Trial of Hunter Biden’s gun case commences in Delaware

Hunter Biden will appear in Delaware on Monday as a defendant for the first day of a trial in which he is facing felony charges over a 2018 gun purchase.

Biden’s appearance will mark the first time the son of a sitting president has stood trial as a criminal defendant.

Special counsel David Weiss, who is leading the prosecution, has alleged Biden lied on a federal form about his drug use to purchase a revolver and that he then kept the firearm in his possession for 11 days.

Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Donald Trump appointee, is presiding over the case and estimated the trial could last up to two weeks.

The trial will begin with jury selection, and Noreika plans to ask prospective jurors who have been summoned to the Wilmington federal courthouse a series of questions to weed out bias.

The questions, according to court filings, involve gauging prospective jurors’ views about the Second Amendment and drug addiction. The judge also plans to ask them if their views on the 2024 election would affect their impartiality and if they believe Biden being the son of a president has caused him to be prosecuted more or less than what is fair.

The day before the trial, Noreika dealt blows to Biden’s defense team, including denying his request to allow one of his expert witnesses, a psychiatrist, to testify about drug addiction, according to court orders.

Biden’s attorneys had wanted the doctor to testify that addicts commonly are in a “state of denial” about their addiction, which would help them argue Biden thought that when he allegedly said on the gun form that he was not an illegal drug user, he was being truthful.

Weiss has indicated he plans to introduce evidence at trial that shows investigators tested a leather gun pouch they retrieved in 2018 for drugs and found evidence of cocaine on it.

For a second expert witness, Biden’s attorneys asked to call a toxicologist to the stand to dispute the chain of command of the pouch. They said they expect the witness to testify that the drug test was performed five years after the pouch was obtained and that the test included no dating information. Noreika said she would reserve judgment on whether to allow the witness to testify.

Noreika also denied Biden’s attorneys’ request to permit evidence of a second version of the gun form Biden allegedly filled out that included updated information on it. The attorneys planned to incorporate the form into their defense by saying the second form on record with the gun shop was “doctored.” The judge called this “unsupported rhetoric.”

The trial is also expected to be highly personal for Biden, as prosecutors have said they plan to call his ex-wife and two ex-girlfriends to the stand to serve as witnesses to his alleged drug abuse in 2018.

The prosecutors also said they will present excerpts from Biden’s memoir Beautiful Things, in which the first son vividly detailed how he battled for years with an addiction to crack.

Biden, who said he became sober in 2019, has pleaded not guilty to three gun charges he is facing. If convicted, he could face up to 25 years in prison, though receiving the maximum penalty is highly unlikely.

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Biden also attempted to have his case dismissed on several grounds, including that a Supreme Court ruling in recent years that relaxed gun regulations rendered the charges unconstitutional. Noreika denied the request but said he could raise it again after the trial.

While his father has, as president, advocated stricter gun laws, the first son’s case is one gun rights activists see as an opportunity to shape gun regulation in their favor.