Hunter Biden trial highlights: ex-wife’s testimony and the moment the gun was purchased

After the jurors were dismissed, Hines told the judge that the prosecution has six more witnesses after Cleveland, and that their testimony will be shorter. He said it is possible that the prosecution could rest its case Thursday. If so, he said, the prosecution would like to know which witness or witnesses the defense might call.

Court has adjourned for the day. Testimony is expected to resume Thursday morning.

Cleveland said Hunter did not express interest in a particular model of handgun when he came into the store. Cleveland said he explained attributes of various models on display to him.

Lowell then asked Cleveland whether he was familiar with the phrase “whale hunter.”

“That’s what they called me because I sold high-end guns to customers,” Cleveland explained.

“I’m a salesman,” he added. “That’s just what I did.”

Lowell, Hunter Biden’s defense attorney, asked Cleveland whether he might have been mistaken when he testified that he saw Hunter drive up to the store, rather than perhaps walking to the store from nearby.

“100% sure he drove up,” Cleveland said. “I noticed the car as soon as it pulled into the third parking spot.”

He is now being cross-examined by the defense.

Fellow gun store employee Jason Turner started the background check process, Cleveland testified.

Cleveland spoke to Hunter about accessories such as a speedloader, practice ammunition and hollow-point ammunition, which he said was preferable to full metal jacket cartridges for self-defense.

“He went with the hollow point,” Cleveland said.

The former store clerk said Hunter paid in cash, giving him $900 and telling him to keep the change, which amounted to about $13. Cleveland said he didn’t keep the change but put it in an envelope next to the register.

Cleveland said he left the sales floor and consulted with a colleague about whether Hunter Biden could use a passport for identification. He then returned to the floor and watched Hunter sign the form, which includes a warning about the consequences of submitting false information.

Cleveland testified that he watched as Hunter Biden entered his name, address and other personal information on the form. He also said he was standing next to Hunter when he began to answer a series of questions on the form with “yes or no” boxes to check. Hunter checked a box saying he was purchasing the gun for himself. Another question asked “are you an unlawful user of or addicted to” marijuana, stimulants, narcotics or any other controlled substance.

“He wrote ‘no’,” Cleveland said. He also testified that Hunter did not ask any questions or express any confusion about answering the question.

The former store clerk testified that he presented Hunter with a blank federal gun purchase form, made a copy of the passport Hunter presented for identification and told him out the form and take his time.

Cleveland said firearms dealers are not allowed to help a person fill out a form.

Cleveland said the Colt Cobra revolver that Hunter Biden purchased was known as a reliable handgun. Hines, the prosecutor, showed Cleveland the gun in court and asked him to read the serial number.

Cleveland recalled seeing Hunter pull up the store in a Cadillac CTS, prompting prosecutor Derek Hines to ask how he remembered what kind of car Hunter was driving.

“I like guns and I like cars,” Cleveland said.

Gordon Cleveland sold Hunter Biden a .38 caliber revolver in October 2018. Federal prosecutors allege Hunter lied on a gun purchase form when he checked a box saying he was not a user of illegal drugs.

Before the judge ordered the recess, the prosecution called gun store clerk Gordon Cleveland to the stand next.

Before cross examination began, Kestan testified that in November 2018, the month after Hunter Biden purchased the gun, he invited her to visit him at a rental home in Massachusetts, where he told her he was undergoing ketamine transfusions, which are sometimes used to treat depression.

When she arrived, she said Hunter asked if she could find cocaine for him. Kestan said she contacted someone she knew from her college days in Providence, and they met a drug dealer before checking int a hotel. That night, and the next morning, before leaving for a ketamine treatment, Hunter used drugs, she said.

On cross examination by Hunter’s lawyer, Kestan acknowledged that she had no contact with him in October 2018, the period when he bought the gun.

Lowell, Hunter Biden’s defense attorney, has asked her about her talks with investigators and prosecutors.

They accused the president’s family members of making false statements to Congress as part of a year-long impeachment inquiry.

The Republican chairmen of the House Oversight, Judiciary and Ways & Means committees sent a letter to the Justice Department Wednesday recommending the prosecution of the two men.

For months, Republicans have pursued an impeachment inquiry seeking to tie the Democratic president to his son’s business dealings. So far, GOP lawmakers have failed to uncover evidence directly implicating President Joe Biden in any wrongdoing.

