I had no idea that New York was a “red state”. Today I learned something.
Ah. The “But I’m angry now!” approach.
Mixed up my colors 
Moderating: Please do not hijack this thread into gun control or gun licenses.
reporting is that mr biden is not testifying.
the lawyers and the judge are going over the jury instructions.
speculation is that closings will start today.
per cnn:
The judge has rejected an attempt by the defense to add more favorable language to the verdict form that jurors will fill out when they finish their deliberations.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers wanted her to add the term “knowledge” for all three charged offenses – because the law requires prosecutors to prove that Hunter Biden knew he was a drug abuser when he bought the gun.
But the judge declined. That term is already in the jury instructions that they’ll hear before they deliberate.
per cnn:
The defense has rested its case without calling any more witnesses. They put on testimony from three witnesses on Friday.
Before the proceedings restarted, several men put their arms around Hunter Biden and prayed in a circle.
FBI agent Erika Jensen, who testified at the beginning of the trial, is back on the stand and prosecutors are questioning her.
Prosecutors are asking Jensen about texts that Hunter Biden sent while he was in Wilmington saying he was at a 7-Eleven in town.
This is an important topic because there are only 2 texts of Hunter Biden referring to using or buying drugs in October 2018 when he bought the gun, one of them said he was meeting a dealer named “Mookie” at the 7-Eleven.
The defense has said that, while those texts may exist, they do not prove that Hunter Biden went where he claimed to have gone in the texts, like the 7-Eleven. They also told the jury that “Mookie,” the alleged dealer, might not exist.
Jensen is now telling the jury about other times that Hunter Biden said he went to the 7-Eleven, according to his texts.
During cross examination, FBI agent Erika Jensen said she did not have location data of where Hunter Biden was when he messaged an individual about meeting at a 7-Eleven.
“It’s Q,” one text on October 11 said, one day before Hunter Biden’s gun purchase. “I’m at 7-11 now.”
“Meet me at 7-11 at 3,” Hunter Biden wrote back.
The prosecution has finished its rebuttal argument after calling FBI agent Erika Jensen.
13 total witnesses testified in the case.
Judge Maryellen Noreika is now reading the jury instructions.
After this, court will go on a lunch break and then have closing arguments.
per cnn:
before the juty instructions, there was a lot of confusion about a sidebar that latest 45 minutes with reporters straining to try and get a glimpse of what defense attorney Abbe Lowell was animatedly arguing about with the judge and prosecutors.
Prosecutor Leo Wise tells the jury, “people sitting in the gallery are not evidence. You may recognize them from the news … but respectfully, none of that matters.”
The first lady, Jill Biden, and other family members have been sitting in the gallery for much of the trial.
“Your decision can only be made on evidence,” Wise told the jurors.
“No one is above the law and this case stands for that simple proposition,” Wise said.
“Prosecutors need to prove Hunter Biden’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a burden we embrace,” Wise said.
Hunter Biden “knew he used crack” around the time he bought the gun in question in his criminal trial, prosecutor Leo Wise told jurors.
“The defendant knew he used crack and was addicted to crack at the relevant time period,” Wise said, homing in on one of the most difficult elements of the alleged crimes that prosecutors need to prove to win a conviction.
Wise added: “The evidence was personal; it was ugly and overwhelming.”
But, he said, such evidence of drug use and beyond was “necessary,” explaining why prosecutors spent so much time highlighting Hunter Biden’s well-documented struggles with addiction.
“There is no evidence that anyone else possessed the gun from October 12 to October 23, other than the defendant,” prosecutor Leo Wise said of the gun Hunter Biden owned.
This was in reference to count three, unlawful possession of a firearm by the user of a controlled substance.
“Maybe if he had never gone to rehab … he could argue he didn’t know he was an addict,” Wise said of Hunter Biden.
The prosecutor said the state does not have to prove Hunter Biden used drugs on a specific day to prove their case.
