Attorneys on Monday said prosecutors introducing a trove of Hunter Biden’s communications as evidence will come back to hurt him in his federal gun trial.
Biden’s trial where he is facing three gun charges brought by special counsel David Weiss, including providing false statements and possessing a gun while he was aware of being addicted to drugs, began Monday with jury selection. Florida state attorney Dave Aronberg and former federal prosecutor Michael Zeldin told MSNBC that the president’s son’s “own words” will be used as “compelling evidence” against him. (RELATED: ‘Every Angle… Hurts Joe Biden’: Hunter’s Latest Stunt May Have Thrown His Dad Into A Messy Tangle, Strategists Say)
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“Biden’s own statements, his text messages will come back to haunt him because he did text around the time of buying the gun that he was smoking crack down the street in Wilmington,” Aronberg said. “And so that’s powerful evidence. And when he says,’ you know, I just came out of rehab. I didn’t feel that I was still in the throes of addiction,’ well, your own words at that time will come back to be used against you. So perhaps jury nullification is the best defense they have.”
Prosecutors in May revealed evidence they intend to introduce to substantiate that Biden lied about his drug use on a 2018 federal gun purchase form, including 75 pages of text messages emphasizing his addiction struggles. The messages included in the filing reveal arguments about him quitting drugs, discussing substance use and photos of narcotics or Biden smoking crack.
“I was sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th street and Rodney,” Biden wrote in an Oct. 14, 2018 message.
“I’m interested in the text messages and the book and things of that sort,” Zeldin said. “Those are words out of the defendant’s mouth … Remember, he has to at the time of the purchase been a drug user. So if they can say during this time period he was using and there’s evidence that he was in remission, out of remission, sometimes in denial. All of that stuff undermines the broad notion that the other witnesses will bring that he was generally speaking a drug user. So it’s really the stuff out of Biden’s own mouth at the time of the purchase that I think will be the most compelling prosecutorial evidence.”
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE – JUNE 03: Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, joined by his his wife Melissa Cohen Biden, arrives to the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building on June 03, 2024 in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden is standing trial for felony gun charges. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Prosecutors suggested they also plan to reference portions of Biden’s memoir, “Beautiful Things,” where he describes his drug use in 2018. Some messages and material were received from Biden’s abandoned laptop.
“All the words that Hunter Biden has said, whether through text messages, emails, that can be used against him,” Aronberg said. “The stuff from the laptop that the Republicans like to crow about, about so-called business dealings, that’s not coming in. That is not part of this trial. This is all about the purchase of the gun while he was in addiction, and so anything he says at the time that shows that he was in the throes of addiction around the time he bought the gun is fair game. That’s where you’ll see it from the laptop.”
Criminal defense attorney Bernarda Villalona advised Biden to plead guilty, saying Weiss’ evidence against him is “strong.” She also gave this advice based on the potential jail sentence he could face, asserting a guilty plea may be his “best” course of action to evade incarceration.
Biden is also confronting nine federal tax charges, such as tax evasion and tax fraud for tax years 2016 through 2019, according to the indictment against him. Biden’s attorneys appealed the case, but Judge Mark Scarsi rejected it, with the trial slated to start on June 20.
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