WILMINGTON, Del. (NewsNation) — The jury has reached a verdict in the trial of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter who is facing charges that he bought a gun while being addicted to drugs.
This is the first of two trials Hunter Biden faces amid his father’s reelection campaign. The president has previously said he plans to accept the jury’s verdict and has ruled out a pardon for his son.
It’s a case that has put a spotlight on a turbulent time in Hunter Biden’s life after his older brother Beau Biden’s death in 2015.
Prosecutors say Hunter Biden lied when he swore he wasn’t a drug user on a form he filled out at the gun shop in 2018, months before Joe Biden announced his bid for president. However, attorneys say that Hunter Biden did not consider himself an “addict” when he filled out that form, after completing a rehab program weeks earlier, and there’s no evidence he had been using drugs in the 11 days that he possessed the gun.
Witnesses included Hunter Biden’s former romantic partners, including Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie. The two had a brief relationship after Beau Biden died of brain cancer.
Hallie Biden found the unloaded gun in Hunter Biden’s truck Oct. 23, 2018, panicked and tossed it into a garbage can at a grocery store in Wilmington, where a man inadvertently fished it out of the trash.
During the trial, Hunter Biden’s daughter, Naomi, also testified, as well as the person who sold him the gun.
Hunter Biden is also facing a separate trial, set to be held this September in California, over charges that he failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes. Both cases were to have been resolved through a now-defunct plea deal with prosecutors last July, the culmination of a yearslong investigation into his business dealings.
