WILMINGTON, Del. − In amoment of stress, Hallie Biden− the widow of President Joe Biden's first son, Beau − tossed Hunter Biden's gun in a trash can in October 2018.
That gun, purchased afterHunter Biden marked 'No' on a form meant to screen gun buyersfor drug addiction, is at the heart of the case against the president's son. Hunter Bidenfaces three felonies over whether he lied on a federal gun formin 2018 that asked if he was addicted to drugs.
Hallie Biden testified that Hunter Biden introduced her to drugs before she quit using them in August 2018, a couple of months before he bought the gun. She described her anguish trying to track him down in the days after the purchase, with him replying he was waiting to meet a dealer and smoking crack on a car.
Hallie Biden and Hunter Biden dated after Beau died in 2015. She was granted immunity for her own drug use in exchange for her testimony.
The trial hasunfolded in President Joe Biden's home state all week. Follow along for live updates from the USA TODAY Network.
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Hallie Biden says she didn’t see Hunter Biden use drugs in early October 2018
On cross examination, Hallie Biden told the jury she didn’t see Hunter Biden use drugs from when he returned to Delaware in early October 2018 through when she trashed his gun later that month.
This is part of a defense strategy that seeks to convince the jury Hunter Biden was in a period of recovery when he bought the gun in early October and therefore didn’t knowingly lie on the form central to the case.
– Xerxes Wilson
Why did Hunter Biden buy a gun?
The president's son's felony gun trial has left some observers asking: Why did Hunter Biden buy a gun in the first place?
He told Delaware State Police that he bought it for target practice in 2018 after law enforcement officials started investigating the purchase. That investigation was launched after Hallie Biden discovered the gun and threw it in a grocery store trash can.
Hunter Biden has also said he he was waiting for a replacement phone at a store across the street and went in the gun store.
– Xerxes Wilson and Marina Pitofsky
Cross examination of Hallie Biden begins
Prosecutors ended their questioning of Hallie Biden with a text she sent to Hunter Biden in late October 2018.
She told Hunter Biden that she found a leather pouch with a stem in it inside her home beside her child. She confirmed sending the text. Now Abbe Lowell will begin his cross examination.
– Xerxes Wilson
Hunter Biden calls Hallie Biden ‘insane’ for trashing gun
Hallie Biden described for the jury how Hunter Biden confronted her over getting rid of the revolver 11 days after he bought it.
“Did you take that from me Hallie? Are you insane … ” Hunter Biden said in a text the day after she threw it in a grocery store trash can.
“It’s hard for me to believe anyone is that stupid,” Hunter Biden said in a text. “Do you want me dead?” he asked in a later text.
She apologized.
“I’m sorry. I just want you to be safe. That was not safe,” Hallie Biden replied in a text.
– Xerxes Wilson
Hallie Biden discusses Hunter Biden’s incriminating text messages
Hallie Biden walked the jury through a series of text messages in the days after Hunter Biden purchased the gun on Oct. 12, 2023.
“Why won’t you answer my calls,” she texts him.
He replies in a text Oct. 13, stating that he was behind a baseball stadium in Wilmington “waiting on a dealer named Mookie.”
The next day, she texts him stating that she tried calling him “500 times in the past 24 hours.” He eventually responds: “I was sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th Street and Rodney.”
This evidence is important to prosecutors because defense attorneys have sought to argue Hunter Biden was not using drugs during the period in which he purchased the gun.
– Xerxes Wilson
Hallie Biden trashes Hunter Biden’s gun
After finding Hunter Biden’s .38-caliber revolver, Hallie Biden said she panicked and was afraid to touch it.
She went inside her home and grabbed a gift bag but realized the gun was still visible in the small bag. So she put it inside a leather pouch and then inside the bag, drove to a local grocery store and threw it in an outdoor trash can.
“I realized it was a stupid idea now, but I was just panicking,” Hallie Biden told the jury.
She didn’t remember exactly how, but Hunter Biden found out about it and told her to return to find the gun.
Hallie Biden went back, but the gun was gone. She went inside the store to see if they had removed the trash and eventually filed a police report with the help of one of the employees.
