Hunter Biden’s federal trial on three gun-related charges kicked off in Delaware this week. The government alleges that the president’s son lied about his drug use on a form to buy a gun, and thus obtained the firearm illegally. On Wednesday, prosecutors called two of Biden’s exes — including Kathleen Buhle, to whom he was married for 20 years — to testify about his drug use.
Buhle, who was married to Biden from 1993 to 2017, said that from 2015 to 2019 she would often search Biden’s car and found drugs or drug paraphernalia at least a dozen times, according to Politico. Biden and Buhle have three children together, and Buhle said she searched his car because he would often let their daughters use it.
Buhle said she first discovered Biden was using drugs in 2015, and that he “acknowledged smoking crack.” Biden’s brother Beau died of brain cancer in May of that year.
Zoe Kestan, who was dating Biden in the months before he purchased the gun in 2018, also testified on Wednesday. “He would want to smoke as soon as he woke up,” she said, according to Reuters. Kestan noted that Biden would smoke crack frequently, and the jury was shown images from her phone of drug paraphernalia, including one of Biden in a hot tub with a crack pipe.
Biden has publicly acknowledged his drug addiction, including in his memoir Beautiful Things, but pleaded not guilty to the three charges. His lawyer Abbe Lowell has argued that Biden had come out of rehab and was not addicted to drugs when he filled out the gun-purchasing form in October 2018, and did not intend to deceive anyone.
Prosecutors have argued otherwise, and on Tuesday played portions of the Beautiful Things audiobook in which Biden described his drug addiction. “Addiction may not be a choice, but lying and buying a gun is a choice,” prosecutor Derek Hines said in his opening statement, according to The New York Times, adding that “nobody is above the law.”
Biden’s trial comes in the heat of his father’s reelection campaign against former President Donald Trump, who was convicted last week on felony charges of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
Trump and his allies have done all they can to highlight Hunter Biden’s history in an effort to portray the Biden family as corrupt. House Republicans on Wednesday issued criminal referrals for Hunter Biden and President Biden’s brother, James, alleging that they lied to Congress as part of the GOP’s impeachment goose chase against the president.
