Prosecutors Detail Hunter Biden's Drug Problems

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday painted President Biden's son Hunter as deceptive and driven by addiction, a man whose dark habits ensnared loved ones and who knew what he was doing when he lied on a federal form to purchase a gun in 2018.

• The first day of testimony in the case dredged up painful memories for the president and his family, and revealed new and highly personal details about some of their struggles with addiction as the 2024 election looms, the AP reports. For part of the day, the first lady watched from the front row of the courtroom.

• Attorneys said jurors would hear testimony from the president's brother James Biden, who is close with Hunter and helped his nephew through rehab stints in the past. They will also hear how Hallie Biden, the widow of the president's late son Beau, also became addicted to crack during a brief relationship with Hunter.
• Prosecutors on Tuesday spent hours on Hunter Biden's drug problem, using his own words and missives to show the depth of the addiction and to suggest it was still ongoing when he bought the gun. They showed jurors his old laptop computer, the same one he left at a Delaware repair shop and never retrieved. In 2020, the contents made their way to Republicans and were publicly leaked, revealing highly personal messages about his work and his life.

• An FBI agent read aloud messages stored on his devices that chronicled a desperate effort to buy drugs. The data also included receipts for a detox facility he attended before relapsing and showed large cash withdrawals. In one exchange with Hallie, the day after he bought the gun, she wrote: "I called you 500 times in past 24 hours." Hunter replied less than a minute later, informing her that he was "sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th street and Rodney."
• But during cross-examination, the FBI agent testified that Hunter Biden sent fewer messages about seeking drugs in October 2018, around the time when he purchased the gun, than in February 2019, a later period in which Lowell described his client as struggling significantly with addiction.
• The jury also heard lengthy audio excerpts of Hunter Biden's memoir, Beautiful Things, in which he narrates his return to Delaware around the time of the gun purchase and his descent into drugs following the death of his brother in 2015 from cancer.

(During a morning break in the trial, Hunter Biden's wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, confronted a former Trump staffer.)

(More Hunter Biden trial stories.)