After the lunch break, jurors also were shown a cellphone photo that Kestan took of a hotel room in California where she said Hunter Biden had stayed in May 2018 with another woman before catching a flight to the East Coast. Kestan said Hunter asked her to check out of the room for him.

“I was quite angry that I had to clean it up,” she said, as jurors observed a photo of a tabletop littered with drug paraphernalia.

First lady Jill Biden had been absent after the morning break, but has now returned to the courtroom after lunch. Kestan, a former girlfriend of Hunter Biden’s, is back on the stand.

Several jurors took notes as Buhle and Kestan testified, and all members appeared to be attentive during the women’s testimony.

Hunter Biden didn’t have any visible reactions to the women’s testimony, and neither made eye contact with him as they left the witness stand.
Afterwards, Hunter held hands with his wife as they left the courtroom for a lunch break.

Before lunch, the prosecution showed jurors a photo from Kestan’s cellphone showing a glass pipe on a bathroom counter at the Four Seasons hotel in New York City.

Jurors also saw photos that Kestan took during their stay in Los Angeles, including a bathroom selfie that showed pipes and a beer bottle near Hunter. Another photo showed Hunter wearing a T-shirt that said “Addicted” over a marijuana leaf. “I thought that was funny because he didn’t smoke weed,” she said.

Kestan recalled helping Hunter learn how to cook powder cocaine into crack by searching the internet for tips for him. She said he successfully cooked his own crack but was disappointed by the yield that it produced.

She detailed when she saw him use drugs, buy drugs, talk about drugs or have drug paraphernalia. The prosecution asked her where he stored his drugs and pipes, and she testified he kept them in pouches and other places like sunglass cases.

Kestan was asked whether he acted differently when he was using.
“He was super charming. Everyone loved him. I didn’t notice it,” she said. “I think because I was catching feelings for him.”

She was asked whether he drank and used drugs at the same time, and she said yes. She moved to California, and he told her wanted to come, too, to get away from the East Coast and get clean. They looked for rehab facilities, Kestan said.

Testimony is expected to start up again when court resumes in about an hour.

Kestan said she met up again with Hunter Biden in New York a couple of weeks after their initial meeting, when a friend invited her to the hotel where Hunter was staying. Within 15 minutes of her arrival, Hunter began smoking crack and asked her if she wanted to join him, said Kestan, who declined. She ended up stayed with Hunter at his hotel for the next five days, during which time Hunter was smoking crack perhaps every 20 minutes, Kestan said. She added that she believed he was smoking less than what he was used to.

Kestan, a designer, said she first met Hunter Biden in December 2017 at a strip club in New York where she was working. During a private session, he pulled out a pipe and began smoking what she assumed was crack.

“He was incredibly charming and charismatic and friendly, and I felt really safe around him,” she said. “I remember after he had smoked it, nothing had changed. He was the same charming person.”

Kestan said Hunter invited him back to his hotel room. She declined but gave him her phone number.

Kestan is a former girlfriend of Hunter Biden. She is testifying under grant of immunity.

During cross examination, Lowell, Hunter’s defense attorney asked Buhle:

“Did you ever see Hunter using drugs?”

“No,” she replied.

On redirect questioning, prosecutor Leo Wise asked Buhle how she knew Hunter was using drugs, to which she replied: “He told me.”

“I assumed he was continuing to use when I would find the pipes in the car,” she said, adding that she found pipes “about a dozen times.”

First lady Jill Biden, who was in court earlier in the day to support Hunter, did not return after the morning break. She is headed to France later Wednesday, where President Joe Biden is marking the anniversary of D-Day.

Buhle testified that she discovered husband Hunter Biden was using drugs when she found a crack pipe in an ashtray on their porch on July, 3, 2015, a day after their anniversary. When she confronted him, “he acknowledged smoking crack,” she said.

Even before she found the crack pipe, Buhle suspected that Hunter was using drugs, given that he earlier had been kicked out of the Navy after testing positive for cocaine.

“I was definitely worried, scared,” she said.

Kathleen Buhle was married to the president’s son for roughly 20 years. They have three children and divorced in 2016 after his infidelity and drug abuse became too much, according to her memoir, “If We Break,” about the dissolution of their marriage.

Before the break, Hines, in his follow-up questioning of Jensen tried to rebut the implication that Hunter Biden was making large cash withdrawals to pay for rent, rehab and other expenses. The prosecutor showed bank statements indicating that Hunter used a debit card to pay for his drug treatment in California in August 2018 and for Airbnb rentals.

