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Hunter Biden’s protection crew is predicted to wrap up arguments in his federal firearms trial in Delaware on Monday, and the jury may start deliberating by day’s finish barring any dramatic strikes — like a last-minute resolution by Mr. Biden to testify on his personal behalf.
Mr. Biden, who’s President Biden’s son, was angered by the federal government’s robust cross-examination of his daughter Naomi Biden Neal on Friday and instructed folks in his orbit that he would take into account testifying. But the protection, after a weekend of consultations between Mr. Biden and his lead lawyer, Abbe Lowell, now appears extra more likely to relaxation with out taking the dangerous step of placing Mr. Biden on the stand.
Prosecutors and Mr. Lowell’s crew will meet early on Monday with the presiding judge to think about a request by the protection to dismiss the case.
If the judge, Maryellen Noreika, rejects Mr. Lowell’s motions, as anticipated, either side will current its closing argument and Judge Noreika will difficulty directions to the jury.
The authorities has sought to point out that Mr. Biden frequently used medication in 2018 and 2019 and that he falsely claimed to be drug-free when he crammed out a federal firearms type. His legal professionals have provided a spirited, if narrower, protection centered on whether or not Mr. Biden was really doing crack cocaine on the time he purchased the gun in October 2018 and have sought to undercut the prosecution’s witnesses by difficult their recollections.
Over two days, David C. Weiss, the particular counsel within the case, summoned three of Mr. Biden’s former romantic companions, all of whom described in painful element Mr. Biden’s unrelenting descent into crack dependancy after his brother died of mind most cancers. They included his former spouse, Kathleen Buhle; a onetime girlfriend, Zoe Kestan; and Hallie Biden, his brother’s widow with whom he had an ill-fated romantic relationship.
Ms. Biden Neal has to this point been the one girl known as by the protection.
In emotionally uncooked testimony, she gave an upbeat evaluation of his drug use within the weeks earlier than he purchased the gun, saying he appeared “hopeful” and sober.
But beneath cross-examination, that declare appeared to crumble, with prosecutors introducing textual content messages from that interval that illustrated an anguished, and excruciating, relationship wherein she knowledgeable her father he had pushed her to the breaking level.
Still, Ms. Biden Neal may supply solely restricted insights into the actions of Mr. Biden, who was usually absent from her life for months and erratic even once they have been in the identical metropolis.
The prosecution, which rested on Friday morning, has additionally pointed to lots of of textual content messages and financial institution data, in addition to to the defendant’s personal phrases, as an instance Mr. Biden’s unyielding drug dependancy within the months earlier than and after October 2018.
Over the final week, Mr. Lowell has established that nobody noticed Mr. Biden doing crack cocaine within the month he purchased the gun. Ms. Biden Neal’s testimony didn’t change that.
But two textual content messages retrieved from Mr. Biden’s cellphone have damage his protection from the beginning. One day after he bought the gun, he despatched a textual content saying he was assembly a vendor named Mookie. A day later, he adopted as much as say that he was sleeping on a automotive and smoking crack.
The obvious admission got here to a head on Friday as Mr. Lowell questioned the prosecution’s final witness, Joshua Romig, a particular agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, who was requested to translate drug lingo launched within the authorities’s case towards Mr. Biden.
Mr. Lowell made the purpose that whereas the prosecution had spent days analyzing Mr. Biden’s communications from earlier in 2018 and 2019, exhibiting footage of him holding a crack pipe and texts about shopping for medication, there was nothing comparable to point out for October 2018.
“No reference of Chore Boy?” Mr. Lowell mentioned to Mr. Romig, referring to phrases associated to crack use. “No point out of a ball?”
Mr. Romig responded, “With the exception of the October textual content that we talked about, the place he mentioned he was smoking crack.”
