By Hallie Biden, the widow of President Joe Biden’s late son Beau Biden, testified in federal court Thursday that she became a drug user after the president’s surviving son, Hunter Biden, introduced her to crack cocaine.
“It was a terrible experience that I went through and I’m embarrassed and I’m ashamed of that period of my life,” Hallie Biden said in Hunter Biden’s criminal gun trial in Delaware federal court, NBC News reported.
Hallie Biden was romantically involved with Hunter Biden after Beau Biden’s death from brain cancer in 2015. She and Hunter were together in October 2018, when he allegedly lied about his drug use to buy a Colt Cobra revolver.
Hunter Biden, 54, faces three counts connected to his purchase and possession of the gun despite his drug use.
The trial has dredged up a slew of embarrassing and painful information that threatens to weigh down his father’s reelection bid against former President Donald Trump, who last week was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The current president’s campaign has sought to contrast the image of a stable, morally righteous Democratic incumbent against a lawless, dangerous and unfit Republican challenger in Trump. The Hunter Biden trial, filled with lurid details about the illegal and callous behavior of the president’s sole surviving son, could blur that distinction.
However, the fact that Hunter is on trial at all undermines the baseless, but widespread, claim by Trump and his allies that his hush money case in New York state court was a political persecution orchestrated by Biden.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Republicans have largely kept quiet about Hunter Biden’s trial for that reason.
Hallie Biden, who testified under a grant of immunity, said Thursday that she found the revolver in Hunter’s truck on Oct. 23, 2018, and threw it out behind a grocery store.
“I didn’t want him to hurt himself or my kids to find it and hurt themselves,” she testified.
Prosecutor Leo Wise showed jurors surveillance footage of Hallie Biden disposing of the gun and ammunition, then entering the grocery store and standing by a refrigerator without appearing to buy anything.
“I was just so flustered from the whole thing,” she testified. “I realize it was a stupid idea now, but I was just panicking.”
Prosecutor Derek Hines noted in his opening statement Tuesday that Halie Biden by October 2018 had been sober for two months, adding that “she remains clean today.”
She also testified about two text messages sent from Hunter on Oct. 13 and Oct. 14, in which he wrote he was waiting for a “dealer” and “sleeping on a car smoking crack.”
The messages are key to the government’s case that there is “overwhelming evidence” that Hunter knew he was a drug addict at the time he filled out the gun background check form.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell, in his opening statement, suggested that while the president’s son has long struggled with substance abuse and continued to abuse alcohol through 2018, there is reason to doubt he was a crack addict at the time he bought the gun.
This is developing news. Please check back for updates.
