cottage in rural Greenville, five miles away.
And everywhere you looked there were Secret Service agents, guards around the First Family, police lights flashing, big black Chevy Suburbans blocking off the courthouse, roads closed, huge satellite trucks for the world’s media.
“Wilmington is a small town.”
The power imbalance was clear as potential jurors were questioned about their lives as a carpenter, a traveling salesman, a teacher, an aspiring forensic scientist and a bartender.
They all knew who Hunter was. Some of them knew members of the Biden family, but they were left out. “Wilmington is a small town,” one said.
But seven of the final 12 chosen Monday had close relatives with drug or alcohol addictions — a commonality that should provide some comfort to Hunter as he faces his first test of the Teflon protection of his family name.
