Jury to resume deliberations in federal gun case against President Joe Biden’s son Hunter

Jurors will resume deliberations Tuesday in the criminal case against President Joe Biden’s son over a gun he Hunter Biden purchased in 2018 when prosecutors say he was mired in a crack addiction.

Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before leaving the federal courthouse in Delaware on Monday afternoon. They are weighing whether Hunter Biden is guilty of three felonies in the case that pits him against the Justice Department of his father, who is in the midst of his re-election campaign.

Prosecutors spent last week using testimony from his ex-wife and ex-girlfriends, photos of Hunter Biden with drug paraphernalia and other evidence to argue that he lied when he checked “no” on the form at the gun store that asked if he was “a consumer.” illegal or addicted to drugs.

“I knew he was using drugs. That’s what the evidence shows. And I knew he was addicted to drugs. That’s what the evidence shows,” prosecutor Leo Wise told jurors in his closing argument Monday.

Hunter Biden’s substance abuse problems after the death of his brother Beau in 2015 are well documented. But the defense has argued that he did not consider himself an “addict” when he bought the gun and checked “no” on the form that asked if he was “an illegal user” of drugs or addicted to them.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers have tried to show that he was trying to turn his life around at the time of the gun purchase, having completed a rehabilitation program in late August 2018.

The defense called three witnesses, including Hunter’s daughter, Naomi, who told jurors that her father seemed to be improving in the weeks before purchasing the gun.

And the defense told jurors that no one actually saw Hunter Biden using drugs during the 11 days he had the gun before Beau’s widow, Hallie, found it in Hunter’s truck and threw it in a trash can. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell suggested that prosecutors were presenting circumstantial evidence like a magician might present a card trick, trying to get jurors to focus on one hand and ignore the other.

“With my dying breath in this case, I ask for the only verdict that will force prosecutors to do what the law requires of them”: a not guilty verdict, Lowell said in his final address to the jury.

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