WILMINGTON, Delaware — Very few Bidens were willing to go to bat for Hunter last week.
Naomi Biden, the eldest daughter of Hunter and his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, who had testified against him on Day 3 of his gun trial, was the only family member to take the stand in support of her crackhead father. The 30-year-old Columbia Law grad, also an international arbitration attorney at a white-shoe firm, spoke softly in the courtroom Friday, quietly answering questions, whispering at times, and acting meek.
"After my uncle died, things got bad," an admittedly "nervous" Naomi said.
She repeatedly referred to the 2015 death of Hunter's brother Beau Biden as the catalyst that kicked off his crack addiction. "He seemed the clearest since my uncle died," Naomi said, insisting that Hunter had appeared to have achieved a state of sobriety around the time he bought the gun in question.
Federal prosecutor Leo Wise wasn't buying it. During cross-examination, Wise asked if she was aware of what he was doing in the dead of night on October 17, 2018, five days after he had bought the firearm. "No," she said in a faint voice.
Naomi and Hunter were supposed to switch cars; she was using his Ford Raptor, the truck that stored his Colt Cobra revolver in the center console, while he was driving his famous father's black Cadillac CTS.
Near midnight, Hunter had asked Naomi to swap back, and then around approximately 2:00 a.m. that morning, he instructed her to drop the truck off at a street corner in New York City. He "still seemed good and I was hopeful," Naomi claimed.
In front of her, Wise placed a print-out of Naomi's texts with Hunter saying otherwise.
Over text, Naomi had expressed deep disappointment in Hunter's absence, telling him how much she missed him and that she just wanted to see her deadbeat dad. "So no c u?!" she texted, exasperated, indicating she couldn't handle the situation any longer. "I'm really sorry, Dad, I can't take this. I don't know what to say," Naomi despairingly texted Hunter, adding a frowny face emoji, as quoted by Wise. Hunter acknowledged he was "unreachable."
Wise questioned whether Naomi knew the real reason why he was so inaccessible. Hunter was too busy meeting with a drug dealer named "Frankie" at his hotel, Wise told Naomi.
On re-direct, Hunter's defense attorney Abbe Lowell blamed Naomi, saying it was partly her fault for why they weren't spending time together since she was in an externship at the time.
Though the whole world knows his name, no one knows who he is.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
Here's a thread on my dad, Hunter Biden - free of charge to the taxpayers and free of the corrosive influence of power-at-all-costs politics. The truth of a man filled with love, integrity, and human struggles: pic.twitter.com/GGeOexmtTV
Afterward, Naomi swiped away a tear as she walked past the defense table, where Hunter was seated, and gave him a quick hug, noticeably briefer than the big Biden family embraces we've seen so far. In the courthouse's hallway, she started sporting oversized sunglasses. The court broke for lunch, but there wasn't the usual sharing of high fives, fist bumps, and laughs among the Biden camp. Naomi's testimony left Hunter and Co. silent, and a palpable seriousness settled in.
James "Jimmy" Biden, the brother of President Joe Biden and Hunter's uncle, who was waiting in the witness room teed up to testify, left after lunchtime. No explicit reason was given for why Uncle Jimmy wasn't called on, as previously planned. The defense announced he would not testify after all, nor would any other witnesses—except the defendant potentially.
Day 5 ended early with Judge Maryellen Noreika excusing everyone hours before the court is typically adjourned. Over the long weekend, the defense is tasked with deciding by 8:15 a.m. Monday morning whether or not Hunter will defend himself and answer questions under oath about his crack-chasing chronicles. (If so, the prosecution will build its rebuttal.)
Legal experts are advising against Hunter testifying in his own trial, warning that it's a dangerous gamble and the defense team would be rolling the dice by letting the defendant speak (via The Washington Times):
Hunter Biden would have to be the "world's best witness" to keep his cool under a brutal cross-examination and further damage himself, said Rod Phelan, a Dallas-based lawyer and expert litigator.
"He has got a lot of water to carry and I would be surprised if they put him on," he told The Washington Times. "I can't imagine that he could hold up under that kind of cross-examination."
Cooley Law School professor Jeffrey D. Swartz agreed that Hunter Biden shouldn't testify.
He said that even if the defense is aiming for jury nullification — when a sympathetic jury delivers a not guilty verdict despite thinking a defendant broke the law — they don't need to put Hunter Biden on the stand.
