Hunter Biden trial: Highlights from today’s testimony

Afterwards, prosecutor Derek Hines told the judge two the prosecution has two witnesses planned for Friday, a drug expert and an FBI chemist.
Lowell, Hunter Biden’s attorney, said the defense has two or three witnesses before they will decide whether Hunter will testify himself.

Jill Biden has left France where she was attending D-Day anniversary events with President Joe Biden. She’s headed back to Wilmington, Delaware and is expected to attend Hunter Biden’s trial Friday. She is then expected to return to France for a state dinner on Saturday.

The first lady has been in court every day this week except Thursday. Other family members have also attended the proceedings throughout the week to show support for Hunter Biden, including Hunter’s sister Ashley, the president’s sister Valerie Biden and Jill’s sister Bonny Jacobs.

Banner is the man who found the gun in the trash can.

Banner said he found the leather pouch in which Hallie Biden had put the gun before tossing it in the trash, along with ammunition and a speed loader.

Banner said he took the gun home and put it inside a box from General Motors, where he previously worked, and put the box on a shelf in a closet.

On cross-examination, Greer explained that he told the man who took the gun out of the trash can, Edward Banner, that he wanted to talk to him because someone had left something in the trash at the grocery store that they should not have left.

Greer recalled Banner telling him: “Oh, yes they did.”

Lowell, the defense attorney, questioned Greer in great detail, which sometimes became comical, about how Banner drew a sock containing the gun from a shoe box and gave it to him, along with the leather pouch, the speed loader, ammunition and a Chapstick lip balm.

Lowell asked Greer whether Banner also turned over an iPhone box that apparently may have belonged to Hunter Biden. Greer said he could not recall, but that if Lowell was asking about it, he probably did.

During his earlier testimony, Marley, a Delaware State Police trooper who responded to Hallie Biden’s report of the missing gun, said Hunter Biden was considered the victim in that incident.

After interviewing Hunter at the grocery store, Marley said he went to the gun store where Hunter purchased the firearm and got its serial number for the report. He didn’t ask store employees for a copy of the paperwork that is at the center of the criminal charges against the president’s son. Another officer was assigned to conduct the follow-up investigation.

Marley said he doesn’t recall if Hunter expressed any concern that Hallie could get into legal trouble for tossing the gun in the trash can.

“But you called him the victim?” Lowell, the defense attorney, asked on cross-examination.

“Right,” Marley said.

Greer testified about video surveillance footage from the grocery store where Hallie Biden tossed Hunter’s gun in the trash at a grocery store. That footage showed an elderly man looking in the trash can and pulling out the gun just a short time earlier.

Greer said he was able to identify and find the man, who took Greer to his home, where he pulled the gun out of a sock and gave it to the trooper.

He also handed Greer the leather pouch in which Hallie had put the gun, along with a speedloader and a box of ammunition.

Greer is now a special investigator with the Delaware Department of Justice.

President Joe Biden says he will not pardon his son Hunter if he is convicted in a federal gun trial.

Biden was speaking to ABC News from Normandy France, where he is commemorating the anniversary of D-Day. The White House has said in the past that Biden would not pardon Hunter, but he was asked in an interview Thursday whether he would accept the outcome of his son’s trial, and he said: “Yes,” according to ABC.

He also said “yes” when asked whether he’d rule out a pardon.

After brief direct examination of Marley from the prosecution, defense attorney Lowell began his questions.

Lowell asked Marley whether he or the other trooper arrived at the grocery store first. Marley said he couldn’t remember. The questioning seemed to be part of a defense strategy to cast doubt on the memories of witnesses.

Delaware State Police trooper Joshua Marley and another officer were called to the grocery store where Hallie Biden tossed Hunter Biden’s gun in a trash can on Oct. 23, 2018.

Marley said he and a fellow trooper interviewed Hunter after he arrived at the store that day.

The pair exchanged a series of texts in the days after she threw out his gun that reflected a growing tension between the two.

“Im a drunk,” Hunter wrote in one text on Nov. 8, 2018. “An addict,” he added four seconds later.

Hallie called Hunter at 12:55 p.m. He then called her at 1:11 p.m.

At 1:23 p.m., Hallie texted Hunter: “Police coming to talk to me now. I’ll take full blame. I don’t want to live like this anymore. This is too much for me to handle.”

Hunter later arrived at the store, where the police talked to him as well.

Hallie and Hunter later left the store separately, but Hallie said she could not recall whether she went straight home.

“I would probably go home. But I just don’t recall driving back home,” she said.

Lowell pointed to phone records showing that they had several phone conversations over the next hour.

Hallie said she could not recall details of those calls.

Lowell asked Hallie Biden if she recalled also putting an iPhone box in the bag with Hunter Biden’s gun.

“I don’t recall the iPhone box,” she said.

