Prosecutors seek to corroborate testimony from three of his former romantic partners to argue he was still addicted to crack cocaine when he bought the gun.
WILMINGTON, Del.—Prosecutors called Hallie Biden to testify on June 6, the fourth day of Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial, and she detailed their romantic relationship, their alleged drug use, and messages purportedly showing that Mr. Biden was using drugs around the time he bought the firearm.
Ms. Biden is the widow of Mr. Biden’s deceased brother, Beau, who died from cancer in 2015. Mr. Biden previously said he succumbed to crack cocaine addiction after his brother’s death, and he began seeing his sister-in-law romantically around the same time.
She testified to prosecutors that Mr. Biden sent her messages in the days after the gun sale on Oct. 12, 2018. She alleges that Mr. Biden said he was “waiting for a dealer named Mookie” in one and that he was “sleeping on a car smoking crack” in another.
She also alleges that Mr. Biden encouraged her to try crack cocaine, making her “embarrassed and ashamed.” The “terrible experience” led to her own addiction to the drug, Ms. Biden testified.
Mr. Biden is facing three felony charges related to the 2018 firearm purchase. Authorities accuse him of lying to the federally licensed gun store by illegally claiming on his application that he was not a drug user at the time and then unlawfully possessed the gun for 11 days.
Ms. Biden testified that she found the gun in the center console of Mr. Biden’s car and threw it away out of concern for his mental health. She said that Mr. Biden asked her to file a police report on the gun after she threw it in a public garbage can, and police located the man who retrieved it from the trash.
Drug Abuse
Ms. Biden has known Mr. Biden since middle school, she said, and the two began a romantic relationship in late 2015 after the death of her husband. She soon discovered Mr. Biden’s drug use, she alleges, but the two went a step further and rented a house in Annapolis together from the fall of 2017 until July 2018.
By Jacob Burg and Stacy Robinson
