FBI agent testifies in Hunter Biden trial

Exes take the stand to describe his drug habits

By: Xerex Wilson
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
and Bart Jansen
USA today Network

WILMINGTON, Delaware - Hunter Biden;s trial on felony gun charges resumed Wednesday [06/05/2024] with testimony from an FBI agent, an ex-girlfriend and an ex-wife, all of whom discussed his long struggle with addiction.
..... Prosecutors expect to spend three days laying out their case against President Joe Biden's son.
..... Hunter Biden faces three felonies. Two involve whether he lied on a federal gun from in 2018 that asked if he was addicted to drugs. The third pertains to his possession of a firearm while he was allegedly an unlawful drug user or addict4ed to controlled substances.
..... On Tuesday [06/04/2024] both sides gave their opening statements. For the prosecution, attorney Derek Hines said "no one is above the law," Defense attorney Abbe Lowell said Biden didn't knowingly lie when he filled out the form because he had recently completed a rehabilitation program.
..... Then jurors heard audio of Biden narrating his memoir, where he graphically recounted his drug use. Jurors also heard FBI agent Erika Jensen detail text messages, bank statements, and book excerpts describing Biden's drug use in 2018 when the gun was purchased.
..... Lowell had just begun his cross-examination of Jensen when the trial ended for the day Tuesday, [06/04/2024] and hie picked up Wednesday [06/05/2024] where he left off.
..... The Biden family's pastor the Rev. Dr. Christopher Bullock was at the trial, seated in the second row.
..... "I am here to offer moral and spiritual support to the family," he told USA Today. the "Biden family is Delaware. There is a lot of support here for them."

Debit cards and text messages

..... Lowell seemed to have tow goals: attempting to show that Biden was not using drugs on the day he purchased the gun, and providing alternate explanations, beyond buying drugs, for the large amount of cash the prosecution said Biden withdrew.
..... Under questioning, Jensen testified Wednesday [06/05/2024] that she had no recollection of description of drug use in Biden's memoir specifically form October 2018.
..... Lowell noted Jensen provided excerpts with "granular" descriptions of drug use in 2017 and early 2018, Lowell asked if she would have provided any from the month Biden bought the gun, if they existed.
..... "It would have been added if they were there, that's fair," Jensen said.
..... As for Biden;s texts, Jensen acknowledged that the bulk of the text messages referred to drug use that occurred well before he bought the gun at issue.
..... However, two messages stood out.
..... One exception was a text to his sister-in-law the week he brought the gun in October 2018 saying he was waiting on a dealer named Mookie. Another text stated he was smoking crack on a car.
..... Under Lowell's questioning, Jensen said the didn't know if Mookie actually existed and did not know whether Biden was actually smoking crack on a car at that time.
..... Jensen also testified she did not investigate to what extent Biden was spending money to help his family members, pay his children's school tuition or cover other living expenses.
..... Jensen said Biden paid for rehabilitation services and an Airbnb in 2018 with a check card, according to bank statements. he also brought liquor with check cards, she said.
..... Hines highlighted the sue of a check card after Lowell argued that Biden withdrew large sums of cash because he had no credit cards.
..... "Do drug dealers accept credit cards?" Hines asked Jensen.
..... "Not in my experience," Jensen responded.

Exes describe drug use

..... Prosecutors then called Biden's ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle. The two were married form 1993 to 2017 and they have three grown children. in 2022, she published a memoir that detailed her ex's addiction.
.... Buhle told jurors she had feared he was suing drugs since he ad been discharged from the Navy in 2014 for testing postie for cocaine.
..... "I was worried, but I had no proof," she said. "I was worried, scared.
..... Biden was given an administrative discharge, not the dishonorable discharge former President Donald Trump has falsely claimed.
..... Then in July 2015, Buhle found a crack pipe in the ashtray on the porch of their Washington home. She confronted him, she told the jury."
..... It was very short," Buhle said. "He acknowledged smoking crack."
..... Following their 2017 divorce, until 2019, she would search Biden's car out of concerns for their children. "I would check the car to make sure they were not using the care with drugs in it,' she told he jury.
..... According to pretrial filings ,she told investigators she discovered drugs in his vehicles on at least a dozen occasions.
..... During cross-extermination, Buhle told the jury she wasn't aware Biden was living in California in the summer of 2018, nor was she aware that he returned to Delaware in fall 2018.
..... She said she didn't now the exact days she searched his vehicle, and never actually saw Biden use drugs.
..... Biden's ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, however, not only saw him use creak but used it with him during rendezvous trough early 2018 in New York and Atlantic City, New Jersey, she said.
..... The two were in a relationship form approximately December 2017 to October2018, according to pretrial filings. The two met when she was working part-time at a new York gentleman's club and gave him a private dance, she said.
..... Early on, "I already felt myself really caring for him and starting the discussions about this addiction," Kestan told the jury.
..... Kestan testified that her lease in New York was expiring and Biden wanted to move to California to get sober so the two decided to move together in Early 2018, with him going first.
..... But when she arrived, "it seems like the plan had gone out the window," she said.
..... She arrived at the Southern California bungalow he had rented to find drug paraphernalia, alcohol and two women that Biden said would not leave.

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