“The United States is not required to prove drug use on a specific day,” prosecutor Leo Wise told the jury. “There is no requirement for the United States to prove [drug] use in the month of October.”
Instead, the standard is that Hunter Biden was “actively engaged” in drugs around the time of the gun purchase, Wise said.
“You can convict on those facts alone,” Wise said.
Wise invoked the testimony of Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, who said she witnessed Hunter Biden smoking crack in September 2018, a few weeks before buying the gun.
rc: as this is federal, it is prosecution, defence, prosecution in closing arguments.
If he didn’t use in October, I’m not sure they could say he was a “user” when he bought the gun. Maybe he’s still an “addict” at that time, but not a user.
per cnn:
Prosecutor Leo Wise said that Hunter Biden messaged with drug dealers in the days around when he bought the gun at the center of this case.
“You see him setting up meetings [with a dealer] right before he bought the gun,” Wise said.
The messages show Hunter Biden’s purchasing drugs “almost in real time,” Wise said.
Wise also attacked Hunter Biden’s defense of text messages sent in the days after he bought the gun about buying and using drugs.
Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s attorney, has argued Hunter Biden made up a drug deal story to avoid seeing Hallie Biden at the time. Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter Biden’s late brother, Beau, was Hunter Biden’s former girlfriend.
“You use your common sense,” Wise said of this theory from the defense, noting if Hunter Biden didn’t want to see Hallie Biden he could have lied earlier about where he was.
“He didn’t need to make up this elaborate story about two drug deals,” Wise said.
In closing arguments, prosecutor Leo Wise zeroed in on testimony about Hunter Biden’s truck. His daughter Naomi said there weren’t any drugs or drug remnants when she gave the truck back to her dad on October 19.
Hallie Biden testified that she found crack remnants when she searched his care on October 23.
Wise read messages between Hunter Biden and his daughter, Naomi, telling the jury they were evidence of Hunter Biden acting erratically.
Pointing to Naomi’s searing testimony about her father’s addiction, Wise said the reason Naomi was called to the stand “was to suggest he was somehow okay” in October 2018.
But Hunter Biden repeatedly texted his daughter on the early hours of the morning, wise said, trying to get his touch from her.
“This isn’t okay,” Wise said.
Prosecutors have finished their closing arguments in Hunter Biden case. The defense team is beginning theirs.
Abbe Lowell said the jury should make sure that Hunter Biden is not “convicted improperly.”
Reasonable doubt “is not suspicion or conjecture,” Lowell said.
“With this very high burden, it’s time to end this case,” he said.
per cnn:
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell compared the prosecutor’s case to a “magician’s trick” — a slight-of-hand where they try to get a conviction even though the evidence isn’t there.
He said this while this wile criticizing special counsel David Weiss’ team for, in his view, cherry-picking evidence to present a more favorable timeline at Hunter Biden’s drug use that supports their claim that he was actively on drugs in October 2018.
Again, Lowell argued that the bar for prosecutors to prove Hunter Biden was knowingly violating the law was extremely high.
Knowingly, Lowell said, means that Hunter Biden would have had to have been “conscious and aware” of the law and how he was violating it.
“With this very high burden, it’s time to end this case,” Lowell said.
When he marked on the federal form that he wasn’t an addict, Hunter Biden was not saying “what he believed to be false.”
Lowell, Hunter Biden’s defense attorney, told the jury that prosecutors hadn’t proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter Biden knew at the time he bought the gun that it was illegal.
Hunter Biden’s knowledge of his addiction and of breaking the law is a key legal threshold required for a conviction.
“They spent hours, I mean literally hours, recounting Hunter Biden’s terrible journey with alcohol and drug use,” Lowell said, chiding prosecutors for reading excerpts from Hunter Biden’s memoir.
But, Lowell said, prosecutors are “blurring Hunter’s intentions at the time of the purchase with what he was “admitting after the fact” in his book.
