Jurors were told Biden would spend days in hotel rooms getting high in the months before his 2018 gun purchase.
Hunter Biden’s former girlfriend testified about his near-constant use of crack cocaine in luxury hotels during the criminal trial where prosecutors are trying to prove that US President Joe Biden’s son lied about his addiction. buy a gun illegally.
Zoe Kestan told jurors that Hunter Biden would cook crack at the swanky Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles or spend days in hotel rooms getting high in the months before his 2018 gun purchase.
“He would want to smoke as soon as he woke up,” Kestan told the court Wednesday, describing his encounters with a “scary” drug dealer and his search on the Internet for instructions on how to turn powder cocaine into crack.
Kestan testified in the first trial of a US president’s child, where prosecutors are trying to prove Hunter Biden knowingly lied about his drug use on the control documents when he purchased a revolver in October 2018.
Kathleen Buhle, who divorced Hunter Biden in 2017, also testified for about 20 minutes to describe how she first discovered he was using drugs.
Prosecutors also said they plan to call Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter’s late brother Beau.
Hunter Biden, 54, has pleaded not guilty to three criminal charges, accusing him of failing to disclose his illegal drug use when he purchased the gun and illegally possessing the weapon for 11 days.
Biden has publicly acknowledged his past drug use, including in his memoir. He told the judge in the case during a 2023 hearing that he had been sober since 2019.
Defense says it has no intention to deceive
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell countered that Hunter Biden was not using drugs at the time of the purchase and did not intend to deceive. Lowell pressed an FBI agent to acknowledge that prosecutors had evidence of Hunter’s addiction only before or after rather than during the time he owned the gun.
This trial follows another historic first: last week’s criminal conviction of Donald Trump, the first American president. be found guilty of a crime. Trump is the Republican challenger to Democrat Joe Biden in the November 5 election.
Kestan also described a message from Hunter Biden in which he said, a month after purchasing the gun in October 2018, that he might get sober but that “I will always be an addict.”
The defense has worked to show that prosecutors did not present much evidence that Hunter Biden was using drugs at the time he bought the gun.
When questioned by Lowell, Kestan said she had not seen him in the weeks before and after purchasing the gun. She also acknowledged that when he described himself as having always been an addict, he was using language associated with people recovering from drug addiction.
Hunter Biden is charged for lying about his use of illegal drugs when he purchased a .38 caliber Colt Cobra revolver and for illegally possessing the weapon for 11 days in October 2018.
The trial comes after a plea agreement which would have settled the case collapsed in July last year.
If convicted on all counts in the Delaware case, Hunter Biden faces up to 25 years in prison, although defendants typically receive shorter sentences, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
