Editor’s Note: Hallie Biden remarried last week. It is unclear if she still uses Biden as her last name. Court staff and attorneys referred to her with the Biden last name. This story will as well.
Hallie Biden, the ex-girlfriend of Hunter Biden and the widow of his brother, testified Thursday about his use of crack cocaine, as well as trashing his gun at a Greenville grocery store in October 2018.
The deeply personal testimony provided some of the closest evidence of Hunter Biden’s drug use to when he purchased a Colt revolver at a Talleyville gun store 11 days before it was thrown in the trash.
Hunter Biden is on trial for three firearms felonies in a federal courthouse in Wilmington this week, the first child of a sitting president to face criminal trial in U.S. history. Prosecutors contend that he lied about his drug use when he filled out a federal form required to purchase the gun, the root of the felonies.
Defense attorneys concede that Hunter Biden struggled with drug addiction before and after purchasing the weapon, but have argued that prosecutors cannot prove that he knowingly deceived the gun shop when filling out the form − which is required to convict him.
To that end, his defense has sought to build a wall around the October period in which Hunter Biden purchased the gun, arguing in opening statements the evidence will show he “was not using when he bought the gun.”
However, Hallie Biden’s testimony and evidence introduced Thursday showed that just one day after he purchased the gun, the president’s son texted Hallie Biden to say he was smoking crack cocaine at 4th and Rodney streets in Wilmington.
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‘I am embarrassed, I am ashamed’
The room was silent Thursday morning as Hallie Biden entered with her husband by her side and walked directly to the witness stand without glancing at anyone, including Biden family and friends sitting in the gallery. She referred to Hunter Biden as her “brother-in-law.”
She told the jury that after the May 2015 death of her husband Beau − Hunter Biden’s late brother and Delaware’s former Attorney General − she and Hunter gradually began a relationship. It was late 2015 or 2016.
She also said Hunter Biden introduced her to crack cocaine, saying she’d never previously seen it before she found it at her home, where the president’s son would periodically stay. She initially didn’t know what it was and had to Google search what the marble-to-golf-ball-sized rocks she found were.
She said that eventually, she, too, began using crack. That continued through August 2018, though by September of that year, she had enrolled at a Pennsylvania treatment center.
“It was a terrible experience that I went through, and I am embarrassed, and I am ashamed and I regret that period of my life,” she told the jury Thursday morning.
Hunter Biden rarely looked at his sister-in-law, whose testimony is key to his trial. He instead spent most of her testimony looking at documents or the screen on the defense attorneys’ desk where he sat.
Hallie Biden describes drug use
Over several hours of testimony, Hallie Biden told the jury that Hunter Biden would use crack cocaine often and that she was with him at least several times when he bought the drug. She said his use skyrocketed in the summer of 2018, when the two rented a house in Annapolis, Maryland.
At that time, Hunter was using daily, Hallie said. He’d go about eight hours between uses, only ceasing the drug to sleep or when he had “some obligation.”
Hallie Biden described Hunter’s behavior when high as “agitated” and “high-strung,” though at times, she said, he could still function.
When asked by prosecutors if others could tell he was under the influence when he was high, Hallie Biden replied simply: “Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”
The answer came less than an hour after prosecutors asked the Talleyville gun store employee who sold Hunter Biden the gun whether he saw any signs of impairment at the time of purchase.
“None at all,” the employee said.
By August 2018, Hallie Biden indicated both she and Hunter Biden stopped using crack cocaine, saying he went to a treatment center in California. She visited him there.
Then, in early September, he returned the favor, attending a counseling session with her at her Pennsylvania treatment center. He was in Delaware off and on until October, when he purchased the gun.
‘I panicked’
Prosecutors walked her through text messages sent one and two days after the gun purchase that serve as the closest evidence of Hunter Biden’s drug use to when he purchased the gun. In the messages, the two discuss plans and eventually, she loses contact with him.
“Why won’t you answer my calls?” she texts him on October 13.
He replies, stating that he was behind a baseball stadium in Wilmington “waiting on a dealer named Mookie.”
The next day, she texts him stating that she tried calling him “500 times in the past 24 hours.”
He eventually responds: “I was sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th Street and Rodney.”
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell first focused his cross-examination on those messages, eliciting that Hallie Biden didn’t know if Hunter Biden was actually waiting or a drug dealer nor whether he was smoking crack on 4th Street and Rodney. In opening arguments, Lowell sought to explain those messages by saying that Hunter Biden would sometimes lie to Hallie Biden about his location because he did not want to be with her then.
Hallie Biden also took jurors through the odd sequence of events in which she threw Hunter Biden’s gun in the trash. She said she would regularly clean out Hunter Biden’s vehicle to “help him get or stay sober.”
“That was kind of the pattern,” she told the jury.
On the morning of October 23, 2018, it was parked beside her home and she searched it and found remnants of what she first described as “crack cocaine” and paraphernalia.
“Oh and the gun, obviously,” she told the jury a moment later.
Prosecutors asked her to identify what remnants she found, and she told the jury it was “a dusting of powder.” Later, on cross-examination, she told the jury she didn’t recall what the items she described as “paraphernalia” were, nor did she have memory of what the powder was.
She said the gun was located in the “center console” of the car with bullets. She said she didn’t want him to have it and she didn’t want her kids to find it and potentially hurt themselves.
“I panicked and wanted to get rid of them,” she said.
She went inside her home and grabbed a gift bag but said she realized the gun was still visible in the small bag. So she put it inside a leather pouch and then inside the bag, drove to a local grocery store and threw it in an outdoor trash can.
“I realized it was a stupid idea now, but I was just panicking,” she told the jury.
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She testified that Hunter Biden found out about it and told her to return to find the gun. She said she went back, but the gun was gone. She went inside the store to see if they had removed the trash and eventually filed a police report with the help of one of the employees.
“I was so flustered,” she said.
Delaware State Police detectives eventually recovered the gun from a man who found it while rummaging for recycling in the Janssen’s garbage can.
Across two hours of cross-examination, Lowell, the defense attorney, painstakingly took Hallie Biden through the events the night before and the morning she found Hunter Biden’s gun. He seemed to emphasize that she could not remember exact times or the exact sequence of events leading up to her discovering the gun.
When prosecutors began their redirect, she told Leo Wise she remarried last week and that her husband was in the courtroom gallery. He asked her whether her frequent looks in his direction affected her testimony.
“No, just support,” she said as the jury peered at the man.
Trial testimony will continue Friday when prosecutors are expected to rest their case. Defense Attorney Abbe Lowell said he will present “two or three” witnesses in the defense case before deciding whether Hunter Biden will testify.