“I was so flustered,” she said.
--Xerxes Wilson
Hallie Biden describes her panic finding Hunter Biden’s gun
Hallie Biden told jurors she would regularly clean out Hunter Biden’s vehicle to “help him get or stay sober.”
“That was kind of the pattern,” she told the jury.
On the morning of October 23, 2018, the car was parked beside her home and she searched it and found “some remnants of crack cocaine and paraphernalia.”
“Oh, and the gun, obviously,” she told the jury a moment later.
Prosecutors asked her to identify what remnants she found, and she told the jury, “a dusting of powder.” She said the gun was located in the “center console” of the car. “I panicked and wanted to get rid of them,” she said.
She said she didn’t want him to have it and she didn’t want her kids to find it.
--Xerxes Wilson
Hallie Biden describes how Hunter Biden introduced her to crack cocaine
Hallie Biden testified that she visited Hunter Biden in California in June 2018, telling the jury Hunter Biden was using crack cocaine at that time.
Prodded by prosecutors, she told the jury that by then, she also had begun using crack cocaine and was introduced to it by Hunter Biden.
“It was a terrible experience that I went through, and I am embarrassed, and I am ashamed and I regret that period of my life,” she told the jury.
She said she stopped using in August 2018.
– Xerxes Wilson
Hallie Biden testifies about finding pieces of Hunter Biden's crack cocaine, and googling find out what it was
Hallie Biden, a potentially star witness, took the stand Thursday and testified that she learned about Hunter's drug use after she found pieces of crack cocaine.
“I found it and I Googled it because I didn’t know what it was,” she told the jury.
Hallie Biden told the jury that after the death of her husband Beau, Hunter Biden’s brother, she and the defendant began a relationship in late 2015 or 2016.
“It was gradual,” she told the jury.
She mentioned his use of alcohol was also an issue and that he frequently used both at the same time.
--Xerxes Wilson
Who is Hallie Biden?
Hallie Biden, the widow of the late Beau Biden and Hunter Biden's ex-lover, is expected testify about how she used drugs with the president’s son as part of the prosecution in his federal trial on gun charges.
Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015. Hallie Biden became romantically involved with his brother in 2016 and were still seeing each other in the fall of 2018, when Hunter Biden is charged with lying on a screening form to buy a gun.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden gave the relationship their “full and complete support” in a 2017 statement that said they were “putting their lives together again after such sadness.”
Prosecutors have said Hallie Biden, who was granted immunity to testify, will say she saw Hunter Biden use drugs multiple times, and found drugs and paraphernalia in his belongings multiple times. She and her kids would search his "bags, backpacks, and vehicle in an effort to help him get sober," according to court documents.
--Xerxes Wilson and Brittany Horn
Hunter Biden texts debated as trial evidence
Abbe Lowell put the court on notice late Wednesday that he wants to introduce into evidence a chart of text messages involving Hallie Biden, the defendant’s sister-in-law and former lover.
Prosecutors objected arguing that Lowell’s notice to them was given too late and the evidence is not admissible. The parties have debated the issue for about half an hour.
U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika ruled that individual messages will be evaluated on a case by case basis to “refresh (Hallie Biden’s) memory.”
--Xerxes Wilson
A dispute about whether Hunter Biden filled out his addiction screen form correctly
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, still had questions Thursday about whether the gun shop that sold the president’s son a resolver in 2018 may have failed to confirm his address.
But U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika previously rejected Lowell’s attempt to introduce the second version of a federal screening form that Biden filled out when buying the guy. The second version had been altered to show Biden’s vehicle registration.
Lowell argued the shop filled out the form incorrectly, which is what Biden is charged with. But Noreika agreed with prosecutors that the second form would only confuse the jury.
The gun shop employee who watched Biden fill out the form, Gordon Cleveland, remained on the witness stand as the trial resumed Thursday. Prosecutors and defense lawyers are also debating other evidence Lowell wants to introduce.