"Everything he has to say was read out of his book in his own voice," Mr. Swartz said, referring to Hunter Biden’s audiobook that the prosecution used to establish his drug use around the time he bought a handgun. "As far as I can see, he has nothing to add that isn't in his book."
"I have a feeling there is more than one juror there that has a family member who has had to deal with addiction," he said. "I wouldn't put him on."
Maybe the "Big Guy" has the final say.
President Joe Biden has said he would not pardon Hunter in the event the First Son is convicted of any of the three firearm felonies. ABC News anchor David Muir, interviewing President Biden in France for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, asked whether he would accept the outcome of his only surviving son's trial. "Yes," President Biden answered tersely. Muir also asked if he would rule out a pardon. "Yes," the president replied.
Hunter's stepmother, First Lady Jill Biden, served as the president's proxy throughout the week but was seen usually leaving mid-day. She spent her 73rd birthday observing jury selection on Monday. Her daughter and Hunter's half-sister, Ashley Biden, was also in attendance as well as Hunter's current wife, Melissa Cohen Biden. President Biden's sister, Valerie Biden Owens, appeared at least once while her husband, John T. Owens, showed up daily.
The prosecution touted 10 different witnesses in total:
- Erika Jensen, the FBI special agent in charge of the investigation, exhaustively reviewed Hunter's messages extracted from his infamous laptop and iCloud account.
- Three of Hunter's exes testified against him, including Buhle, his ex-lover Zoe Kestan a.k.a. "Weed Slut 420," and Beau's widow Hallie Biden, whom Hunter had an affair with and introduced crack cocaine to.
- Buhle found evidence of Hunter's drug use "a dozen times" when she searched his car for paraphernalia whenever their daughter was driving it.
- Kestan said she witnessed Hunter, her "sugar daddy," smoking crack as frequently as "every 20 minutes or so." In the lead-up to the gun's purchase, the two of them lived lavishly, lighting up inside high-end hotels across Los Angeles and New York City. Photographs of the pair shown to the jury captured an ever-nude Hunter actively doing drugs with a crack pipe in his hand. Hunter asked Kestan to withdraw cash on his behalf to buy drugs, she said, and sometimes, he even authorized drug dealers to take out cash themselves. "I can be sober, but I'll always be an addict," Hunter had texted Kestan.
- Hallie had dumped Hunter's gun at a local grocery upon finding it in his car's center console. She recited texts he had sent her days before while the gun was still in his possession, saying he was with "Bernard who hangs at 7/11" waiting behind the Wilmington Blue Rocks Stadium for a drug dealer called "Mookie" and "sleeping on a car smoking crack" at a downtown intersection.
- Gordon Cleveland, the guy who sold Hunter his gun, detailed the day he purchased it at StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply.
- Delaware State Police Senior Corporal Joshua Marley recounted responding to a report of Hallie dumping Hunter's gun.
- Delaware State Police Lt. Millard Greer recalled recovering Hunter's handgun from Edward "Ed" Banner, the elderly dumpster-diver who had found his firearm.
- Banner testified too about the gun's discovery.
- Dr. Jason Brewer, a forensic chemist who worked at the FBI lab in Quantico, explained the analysis he performed on the "off-white" powdery residue that lined Hunter's brown leather pouch, which Hallie had wrapped the gun in. Brewer identified it as traces of cocaine.
- DEA Supervisory Special Agent Joshua Romig decoded Hunter's texts with drug dealers, specifically drug-related phrases he oft-used, such as "baby powder," "chore boy," "party favor," "fentan," and a "ball."
Meanwhile, the defense only had three witnesses testify, two of whom were subpoenaed to appear and vehemently didn't want to be there: Cleveland's coworker Jason Turner, who had conducted the background check on Hunter, and StarQuest Shooters owner Ron Palimere.
There is still the matter of the defense's motion for acquittal.
After the prosecution rested Friday morning, Hunter's defense attorney Abbe Lowell asked that the court acquit his client prior to the jury deliberating the case, a common request in criminal cases, on Second Amendment grounds that the charges are unconstitutional. Lowell also cited legislative changes to relevant statutes in recent years and claimed that the federal prosecutors presented insufficient evidence to convinct his client.
"We will take a look," Judge Noreika, sounding skeptical, stated, adding, though, that she found one of his arguments "kind of an interesting concept."