“Pay close attention” to the real timeline, Lowell told the jury.
The defense slammed Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, a critical prosecution witness who implicated him in drug use a few weeks before he bought the gun at the center of the case.
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell said Kestan met with prosecutors many times before trial to “rehearse” her testimony – instantly drawing an objection from the special counsel team. It is not uncommon for prosecution witnesses in a trial to meet with those attorneys before getting on the stand.
Lowell noted that Kestan helped connect Hunter Biden with drug dealers, enabling him.
He also pointed out that Kestan took a lot of pictures of Hunter Biden with drugs, but none from the key month of October 2018, when he bought the gun.
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell also noted that Hallie Biden, a key witness for the prosecution, couldn’t recall details around the time she found the gun in Hunter Biden’s car.
“Poor Hallie,” Lowell said, adding that through her testimony she has been “dragged through” a tragic time in her life.
Hallie Biden, Lowell said, testified that she guessed that residue she saw in the car was from drugs and couldn’t recall what paraphernalia she said she saw.
Powell also said the prosecutors were trying to weave “suspicion” and “conjecture” about the pouch found with Hunter Biden’s gun in his car. An FBI chemist testified that it tested positive for small amounts of cocaine.
“You don’t know” who put that residue there, Lowell said, suggesting explicitly it may have originated from “Hallie [Biden].”
Further, Lowell noted that the special counsel only tested the pouch for drugs in 2023, five years after it was seized.
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell again leaned on the “magician’s trick” motif to accuse prosecutors of trying to dupe the jury.
“Watch this hand, pay no attention to the other one,” Lowell said.
He raised this regarding the testimony of a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) drug expert. The expert told the jury all about the “drug lingo” that Hunter Biden used, Lowell said, but those examples weren’t from the time that Hunter Biden purchased and possessed the firearm.
Much of the case, Lowell said, included testimony to facts Hunter Biden has already admitted – his years long use of crack cocaine.
Lowell ridiculed prosecutors for calling Hunter Biden’s ex-wife to testify, noting she didn’t have knowledge about the year off the allegations.
No one, Lowell said, had witnessed “actual drug use” in the month Hunter Biden bought the firearm.
Lowell is also hammering into the jury that prosecutors’ case is based on “suspicion” and “conjecture.”
“There was no actual witness” to Hunter Biden’s drug use during the operative time in 2018, Lowell asserted.
Hunter Biden’s repeated withdrawals of cash could be for other “operative purposes” besides drug purchase, he said, and prosecutors didn’t definitively prove “when” remnants of crack were left on a leather pouch Hunter owned.
“Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is not suspicion or conjecture and hoping you won’t realize the difference,” Lowell said.
per cnn:
Hunter Biden defense attorney Abbe Lowell brought up the federal form Hunter Biden signed to purchase a gun in 2018.
“He did check the boxes and he did sign the form,” Lowell said, but said based on witness testimony it was unclear when that occurred and how complete it was.
Lowell also noted that the question of drug use and addiction on the form was in the present tense.
“A question not on the past tense but in the present: are,” Lowell said, adding “what he thought on those key days” as crucial.
Lowell reminded the jury that the gun seller, Gordon Cleveland, didn’t think Hunter Biden was on drugs when he bought the gun.
Cleveland “spent lots of time” with Hunter Biden that day, maybe more than anyone else, Lowell said, and testified that Hunter Biden “not at all exhibited” any signs of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
This is “real evidence” that Hunter Biden is not guilty of lying on the ATF form, Lowell said.
Hunter Biden defense attorney Abbe Lowell said Hallie Biden did something “incredibly stupid” and may have done it “for love” when she threw out Hunter Biden’s gun.
After Hunter Biden learned that Hallie Biden tossed the gun in a trash can at a grocery store, he told her to call the police, Lowell noted.
“A person who is … using drugs, can’t operate, is a ‘danger to public safety,’” Lowell said quoting prosecutors, is the “very same person” who told Hallie Biden to file a police report.
