Hunter Biden prosecution a 'waste of taxpayer dollars': Convicting jurors talk about historic trial
After closing arguments in Hunter Biden’s felony gun trial Monday, 12 Delaware jurors received the case with less than an hour to deliberate before taking a break for the night.
That afternoon, they took a vote on the first charge against the president's son, according to two jurors interviewed in the parking garage of a local hotel after the verdict.
“Believe it or not, it was six to six,” said a 68-year-old Sussex County juror who wished to be referred to as juror 10.
After brief deliberation Tuesday morning, the jury quickly returned their unanimous verdict: Guilty on all three counts, rendering Hunter Biden the first child of a sitting U.S. president to be convicted of a crime.
“We broke it down and heard other peoples’ opinions,” said another juror, a woman who lives near New Castle who did not want to provide her name. “That is what moved me to guilty on all three.”
She said the group studied the elements of the crimes and definitions included in the jury instructions and talked for about two hours Tuesday morning before rendering their verdicts.
"We were not that much divided," she said. "We worked together really well."
What made the prosecution's case?
Hunter Biden, 54, was convicted of lying about his drug addiction on a federal form he filled out in October 2018 to purchase a revolver at a Talleyville, Delaware, gun shop and possessing the gun as a drug user.
To prove that he was either addicted to or an unlawful user of crack cocaine when he purchased and possessed the gun, prosecutors turned to a parade of Hunter Biden’s exes who testified about his drug use, struggles to get sober and the destruction it wrought upon their relationships.
The government also spent a week presenting text messages showing drug deals, photos depicting drugs, excerpts from his memoir, and cash-withdrawal receipts that they contend show his active addiction from 2016 through 2019.
Juror 10 said that he felt there was no way Hunter Biden could not see himself as a person addicted to drugs when he bought the gun.
“If you are an addict, you are an addict,” he said. “I know personally from people that I know that were drug addicts and alcoholics, this is something that sticks with you for the rest of your life.”
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The jurors said text messages were particularly damning, specifically identifying two that Hunter sent to Hallie Biden the week he bought the gun. In those messages, he said he was waiting for a dealer and smoking crack.
“It did show that he was trying to do drugs,” the New Castle-area juror said.
Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s attorney, centered his defense on building a wall around the early October 2018 period, arguing that Hunter Biden was in a failed period of recovery and thus did not knowingly lie when he filled out the gun form. It was somewhat convincing to the New Castle-area juror, but she felt the jury instructions still warranted conviction.
“There did seem to be a break (in drug use), but when you looked at the (legal) definitions, it was apparent he was an ongoing user and an addict,” the New Castle-area juror said. “It was kind of hard to get by that.”
She said Lowell did the “best he could” considering the text messages.
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“He tried to poke holes in it, but he did the best he could with what he had to work with,” she said.
Juror 10 said evidence that prosecutors said showed Hunter Biden was at a 7-Eleven, presumably to buy drugs, was also persuasive. Lowell argued that his client could have been there to buy coffee.
"I don’t buy that," he said.
Heart-wrenching evidence, even for the jurors
The evidence, particularly Hunter Biden’s text messages with his then-lovers, was, even in the prosecutors’ own words, “personal” and “ugly.” At times, it seemed aimed as much to embarrass as it was to convict. Lowell told jurors it seemed his client was on trial for his addiction.
“Honestly, it was heart-wrenching,” Juror 10 said.
But some of the most heart-wrenching aspects were brought about by Hunter Biden's lawyers. Juror 10 said he wished the defense would not have called Naomi Biden, Hunter’s eldest daughter, to testify. She was clearly uncomfortable as prosecutors blistered her with questions about text messages seeking to undercut her testimony about her father's sobriety in October 2018.
“That was probably one of the most saddest parts of all,” he said.
The New Castle-area juror described Naomi Biden’s testimony as emotional, noting her testimony about how her father’s drug use spiraled after the death of his brother, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden.
“She probably just wants her dad to be like he was before his brother died,” the juror said.
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She said the personally cutting evidence showing drug addiction far predating the gun purchase was likely prosecutors just trying to get their point across, but added that she wasn’t a “fan of the prosecution."
“In my opinion, this was a waste of taxpayer dollars,” she said.
She said she “didn’t want to find him guilty” because the evidence showed “he needed help.”
But in the end, she said she deferred to how the evidence spoke to the relevant criminal law as it was set out to the jury by the judge.
“I understand he lied on the federal form,” she said. “But I just wonder why all of this came about, why couldn’t they just fine him?”
In hearing the case, she wouldn’t have known that prosecutors had once sought to dismiss the gun crimes before they were ever indicted as part of a plea deal involving tax crimes Hunter Biden is set to face trial for later this year. Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected the deal because of disputes between prosecutors and defense lawyers about Biden’s protection from future charges.
After the verdicts Tuesday, Noreika told the parties that sentencing typically takes place within 120 days and that she’d be in contact to set a date. Hunter Biden faces up to 25 years in prison, though first-time offenders rarely receive anything close to the maximum sentence.
Both jurors said they felt prison isn’t appropriate.
“I don’t think anyone who is a non-violent drug addict should be in prison. Just fine him,” the New Castle-area juror said. “We know he did something wrong. He needs help if he hasn’t gotten it yet.”
Deciding the fate of the president's son
Hunter Biden has said he has been sober since 2019. And while the trial dealt with intense issues for the president's son, it also put 12 ordinary Delawareans in the unique position of judging the guilt of the president's son and Delaware's most famous statesman ? in an election year no less.
“Oh man, I do not want to be here,” the New Castle-area juror said, recounting when she learned the case was about Hunter Biden during jury selection.
Juror 10 has lived in Delaware for as long as Joe Biden's political career. And as ubiquitous as Biden drama is in the gossip of Delawareans, he said he was shocked by some things he learned at trial.
"I don’t watch a whole lot of news. I watch Netflix and stuff. Too much stuff on the news you don’t really want to hear," he said. "I didn’t know Hunter Biden's addiction was that bad. I kind of felt sorry for him."
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He also said he was "shocked" to hear that Beau Biden's widow, Hallie Biden, had developed a romantic relationship with Hunter Biden after Beau's death and began using drugs as well.
"That was tough," he said.
The trial was a family affair on both the witness stand and in the courtroom gallery where first lady Jill Biden and other members of the Biden family looked on during most of the proceeding. Juror 10 said he felt sorry for Jill Biden.
"I'm pretty sure she heard things she's never heard before," he said.
The New Castle-area juror said she noticed the first lady's presence in court.
“I noticed her and her hair,” she said with a smile.
The juror said she feared the deliberation might take a political tone.
“I was expecting all of us to be at each other’s throats because you know, of who his father is and how the political climate is in this country,” she said.
But that was not the case, both jurors emphasized.
"Politics played no part in this whatsoever," Juror 10 said. "We just went by the evidence."
Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Hunter Biden prosecution a 'waste of taxpayer dollars': Juror