Hallie said she arrived at the store where she threw the gun in the trash at 11:20 am. About 25 minutes later, Hunter texted her, asking, “Did you take that from me, Hallie?”

In a phone conversation about a minute later, Hallie said she told Hunter that she had taken the gun.

She then went back to the grocery store at Hunter’s request to see if she could retrieve it. Unable to find the gun, Hallie asked store employees if they had emptied the trash.

“I was upset,” said Hallie, who then worked with a store employee to call the police to report the missing gun.

She testified about how she put the gun in a bag, with the intent of getting rid of it.

“I didn’t want to hold it like a gun,” Hallie Biden said.

She added that she saw a box of ammunition that she put in the bag as well.

“In the console, there were some loose bullets, just sitting there,” she said.

They also went in the bag.

“He didn’t know I was doing this,” Hallie said.

Lowell, the defense attorney, asked Hallie Biden about her recollection of events on Oct. 23, 2018, the day she found Hunter Biden’s gun and tossed it in the trash. The questioning appeared to be aimed at casting doubt on Hallie’s memory.

Hallie said she saw a powder-like “dusting” when she found the gun in Hunter’s truck, parked outside her house.

“I don’t recall exactly what it was,” she said.

Lowell, referring to Hunter, said: “You don’t have a specific memory of where he was and when he was there.”

“On that morning, you’re not certain when you went to the car,” the defense attorney said.

“Correct,” Hallie said.

“You’re not certain when you saw him,” Lowell said.

“Correct,” she said.

Before the break, the defense’s cross-examination of Hallie Biden followed the prosecution’s tour through text messages and her recollections of her and Hunter Biden’s drug use. It also covered her finding a gun in Hunter’s truck and throwing it in the trash.

Hallie Biden acknowledged that when Hunter Biden told her in a text message the day after the gun purchase that he had been at a 7-Eleven store and waiting for a dealer, she did not know whether that was actually the case.

Hunter’s message came after she sent a text wondering where he was, suspecting that he might have been with another woman.

Hallie also said that she could not know whether Hunter was being truthful when he told her in a text on Oct. 14, two days after the gun purchase, that he was smoking crack.

Lowell asked Hallie Biden about her own drug use, and whether she attended counseling with Hunter Biden after he returned to Delaware from California in early October 2018.

Hallie said that from the time Hunter returned to Delaware to the time she threw his gun in a trash can, she did not use drugs and did not see Hunter using drugs. That period includes Oct. 12, 2018, the day of the gun purchase that led to the criminal charges he is facing. Prosecutors allege he lied on the gun purchase form when he said he wasn’t using drugs.

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Hunter Biden’s defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, begins by asking Hallie about Hunter Biden’s drug use after they began a romantic relationship following the 2015 death of her husband and Hunter’s brother, former Delaware attorney general Beau Biden.

Prosecutor Leo Wise is continuing his direct questioning of Hallie Biden.

Hallie Biden remained calm and composed as a prosecutor questioned her about her romantic relationship with her brother-in-law. She didn’t turn to look at Hunter Biden or his supporters as she entered the courtroom. Hunter appeared to remain expressionless as he watched her testify.

The attorneys have resumed their discussion over evidence admissions.

The prosecutor asked about a text message Hunter sent Hallie the day after he bought the gun, saying he was waiting for a dealer named Mookie.

Wise asked what she thought Hunter meant.

“That he was buying crack cocaine,” she said.

She said Hunter told her to go back to the store and look for gun. Surveillance footage shows Hallie looking in the trash can for the gun, but it was no longer there.

Hallie asked store officials if someone had taken out the trash or if they had surveillance footage that might help her find out what happened to the weapon.

She said Hunter told her to file a police report because the gun was registered in his name. She called the police while she was still at the store.

“I panicked and I wanted to get rid of them,” she testified of finding a gun and ammunition in the console of Hunter’s truck in October 2018..

Wise asked why she panicked, and Hallie responded: “Because I didn’t want him to hurt himself, and I didn’t want my kids to find it and hurt themselves.”

Hallie said she considered hiding the gun but thought her kids might find it. She then decided to throw it away.

“I was afraid to touch it. I didn’t know if it was loaded,” said Hallie.

She put the gun in a leather pouch, stuffed it in a shopping bag, and tossed it in a trash can outside an upscale grocery market near her house.

The prosecution played surveillance footage showing Hallie dumping the gun in the trash.

“I realize it was a stupid idea now, but I was panicking,” she said.

Wise, the prosecutor, asked Hallie Biden about visiting Hunter Biden at a hotel in California in 2018, and whether she was using drugs at the time.

“Yes, I was,” Hallie said.

“And who introduced you to it?’” the prosecutor asked.

“Hunter did,” Hallie said as Hunter rested his face on his left hand and looked down.

