Hallie Biden, the widow of Beau Biden who also dated Hunter Biden after her husband's death, gave emotional testimony on Thursday about finding the gun at the center of his felony trial.
Hunter Biden faces felony chargesover whether helied on a federal gun formin 2018 that asked if he was addicted to drugs
Hallie Biden took the stand in the Delaware courthouse where Hunter Biden is on trial in a much anticipated testimony given under the promise of immunity.
She said Hunter introduced her to crack cocaine, but she stopped using the drug after a few months and tried to help the president's youngest son stay sober. She was cleaning out his car when she found the gun he purchased in 2018, she said on the stand. While Hallie Biden threw the gun away at a Delaware store after discovering it, it was later recovered by law enforcement officers.
Here is what to know about her potentially pivotal testimony:
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Hallie Biden and Hunter Biden began dating after Beau Biden's death
Hunter's late brotherBeau Bidendied of cancer at age 46 in 2015. After Beau's death, Hunter connected with Beau's widow Hallie romantically.
“It was gradual,” she told the jury about their relationship as of late 2015 or 2016. She also mentioned he drank alcohol while using crack cocaine.
Hallie and Hunter tried to live together, but the relationship fell apart, according to Hunter Biden'smemoir.
"It was a giant miscalculation on both our parts, errors in judgment born of a uniquely tragic time," he wrote in the 2021 book, titled "Beautiful Things," explaining how they tried unsuccessfully to get back together later in a period of sobriety. "It felt like a failure of epic proportions."
'I am ashamed:' Hallie Biden said she used drugs with Hunter
Hallie Biden testified Thursday that she visited Hunter Biden in California in June 2018, telling the jury Hunter Biden was using crack cocaine at that time.
Prodded by prosecutors, she told the jury that by then, she also had started using crack cocaine and was introduced to it by Hunter Biden.
“It was a terrible experience that I went through, and I am embarrassed, and I am ashamed, and I regret that period of my life,” she told the jury.
She said she stopped using the drug in August 2018.
Hallie Biden addressed Hunter Biden's drug use during weeks surrounding gun purchase
Hallie Biden walked the jury through a series of text messages in the days after Hunter Biden purchased the gun on Oct. 12, 2018.
“Why won’t you answer my calls,” she texted him. He replied in a text Oct. 13, stating that he was behind a baseball stadium in Wilmington “waiting on a dealer named Mookie.”
The next day, she texted him stating she tried calling him “500 times in the past 24 hours.” He eventually responded: “I was sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th Street and Rodney.”
This evidence is important to prosecutors because defense attorneys have sought to argue Hunter Biden was not using drugs during the period in which he purchased the gun, meaning that he didn't have to report his drug use on the federal gun form.
In opening arguments, Hunter Biden's lawyer Abbe Lowell sought to explain those messages by saying that Hunter Biden would sometimes lie to Hallie Biden about his location because he did not want to be with her at the time.
But during Thursday's proceedings, the defense attorney spent hours questioning Hallie Biden on these messages, eliciting that Hallie Biden didn’t know if Hunter Biden was actually waiting or a drug dealer nor whether he was smoking crack in the area.
Lowell also questioned her on the moments leading up to when she found the gun less than two weeks later, asking about her memories around that time.
Hallie Biden said she panicked when she found Hunter Biden's gun
Hallie Biden told the jury Thursday that in the moments before she found Hunter Biden's gun, she was not certain that what she saw in his car was drugs and couldn’t remember any exact paraphernalia. She also said under cross-examination that she did not see Hunter Biden using drugs in early October.
Hallie Biden told jurors she would regularly clean out Hunter Biden’s vehicle to “help him get or stay sober.”
However, on the morning of Oct. 23, 2018, the car was parked beside her home, and she searched it and she said she believed that she found “some remnants of crack cocaine and paraphernalia.”
“Oh, and the gun, obviously,” she told the jury a moment later.
Prosecutors asked her to identify what remnants she found, and she told the jury, “a dusting of powder.” She said the gun was located in the “center console” of the car. “I panicked and wanted to get rid of them,” she said.
She said she didn’t want him to have it and she didn’t want her kids to find it. Hallie Biden and Beau Biden had two children together.
Hunter Biden's attorneys concede that he struggled with drug addiction before and after purchasing the weapon, but they have argued that prosecutors cannot prove that he knowingly deceived the gun shop when filling out the form − which is required to convict him.
To that end, his defense has sought to build a wall around the October period in which Hunter Biden purchased the gun, arguing in opening statements the evidence will show he "was not using when he bought the gun."
Hallie Biden trashes Hunter Biden's gun
After finding Hunter Biden’s .38-caliber revolver, Hallie Biden said she panicked and was afraid to touch it.
She went inside her home and grabbed a gift bag but realized the gun was still visible in the small bag. So she put it inside a leather pouch and then inside the bag, drove to a local grocery store and threw it in an outdoor trash can.
“I realized it was a stupid idea now, but I was just panicking,” Hallie Biden told the jury.
She didn’t remember exactly how, but Hunter Biden found out about her choiced and told her to return to find the gun. Hallie Biden walked the jury through this tense exchange through text messages.
“Did you take that from me Hallie? Are you insane … ” Hunter Biden said in a text the day after she threw it in a grocery store trash can.
“It’s hard for me to believe anyone is that stupid,” Hunter Biden texted. “Do you want me dead?” he asked in a later text.
“I’m sorry. I just want you to be safe. That was not safe,” Hallie Biden texted back.
When Hallie Biden went back, the gun was gone, she said. She went inside the store to see if they had removed the trash and eventually filed a police report with the help of one of the employees.
“I was so flustered,” she testified.
