Jury continues deliberations over Hunter Biden’s fate in firearms trial

WILMINGTON, Del. — The jurors in Hunter Biden’s firearms trial deliberated for about an hour Monday before breaking for the day and preparing to return to the courthouse for continued discussions Tuesday.

No one knows for sure how long the jurors will take to reach a verdict in the case as they debate the felony charges.

“We have had Hunter’s life in our hands, but now we have to give that to you,” defense lawyer Abbe Lowell told the jurors shortly before they departed to begin deliberations.

Prosecutor Derek Hines later shot back in his closing arguments, “Mr. Lowell suggested you have this man’s life in your hands. You don’t have this man’s life in your hands.

“He keeps saying he’s telling you a story,” Hines said. “That’s exactly what he’s done in this case. It’s simply a story — a fictional story.”

Judge Maryellen Noreika impressed upon the jurors that they need to reach a conclusion on their own and should not mindlessly take what she or any of the lawyers said about the case to heart.

There are three charges pending against President Biden’s son alleging that he illegally bought a .38 caliber revolver while addicted to illegal drugs.

• COUNT 1: False Statement in Purchase of a Firearm
• COUNT 2: False Statement Related to Information Required to be Kept by Federal Firearms Licensed Dealer
• COURT 3: Possession of a Firearm by a Person who is an Unlawful User of or Addicted to a Controlled Substance

Hunter, 54, faces a maximum of up to 25 years behind bars and a little over $750,000 in fees if found guilty on all three counts. He has pleaded not guilty to all three charges.

Should he be found guilty, Hunter will become the first son of a sitting US president convicted while his father is in the White House.

President Biden, 81, has publicly declared that he will not pardon his troubled son in the event of a conviction.

Hunter’s trial began last Monday and has featured a vast trove of evidence ranging from everything from his own memoir that detailed his addiction struggles to his personal communications, bank withdrawals and witness testimony.

Throughout the course of the trial, Lowell has harped on the requirement for prosecutors to prove Hunter was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The lawyer has tried to fuel uncertainty, arguing that the prosecution was predicated upon “conjecture and suspicion.”

In his feisty closing arguments, Lowell admonished the prosecution for a reference to Hunter’s family sitting in the audience and dinged them for dragging his relatives to the witness stand.

“Poor Hallie Biden who had to be dragged through this period of her life again,” he bemoaned, referring to the widow of President Biden’s late son Beau and Hunter’s sister-in-law, who the defendant ended up having an extramarital affair with after his brother’s death.

Hallie had testified that she saw crack paraphernalia in Hunter’s truck Oct. 23, 2018, not far from where the gun was located that she later tossed out, triggering a series of events that alerted law enforcement.

Lowell added that the process was “extraordinarily cruel to [Hunter’s] daughter,” Naomi, too.

“Who called the defendant’s daughter as a witness in this case? Not us,” Hines said. “You saw her up on the stand — how uncomfortable she was.

“She couldn’t vouch for the defendant’s sobriety.”

Naomi’s testimony flagged Hunter’s flaky behavior with her by text. Prosecutors called up FBI agent Erika Jensen for about 30 minutes of additional testimony Monday to add more detail.

“The reason I think she was called was to suggest he was OK,” prosecutor Leo Wise surmised.

“This is not OK,” he said, pointing to Hunter’s texts to her at 2 a.m. demanding his truck back.

Hines later referred to Lowell’s defense of a text Hunter sent Hallie that he “was sleeping on a car smoking crack.”

Lowell likened the prosecution to the “magician’s trick of having you look in one hand” to distract from the other.

Hunter appeared calm and collected as he exited the courtroom with an arm around his wife Melissa Cohen Biden.