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Today is day six of the Hunter Biden gun trial. Last Friday the prosecution rested its case and the defense called a couple of witnesses. Their chief witness was Naomi Biden, Hunter’s daughter. But as I noted at the time, the sense in the room was that Naomi’s testimony backfired. Here’s how Axios reported it.
Hunter’s oldest daughter, 30, clearly wanted to help her father convince jurors that he wasn’t taking drugs when he bought a gun in 2018 and signed a federal form swearing he wasn’t a drug user.
But probing questions and old text messages presented by the prosecution Friday made the president’s son look more like an erratic dad than a good father who was getting sober in the week after he bought the gun…
When the court broke for lunch after Naomi’s testimony, Biden family members looked shaken and crowded into a small room for the defense team, which was so full of people they struggled to close the door.
The came to the same conclusion about Naomi’s testimony.
“I’m really sorry dad. I can’t take this,” Naomi Biden texted on Oct. 18, while they were both in New York, according to prosecutors. “I don’t know what to say, I just miss you so much,” she texted. “I just want to hang out with you.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been so unreachable,” Hunter Biden replied. “It’s not fair to you.”
The questioning of Naomi Biden clearly took a toll on first lady Jill Biden and other members of the Biden family, who sat in the first row, steely-eyed. At one point, Lowell interrupted the cross-examination to provide his client’s daughter with a bottle of water.
After that debacle, Hunter’s team canceled the planned testimony by his uncle James Biden and court ended early for the day. The defense said they would make a decision about the testimony of their last witness, Hunter himself, over the weekend.
Generally, it’s considered risky to have a high profile defendant testify on his own behalf in a case like this. So it came as no surprise today when the defense announced Hunter would not be testifying.
Instead, the defense arrived this morning asking the judge to revise the jury instructions in a way that would be more favorable to their case. Judge Noreika largely said no to those requests.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell has asked Judge Noreika to leave in “did not testify” in the jury instructions as it relates to the defendant, indicating Hunter will not testify.
Judge Noreika decided she will not allow the defense to include their requested “theory of the defense” instruction in the final jury instructions. She called it an “argument” and she said she didn’t think it was “appropriate” for her to say.
After about an hour of wrangling over the jury instructions, the defense rested their case. Then the prosecutors called back one of their previous witnesses, FBI Agent Erika Jensen. The core of the defense case is the idea that Hunter was not doing drugs in October 2018 at the time he bought the gun and therefore didn’t « knowingly » lie on his ATF form when he put down that he was not a drug addict. The problem is that there are text messages which seem to indicate he was still using.
On Oct. 10, Jensen said, Hunter Biden sent texts to Hallie Biden about meeting someone at a 7-Eleven convenience store. It is apparent from the context surrounding the messages that the person he was going to meet was a drug dealer…
The prosecution showed references within text messages that were not previously presented, discussing being at or near a 7-Eleven on the 10th, and on the 13th — which is on either side of the gun purchase on the 12th.
On cross, the defense tried to argue that Hunter’s plan to meat someone at 7-11 at 3 am in the morning (the person was identified only as Q in his phone) didn’t prove that Hunter was buying drugs.