Lowell also said “there is no evidence in the record – none” that the gun was ever even loaded during the 11 days when Hunter Biden owned it in October 2018.
“There is no evidence that the gun was anywhere except in that lockbox,” in his truck, Lowell said.
per cnn:
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell slammed prosecutors, saying the most “unfair” thing Weiss’ team did was “take Hunter’s words about being an addict out of the context they were in.”
Many people refer to themselves as addicts even in periods when they aren’t using, Lowell said.
But calling yourself an addict at an AA or NA meeting, or in retrospect, is “not the same” as legally acknowledging that you are currently a drug user.
Lowell added that “Hunter has not asked anyone to excuse the mistakes he has made: using drugs and alcohol to dull the pain that he felt.”
Hunter Biden’s defense attorney Abbe Lowell finished his closing argument in the federal gun case Monday.
Prosecutors will now present a rebuttal. After that, the judge said she would then give jurors a few final instructions before sending them to deliberate.
Lowell’s closing argument went approximately 85 minutes.
per cnn:
It was “extraordinarily cruel” for prosecutors to ask Naomi Biden if she used drugs to try to fill in the “gaping holes” in their case, Hunter Biden’s defense attorney Abbe Lowell said during his closing argument.
Lowell glared directly at prosecutors as he spoke, raising his voice and banging his fist on the lectern.
The prosecution has started its rebuttal of the defense’s closing argument in the Hunter Biden gun trial.
per cnn:
Prosecutor Derek Hines is pointing directly at Hunter Biden while referencing Hunter Biden’s decisions to buy a gun and use drugs.
“Choices have consequences, and that’s why we’re here,” he said. “We wouldn’t be here in this courtroom” if Hunter Biden only smoked crack, Hines said.
Prosecutor Derek Hines told the jury that defense witness Naomi Biden actually hurt her father’s case because she was telling the truth.
She was “completely uncomfortable” and in visible “anguish” on the stand, he said of Naomi Biden.
“She couldn’t vouch for the defendant’s sobriety,” Hines said, adding that she couldn’t do so because she swore to tell the truth.
During his closing argument, Hunter Biden defense attorney Abbe Lowell shouted that it was cruel when prosecutors asked if Naomi Biden used drugs.
(There is no evidence that she has used drugs and she has not been accused of doing so or charged with any crime.)
“Choices have consequences, and that’s why we’re here,” he said. “We wouldn’t be here in this courtroom” if Hunter Biden only smoked crack, Hines said.
You hear that kids? If your choice is between exercising your Constitutional rights and smoking crack you should choose . . . crack!
per cnn:
The prosecution has concluded their rebuttal.
The judge is now set to provide final instructions and send the jury to start deliberations.
The case against Hunter Biden has gone to the jury in Wilmington, Delaware.
They will now consider whether President Joe Biden’s son is guilty or not guilty of the three gun charges brought by prosecutors.
While I think there should be a MILD legal consequences for using drugs involved in foreign warlordism — maybe diversion to mental health court — it is crazy to me that the consequence is a felony only taking effect when you purchase a gun.
I have no idea what I would do now if on the jury. I expect I would be listening more then talking.
Umm, just being in possession of illegal drugs (with no questions about whether said drugs are involved in foreign warlordism) is … . ALREADY A CRIME.
I wonder why they didn’t prosecute him for that crime. Actually I don’t wonder, it’s because they don’t have enough evidence.
Regarding the last post:
It is in his memoirs. The prosecution could probably show he had been in a rehab center that specializes in drugs. I have no reasonable doubt that Hunter has taken illegal drugs, even without testimony in this case.
It may be that the charges Hunter now faces are hardly ever prosecuted except as an add-on to more serious charges. But just plain possession of a small quantity for personal use, unless bargained down from more serious charges, is, I think, NEVER brought to trial.