Trial of a president’s son: Crack Cocaine, a Colt Cobra revolver and an alleged lie

A salesman standing in the window didn’t initially recognize him as the son of the state’s longtime Democratic senator, now-President Joe Biden, and would later recall declining a tip from the younger Biden as he purchased a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver.

There will be no mistaking Hunter Biden on Monday when he appears in federal court for his criminal trial on charges stemming from that 2018 purchase. At 8:30 a.m., he’s due in the fourth-floor courtroom of U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika for the start of jury selection.

For the younger Biden and his family, the proceeding comes with substantial legal and political peril. Hunter Biden, 54, pleaded not guilty last year to charges he lied on a federal form about his drug use when he purchased the revolver in 2018, at a time when he has acknowledged being addicted to crack cocaine. If convicted, Hunter Biden faces up to 25 years behind bars, although any prison term is likely to amount to just a fraction of that maximum sentence.

But the proceeding itself is expected to delve into details of his addiction and thrust the Biden family’s inner dynamics into public view as the president campaigns for re-election. The trial is expected to wrap up just weeks before Biden has his first debate with former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

The sitting president’s son will be defending himself against the Justice Department of his own father’s administration, just days after Trump was convicted on 34 charges related to paying hush money to a porn star.

Unlike in that trial, where leading Republicans rallied around the former president and showed up to support him in court, Democrats aren’t expected to emerge as a major force defending Hunter Biden in the public arena. The White House views the trial as a personal matter and has no formal plans to respond to courtroom developments, according to a person familiar with the strategy.

“We support rule of law taking place without political hectoring," said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

Efforts to put together a legal-defense fund for Hunter Biden have gained little traction, said David Jolly, the onetime Republican congressman who has been involved in efforts to shore up public support for Hunter Biden. He said he presented a memo outlining options for a fund to some Biden allies months ago and said his ideas remained on the drawing board.

Hunter Biden accompanied his father to the president’s Rehoboth Beach vacation home in Delaware over the weekend. The two rode bikes together Saturday morning and attended church in the afternoon.

The president’s son once thought he had headed off a trial. Last summer, he reached an agreement with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanor tax charges and avoid prosecution on a gun charge.

The plea deal carried the promise of resolving a five-year investigation and avoiding a trial that would air tawdry details of a troubled period in which he has acknowledged struggles with drugs and alcohol. But the deal disintegrated during a dramatic July hearing in which the younger Biden’s lawyers and federal prosecutors disagreed in open court about the extent of the immunity the agreement granted the president’s son from possible future charges.

Within weeks of the hearing, Attorney General Merrick Garland conferred special counsel status on the federal prosecutor overseeing the investigation, David Weiss, an appointment that formally gave him added autonomy within the Justice Department.

By the end of the year, Biden was indicted on the gun charges in Delaware and, later, on tax charges in Los Angeles. His trial on tax charges, initially set to begin later in June, was recently delayed to early September.

In the gun case, federal prosecutors are planning to use the younger Biden’s own words against him. They are expected to draw from excerpts of Biden’s memoir published in 2021, “Beautiful Things." Among the excerpts is a section of the book about his return to Delaware in October 2018.

“All my energy revolved around smoking drugs and making arrangements to buy drugs—feeding the beast," Hunter Biden wrote in one excerpt that prosecutors referenced in court filings.

In court papers ahead of trial, federal prosecutors have also previewed a witness list that includes Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, and Hallie Biden, the widow of his late brother, Beau Biden. Prosecutors didn’t reference either woman by name, but both are identifiable by the descriptions of their respective relationships to Hunter Biden, who had a romantic relationship with Hallie Biden following his brother’s death.

Prosecutors said Buhle checked Hunter Biden’s car periodically because she didn’t want their children in a vehicle with drugs. On about a dozen occasions, prosecutors said, she found drugs or paraphernalia, which she discarded in a trash can. In a March 2018 text message, she wrote: “I also found a few crack pipes. I took them out because our daughter was driving the car."

Prosecutors also plan to show videos and photographs of Biden smoking crack that were backed up to his Apple iCloud account and the now-infamous laptop he left at a Delaware computer store.

In court hearings ahead of trial, prosecutors have described the case as simple and straightforward.

Biden’s attorneys have dug in for a vigorous defense. His lead lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has questioned the legality of the gun sale and alleged that the store improperly accepted Biden’s passport as identification.

Noreika, a Trump appointee confirmed in 2018, said up to 250 residents of Delaware would be summoned to impanel a 12-member jury with four alternates in reserve. When a prosecutor asked if she would hold trial proceedings on Fridays, she replied, “We’re a five-day-a-week kind of court."