Jurors will resume deliberations in the gun case against Hunter Biden

Jurors will resume deliberations in the criminal case against Hunter Biden over a gun that President Joe Biden’s son bought in 2018, when prosecutors say he was addicted to crack cocaine.

Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before leaving the federal courthouse in Delaware on Monday afternoon.

They are considering whether Hunter Biden is guilty of three felonies in the case that pitted him against his father’s Justice Department in the middle of the Democratic president’s re-election campaign.

Last week, prosecutors used testimony from his ex-wife and ex-girlfriends, photos of him with drug paraphernalia and other shoddy evidence to show that he lied when he checked “no” on a form at a gun store that asked if he was an “illegal user of or addicted to drugs.

“He knew he was taking drugs. That’s what the evidence shows. And he knew he was addicted to drugs. That’s what the evidence shows,” prosecutor Leo Wise told jurors in his closing argument Monday.

Hunter Biden’s struggle with drug addiction following the death of his brother Beau in 2015 is well documented.

However, the defense argued that he did not consider himself an “addict” when he bought the gun.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers tried to show that after completing a rehabilitation program in late August 2018, he was trying to turn his life around.

The defense called three witnesses, including his daughter Naomi, who told jurors that in the weeks before he bought the gun, he appeared to be improving.

The defense told jurors that no one witnessed Hunter Biden using drugs during the 11 days he had the gun before Beau’s widow, Hallie, found it in Hunter’s truck and threw it into a garbage can.

Defense attorney Abbe Lowell suggested that prosecutors presented circumstantial evidence like a magician playing a card trick, trying to get jurors to focus on one hand and ignore the other.

“As I draw my last breath in this case, I am asking for the only verdict that will keep prosecutors in line with what the law requires of them” – a not guilty verdict, Lowell said in his final address to the jury.

Prosecutors, however, showed the jury text messages sent a few days after purchasing the gun in which Hunter Biden told Hallie he was waiting for a dealer and smoking crack.

Hallie and Hunter dated for a short time after Beau’s death.

Prosecutors also said they found cocaine residue on the bag into which Hallie put the gun and then threw it into a trash bin outside the upscale grocery store.

Hunter Biden last year hoped to resolve a long-running federal investigation into his business dealings in a deal with prosecutors that would avoid the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election.

Under the deal, he would plead guilty to tax crimes in California and avoid prosecution in a Delaware gun case if he stayed out of trouble for two years.

However, the deal collapsed when Trump-nominated U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika questioned unusual aspects of the proposed deal, and lawyers were unable to resolve the issue.