--Xerxes Wilson
Trump laments the addictions of others when asked about Hunter Biden trial
Former President Donald Trump told Fox News on Wednesday he is watching Hunter Biden’s federal trial on gun charges, but the chat with Sean Hannity turned to addiction rather than politics or details of criminal law.
Biden is charged with lying on a federal form and to a gun dealer about his drug use when he bought a revolver in 2018. He has acknowledged a crack addiction, but his lawyer argued he was sober when buying the gun and didn’t intend to deceive anyone.
“I had a brother who suffered tremendously from alcoholism and alcohol,” Trump said.“And it was a terrible thing to watch. He was an incredible guy with the best personality. He was the best-looking person you have ever seen. Everything was perfect. But he had an addiction.”
--Bart Jansen
What happened at Hunter Biden's trial on Wednesday?
For Trump, the talk turned to alcohol. Trump, whose brother Fred Trump Jr. died of complications from alcoholism, said he’s never taken a drink.
Wednesday's testimony focused on Biden's years-long struggle with addiction, airing details about how his loved ones feared for his health and safety over several years of drug abuse. Jurors also heard from gun shop employee Gordon Cleveland who sold the gun and watched Hunter Biden fill out the form.
Who else is testifying this week?
After Hallie Biden's testimony, jurors are expected to hear this week from Delaware state police witnesses involved in finding the gun..
Hunter Biden's trial unites family for wrenching testimony
Hunter Biden’s federal trial on gun charges has become a presidential family reunion.
First Lady Jill Biden has been attending each day for gut-wrenching testimony of drug use, before traveling to France for D-day commemorations Thursday. Hunter’s half-sister sister Ashley Biden has been a frequent presence, as well as Hunter Biden's wife Melissa and Peter Neal, Hunter’s son-in-law.
Hunter Biden’s wife Melissa Cohen Biden extended her arms and blew kisses to her friends in courtroom. Jack Ownes, who is married to the president’s sister Valerie, patted Jill Biden’s sister Bonny’s head as he got through to his seat in the front row.
“Biden family is Delaware,” says the Rev. Dr. Christopher Bullock, seated in the second row behind Hunter Biden's defense table. He calls himself the Bidens’ spiritual adviser and is often garnering attention from the family during the case. “There is a lot of support here for them.”
−Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
Hunter Biden memoir regains popularity during trial
Hunter Biden’s searing 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things,” was a New York Times bestseller years before an audio version of him reading the tale of drug abuse was played as evidence in federal trial on gun charges.
But the trial has rekindled interest in what mega-author Stephen Kingcalled a “harrowing and compulsively readable memoir.
The book reached No. 4 on the New York Times’ list after its April 2021 list. The book jumped from 338,000 in Amazon rankings on Sunday to 12,900 on Monday, the trial’s first day, and 4,200 on Wednesday.
More than 28,000 copies of the book have been sold in the U.S. by May 25, according to industry tracker BookScan. More than 11,00 e-books were sold through February.
−Dan Morrison
What is Hunter Biden being on trial for?
The president's son faces three firearms felonies. In October 2018,Hunter Biden walked into a gun shopnorth of Wilmington, Delaware, and purchased a revolver. People who purchase firearms are required to fill out a standardized form that asks whether they are an unlawful user or are addicted to controlled substances, narcotics and other listed substances. Biden is accused of answering "no" to that question on the form.
But Biden has been open about his longtime struggles with crack cocaine addiction. He's written about it in his 2021 memoir, "Beautiful Things," and discussed it during a court hearing last year, stating he's been sober since 2019.
Biden faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison if convicted, although first-time and non-violent offenders are often given shorter terms.
– Xerxes Wilson
How many kids does Hunter Biden have?
Hunter Biden has five children. He has three daughters with his ex-wifeKathleen Buhlenamed Naomi Biden, Finnegan Biden, and Maisy Biden. In 2019, he welcomed a son with his second wife Melissa Cohen, Beau Biden IV., named after hislate older brother.
It was alsorevealedthat he had secretly fathered another daughter with an Arkansas woman named Lunden Roberts in 2018. Her name is Navy Roberts. President Joe Bidenfirst publicly acknowledgedhis granddaughter in 2023.
– Rachel Barber
