Hallie Biden is getting married this weekend, apparently between the time her youngest graduated from high school and the ninth anniversary of Beau Biden’s death and the start of the Hunter Biden trial, at which she will be the most important witness. I learned that when I perused the Page Six reporting on how Melania, Barron, and Ivanka all snuck into Trump Tower to commiserate with Donald after he was made a convicted felon.
Goodness knows that woman has been put through the wringer since Murdoch has made Hunter the primary focus of its obsession; I wish her a long, supportive, private marriage.
But first she has to make it through two Hunter Biden trials.
I want to focus on one aspect of the Hunter Biden trial, which starts next week, which has been missed by those doing scene-setters for the trial. This post, on how prosecutors plan to prove their case, and this one, on rulings thus far on motions in limine lay out much of how the trial will go.
Judge Noreika still has to rule on a dispute about whether Hunter Biden will be able to show the jury how the gun shop doctored his purchase form when the ATF asked for the hard copy of it. If she permits that, it makes two of the three charges against Hunter far sketchier, both of which rely on the way he filled out a form when he purchased the gun. Once gun shop employees admit that they didn’t require Hunter to provide a valid ID because they knew who he was, and then doctored the form years later to cover up that they had done so, it will provide an opening for Hunter’s lawyers to raise a doubt about what happened with the form on the front end and certainly whether it was material to the sale (materiality is required by just one of those two counts).
That leaves Count Three, that Hunter was either an addict or a user of illegal drugs during the period he knowingly owned the gun in 2018. As the government laid out and Judge Noreika adopted for her orders, they will only need to prove that he knew he had the gun and either knew he was an addict or that he used a controlled substance in those 11 days in 2018.
Thus, that leaves only the following issues for trial with respect to Count Three: (1) whether the defendant was either an unlawful user of a controlled substance or a drug addict;4 (2) whether the defendant knowingly possessed a firearm, (3) whether the defendant knew he was a unlawful user of a controlled substance or a drug addict at any point in time while he possessed the firearm (i.e., on any date between October 12 and October 23, 2018).
This is the charge that is most ripe to be overturned by post-Bruen constitutional charges, and Hunter plans an as-applied constitutional charge if he is convicted on it. But it is also the one that will be easiest to prove.
To prove it, though, prosecutors will rely heavily on Hallie Biden.
That’s because she exchanged a bunch of texts with Hunter both during the period he had the gun and as he almost immediately realized that she had done something with it on October 23, including these from October 14 where he seemingly describes smoking crack in a car.
Hunter had days earlier lost his phones, and so he was repurposing an old phone when he sent these texts.
The government has repeatedly described that they’ll have a witness — who by description is Hallie — who will testify that she sent and received those messages.
What we’re using on the laptop are messages that will be corroborated by a witness in this case who will testify that she sent those messages and received those messages.
If they can convince a jury these texts are valid representations of Hunter’s mindset at the time, it will be fairly compelling evidence on Count Three.
And that’s why the question of whether and if so how prosecutors compelled Hallie’s testimony is of interest.
In the face of representations from her attorney that she would invoke the Fifth Amendment on the stand, David Weiss has moved to compel her testimony in Los Angeles.
The Special Counsel hereby applies to this Honorable Court for an order compelling Hallie Biden to testify and produce evidence pursuant to the provisions of Title 18, United States Code, Section 6001 et seq., and respectfully represents as follows:
1. Hallie Biden has been subpoenaed to testify before this Court during trial beginning on June 20, 2024;
2. Counsel for Hallie Biden has advised that if Hallie Biden is called to the stand she will at that time refuse to answer questions, invoking the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination;
3. In the judgment of the Special Counsel, the testimony of Hallie Biden may be necessary to the public interest; and
4. Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg, an authorized Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States, has approved this application for an order instructing Hallie Biden to testify pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 6002 and 28 C.F.R. § 0.175(a).
Even though, absent statutes of limitation, her testimony in the Delaware case might be just as incriminating (because she’s the one who disposed of the gun), there’s no sign of such compulsion in the Delaware docket.
There is, however, a sealed filing (uncontested by Hunter’s team) pertaining to the testimony of a female witness that David Weiss has gotten permission to retain under seal until after the witness finishes testifying.
The United States of America, by and through its attorneys, David. C. Weiss, Special Counsel, and Derek E. Hines and Leo J. Wise, Assistant United States Attorneys for the District of Delaware, move that the enclosed filing be filed under seal as well as the accompanying proposed order and requested order from the court. The filing relates to a witness issue in the upcoming trial. The government will move to unseal this filing after the conclusion of the witness’s testimony at trial. In the interim, the government requests that the filings remain under seal to protect her identity from public disclosure so that her security is not compromised and so that there will be no witness intimidation issues that could undermine these proceedings. See United States v. Smith, 776 F.2d 1104, 1115 (3d Cir. 1985).
This isn’t necessarily Hallie: in addition to the female FBI agent and Hunter’s ex-wife, there’s a female witness who partied with Hunter in Los Angeles in spring 2018 whose testimony might have some unique circumstances behind it. But, given the motion to compel her testimony in Los Angeles, there’s a pretty good likelihood it is Hallie.
Indeed, it could be nothing more than a sealed version of the motion to compel in Los Angeles (which for some reason did not obscure her identity), which was filed just three days later.
Obviously, prosecutors have prepped Hallie’s testimony. They claim to know precisely how she’ll testify. So there shouldn’t be too many surprises next week at trial.
If nothing else, however, it would mean two of three key witnesses at trial (the other being the gun shop owner, who testifying under a proffer admitted he only retroactively created a record of having required the proper identification for the sale) had concerns about their own legal exposure for a gun sale made over five years ago. It would mean that prosecutors have decided to pick and choose who’ll face legal liability for those events, deciding that Joe Biden’s kid will be the one who faces legal consequences for a charge no one else would have been charged with under the circumstances.