“Did you see any evidence during your investigation that Mr. Biden was taking wads of cash and mailing it to Airbnb?” Hines asked Jensen, the FBI agent called to answer questions about personal messages from Hunter’s devices. “No,” she replied.

Hines presented bank statements showing that Hunter used his debit card for liquor purchases. “Do drug dealers accept credit cards?” he asked, to which Jensen replied: “Not in my experience.”

The prosecutor also attempted to rebut suggestions by the defense that references to relapsing in Hunter’s memoir referred to alcohol and not drugs.

“I was smoking crack every 15 minutes,” Biden wrote after referring to relapsing in August 2018. Hines noted that Biden wrote about not being troubled about people trying to rob him as long as a cycle of depravity including drugs continued. “Does he say alcohol in that sentence?” the prosecutor asked, drawing a negative response from Jensen.

It’s unclear whether the president’s son would take the stand during the trial which could last up to two weeks during his father’s reelection campaign and likely include sharp disagreements over evidence

But jurors have been hearing his voice.

They have already listened to several audio excerpts prosecutors have played in court of his memoir “Beautiful Things” in which he talks about his descent into addiction following the death of his brother Beau in 2015. And they’ve seen text messages he wrote to friends and family.

After the jury left for the break, Judge Maryellen Noreika spoke with the attorneys about jury instructions.

Hunter Biden also faces a trial in California in September on charges of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes. Both cases were to have been resolved through a plea deal with prosecutors set for last July, the culmination of a yearslong investigation into his business dealings.

But Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, questioned some unusual aspects of the deal. The lawyers could not come to a resolution on her questions, and the deal fell apart. Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed a former U.S. attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, as a special counsel in August, and a month later Hunter Biden was indicted

During cross-examination, Lowell, Hunter Biden’s defense attorney, attempted to cast doubt on the testimony of the FBI agent called to answer questions about personal messages from his devices that were pulled by law enforcement.

Agent Jensen’s job was to establish that Hunter Biden had a drug problem when he purchased the gun in October 2018. Prosecutors do not have to prove he was using the day he bought the gun, just that he was using generally around the time of the purchase when he is accused of having lied on the form.

Lowell went through a large number of Hunter’s texts with the agent to establish that there were few messages that involved seeking or using drugs in the weeks before the gun purchase. The defense attorney also raised questions about how the FBI could prove Hunter Biden was being truthful with family when he texted about seeking or using drugs.

The president’s allies are worried about the toll the trial may take on the elder Biden, who’s long been protective and deeply concerned about his only living son and his sobriety and who must now watch as those past mistakes are publicly scrutinized.

Prosecutor Derek Hines is now doing redirect questioning.

The sidebar came after the prosecution objected to Lowell asking Jensen whether the gun purchase form filled out by Hunter Biden on Oct. 12 was the same form provided to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Oct. 26, after authorities began investigating the discovery of the gun in a trash bin.

The defense has argued that employees at the guns store made two revisions to the form filled out by Biden before providing a copy to the ATF.
After the sidebar, Lowell proceeded with questioning Jensen.

Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell is cross-examining Erika Jensen, an FBI agent who is testifying about messages and receipts law enforcement pulled from his devices. Earlier, Lowell pointed out several liquor store purchases by Hunter in October 2018, the month he bought the gun. Lowell has suggested that references in Hunter Biden’s book to “relapsing” refer to alcohol abuse, not drug use.

Lowell asked Jensen about text message exchanges that prosecutors say show evidence of Hunter Biden’s drug use in 2018 and 2019. Lowell pointed to a November 2018 text to Hallie Biden -- Beau Biden’s widow, with whom Hunter Biden had a relationship after his brother’s death -- in which Hunter confessed: “I’m a drunk.”

Lowell also questioned Jensen about bank statements showing withdrawals of large sums of money from Hunter Biden’s bank accounts. Prosecutors have suggested that he made the cash withdrawals in order to buy drugs. Lowell implied through his questioning that Hunter spent the money on rent and other living expenses, drug treatment, alimony, tuition for his children, and helping family members with their finances.

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. For part of the day, the first lady watched from the front row of the courtroom.

Hunter Biden has been charged with three felonies stemming from the purchase of the Colt revolver when he was, according to his memoir, addicted to crack. He has been accused of lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application by saying he was not a drug user and illegally having the gun for 11 days.