“It was a terrible experience that I went through, and I’m embarrassed and ashamed, and I regret that period of my life,” Hallie said.

Hallie said she stopped using drugs in August 2018, but that Hunter continued smoking crack.

Hallie Biden said after she began a relationship with Hunter Biden, she learned that he was using crack cocaine. She believes she first found the drug at her house in Wilmington, where Hunter would stay from time to time. She later saw Hunter actually using crack.

“Where did he get the drugs from?” asked prosecutor Leo Wise.

“Various dealers,” replied Hallie, adding that she was sometimes with Hunter when he met dealers.

She also said that smoking crack could leave Hunter “agitated or high-strung, but at other times, functioning as well.”

Hallie Biden is the widow of Hunter Biden’s late brother, Beau Biden. She had a brief romantic relationship with Hunter after Beau died in 2015.

Hallie said the relationship began in late 2015 or early 2016.

Lowell asked Cleveland what he had told another gun store employee who ran the background check on Hunter Biden. Cleveland initially said he did not tell the other employee anything, but then said he had asked the employee, Jason Turner, if it was OK to use Hunter’s passport as an acceptable form of identification.

Cleveland testified that Turner indicated that Hunter would need to provide another form of identification with his address on it, like a utility bill or a vehicle registration.

Hunter then left the store and returned a short time later, Cleveland said, but he did not see Hunter holding a piece of paper or presenting anything to Turner.

In his cross-examination of Cleveland, Lowell notes that some of the questions on the form that Hunter Biden filled out are in the present tense, such as “are you an unlawful user of or addicted to” drugs. Others are in the past tense, such as asking the potential gun buyer whether he or she has ever been discharged from the military or been adjudicated as a mental defective.

Defense attorneys have suggested that Hunter Biden might not have been using drugs at the time he bought the gun, or considered himself at that time to be an addict.

Gordon Cleveland, who began his testimony Wednesday, is back on the stand.

The president’s son is charged with falsely stating that he was not a drug user or addict when he bought a revolver from the store where Cleveland worked in October 2018.

He is facing three felony charges involving making false statements in a firearms transaction, and illegally possessing the gun.

In their trial brief, prosecutors included a series of text exchanges they say were between Hallie Biden and Hunter Biden in the fall of 2018.

In one exchange, the day after he bought the gun, Hunter told Hallie that he was waiting on a drug dealer. The following day, he told her he had been sleeping on a car and smoking crack.

Hallie Biden took the gun from Hunter Biden’s car and tossed in a trash can. It was found by a man collecting recyclables and eventually turned over to police.

Hunter Biden stood with his arms crossed in front of him as the jurors filed into the courtroom.

Judge Noreika said that during Hallie Biden’s testimony, attorneys cannot use statements made by Hunter Biden in text exchanges with her because they would be hearsay. Her own statements in the exchanges are a different matter.

“As to the texts from Ms. Biden to Mr. Biden, I think we’ll have to play that one at a time,” the judge said.

The attorneys also argued over whether expected testimony from Hallie Biden, about her text message exchanges with Hunter, contains inadmissible hearsay.

Hallie is the widow of Beau Biden, who also had a romantic relationship with Hunter Biden after his brother’s death.

The lawyers argued back and forth about exchanges of documentary evidence between the prosecution and defense. The discussion involved text messages extracted by the prosecution from Hunter’s laptop hard drive.

“You’re not giving them the information in the same way they gave it to you,” Judge Noreika told a defense attorney.

Lowell told the judge that the defense plans to file a motion later today, after the prosecution rests its case, challenging the sufficiency of the prosecution’s case.

Judge Maryellen Noreika told Lowell that if he thinks she will be able to read the motion, consider the prosecution’s response and issue a quick ruling, he has “an elevated view” of her ability.

“I appreciate that, but it’s not going to happen,” she said.

The trial has resumed for the day, with attorneys and the judge discussing Wednesday’s testimony of a gun store clerk who sold a revolver to Hunter in October 2018.

Defense attorney Abbe Lowell told the judge that he would like to continue his cross-examination by asking former clerk Gordon Cleveland about how another gun store employee became involved in the transaction.

He’s holding a copy of his own memoir, “Beautiful Things.” The jurors have been hearing excerpts from the book in court.

The case playing out in Wilmington, Delaware, stems from a gun the younger Biden bought in October 2018, months before his father announced his bid for the presidency.

Take a look at some key witnesses in the trial.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday painted President Joe 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.

Jurors also got their first look at the document at the center of the case, and Hunter Biden’s attorney argued that his client did not believe he was in the throes of addiction when he stated in the paperwork that he did not have a drug problem.

Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to the three federal firearms charges filed after his earlier deal imploded. He could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

The courtroom grew quiet when Kathleen Buhle, who was married to Hunter for 20 years, walked in Wednesday. She testified that she discovered her husband 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.