WILMINGTON, Delaware — Prosecutors began presenting their case against Hunter Biden at his gun trial on Tuesday by showing the courtroom the first son’s infamous laptop and highlighting photos and messages from it.
Biden’s lead defense attorney Abbe Lowell looked at Judge Maryellen Noreika, with the silver laptop in his peripheral, and said he did not object to the government entering it into evidence. Lowell, however, also had opportunities to present his own case to jurors.
The panel of 12 Delawareans, who were selected one day prior, listened as both parties delivered opening statements and questioned prosecutors’ first witness, FBI agent Erika Jensen.
Jensen confirmed the authenticity of the laptop, as well as certain items of evidence from Biden’s computer data and excerpts from a memoir he wrote about his addiction battles.
Biden, who must be present in court every day, is facing three felony charges over allegations brought by special counsel David Weiss that he lied on a federal form about his drug use to purchase a revolver and that he possessed the gun for 11 days.
Hunter Biden’s actual laptop
Derek Hines, a government prosecutor, stunned the courtroom on Tuesday afternoon when he pulled out Biden’s MacBook Pro and carried it over to the witness stand for Jensen to authenticate.
Jensen held the silver machine, wrapped in clear plastic, in front of her for all of the courtroom to see. Hines then entered it into the exhibit record and began reviewing with Jensen a wealth of evidence from it.
The momentous event comes after years of salacious headlines about what became known as the “laptop from hell.” The stories stemmed from Republican operatives obtaining Biden’s computer data and disseminating it to the media right before the presidential election in 2020.
Biden has never confirmed the authenticity of the contents of the laptop and has waged lawsuits against its top disseminators, claiming the laptop contents was illegally hacked and manipulated. He has also signaled he may plan to raise chain of command issues with it at his trial.
Hines told the court the FBI subpoenaed the laptop from a repair shop in 2019 after receiving a tip about it.
Jensen confirmed that some data found directly on the laptop “sometimes” overlapped with Biden’s iCloud backup data that the government had received from Apple via subpoena. Jensen said the laptop was Biden’s because it contained a serial number that aligned with the subpoenaed data. She also confirmed investigators obtained an email from the iCloud data that showed an invoice from the repair shop to Biden that was dated April 2019.
Cocaine on leather pouch
Hallie Biden, with whom Hunter was in a romantic relationship, is expected to testify later in the trial that she retrieved the revolver from Hunter Biden’s possession and put it in a leather pouch that “he used to store his crack cocaine,” Hines said.
She will then testify that she threw the pouch in a trash bin at a grocery store, the prosecutor said.
Hines noted he would “maybe” call a chemist to the stand to testify about cocaine investigators found on the pouch five years after they retrieved it.
Lowell in his opening statement said that the lab reports from the pouch testing would be flawed for several reasons, including because the government failed to test for fingerprints or any sort of dating information.
“The evidence, like the pouch, will tell you nothing that supports the charge,” Lowell said.
Cash withdrawals
Prosecutors introduced into evidence three months’ worth of Biden’s bank records, which showed the first son withdrew an average of about $50,000 per month in cash from September to October 2019.
On Oct. 12, 2018, the day of the gun purchase, Biden withdrew $5,000.
During this timeframe, Biden was withdrawing “hundreds and sometimes thousands” of dollars nearly daily, behavior that is “consistent” with drug addiction, Hines said in his opening statement.
Hines also showed a receipt from Biden’s gun store purchase, which totaled $886.81. Biden paid in cash for the items, which included a Colt Cobra revolver, a BB gun, a box of ammunition, and a speedloader, the receipt showed.
Evidence entered at trial also showed Biden visited a rehab center in Los Angeles several times in August 2018. Lowell had just begun his cross-examination of Jensen at the end of the day on Tuesday, and he did not directly address the cash withdrawals. He did however suggest that a large expense for Biden was his visits to the rehab facility.
Did he know he was an addict?
Biden’s acceptance of his addiction problems and the exact days that he was using drugs have already become a key point of dispute.
Biden’s defense team showcased on Tuesday the erratic nature of the first son’s addiction and how the evidence at times left open questions about whether he was using alcohol or drugs.
At the start of his opening statement, Lowell said prosecutors “left out the word ‘knowingly’” in their presentation of Biden’s charges.
He said addicts commonly display a “deep state of denial,” suggesting Biden may have felt he was being truthful when he checked off on the form that he was not a drug user or addict.
Prosecutors must prove Biden committed the crimes “knowingly and with an intention to deceive,” Lowell said.
“They cannot do that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Hines told jurors he would present “overwhelming evidence” about Biden’s awareness level.
He began doing that Tuesday as he ran through months of Biden’s WhatsApp and text messages with Jensen that made references to drug transactions in 2018 and early 2019.
Lowell, on cross-examination of Jensen, noted that prosecutors had painstakingly introduced dozens of messages but that they failed to observe how some occurred in one-day spurts, such as 62 messages exchanged on a single day in February 2019.
He observed how February was four months after the gun purchase, alluding to his argument that prosecutors cannot prove Biden was using drugs on the day of the purchase. Noreika has ruled that the form’s language does not necessitate that prosecutors prove that he was using drugs on the exact day.
Memoir
Biden may have hurt his case in advance in 2021 by publishing his memoir Beautiful Things. In it he vividly details his compulsive yearslong addiction to alcohol and crack.
In opening statements and again during witness testimony, Hines played the audio version of Biden’s memoir. The first son’s voice came over the courtroom speaker and he could be heard making explicit admissions about his drug use. Prosecutors at times corroborated details of the book with Biden’s computer data.
Lowell established during cross-examination of Jensen that Biden began writing his memoir in November 2019.
“It’s not a diary,” he said, noting Biden was not writing it in real time but rather in hindsight.
Witnesses on deck
Hines listed out in his opening statement whom he planned to call to the stand over the course of the trial.
He said that after Jensen, he would call Biden’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle to the stand, as well as his ex-lovers Zoe Kestan and Hallie Biden.
Hallie is also Hunter Biden’s late brother Beau’s widow.
The first son had an “intense” relationship with her, Lowell said at one point as he indicated Biden may have been dishonest with her in text messages about his drug use that were shown as evidence.
Hunter Biden’s former romantic partners would “fill in events” from the fall 2018 time period, Hines said.
He also said he would call the gun salesman who sold Biden the gun to the stand, as well as two policemen, the man who found Biden’s gun in a trash bin, a Drug Enforcement Agency official, and “maybe” a chemist who could speak to the pouch’s lab report.
Lowell has requested to call a toxicologist to the stand to dispute the lab report. It remains unclear if Biden will testify in his own defense.
