Well, when your client admits he's a crack addict in great detail, publishes those confessions in a widely distributed memoir, records himself saying he smoked crack "every 15 minutes" for an audiobook adaption, and takes a trove of selfies flaunting a crack pipe that are then recovered from a laptop he abandoned at a computer repair shop, you don't have much to work with. Enter: Hunter Biden's defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, the scandal specialist on Capitol Hill.
This is one of many illogical conclusions Hunter's lawyer has drawn that many of those in the courtroom could not follow. At times, hardly anyone knows where his line of questioning is going, not even Lowell perhaps.
Like a meandering Michael Scott with the conviction of Saul Goodman, Lowell may be trying to trigger jury fatigue. Move at a painstakingly slow pace and overwhelm the jurors with a boatload of red herrings that makes it feel like you're building towards something substantive but doesn't add up to anything at all. Make it seem like such a sprawling case so to dilute the mountain of evidence against Hunter, which he provided himself, and induce amnesia about the cold, hard facts.
However, once you strip everything down to its bare bones, remove all the noise, it's a clear-cut case. Hunter either lied about doing drugs or he didn't in order to obtain a gun.
Lowell says the federal background check form's questionnaire should have been read aloud to Hunter, purportedly a savvy businessman, an attorney, and the "smartest man" his father knows, so he could understand what he was signing. While he was filling out the ATF form, Hunter could have truly and honestly believed he was sober at the time, Lowell says; it all comes down to whether he "knowingly" lied.
Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter Biden's late brother, Beau Biden, and whom Hunter had introduced to crack cocaine, answered questions under oath Thursday to shed light on Hunter's state of mind that month he's accussed of illegally buying the gun and unlawfully possessing it.
Lowell had to be stopped repeatedly for phrasing leading questions. In front of Hallie, he had placed an exhibit containing her texts with Hunter around the time she ditched Hunter's gun at Janssen's Market in October 2018. Not remembering what she said six years ago, Hallie kept looking down at the texts, placed there to "refresh her recollection," and subsequently affirming Lowell's assertions about Hunter's whereabouts because the texts said so.
When she stopped short of corroborating the timeline leading up to the gun's tossing, Lowell accused Hallie of selectively recalling things. "So, there are some things you remember and then many things you don't?" Lowell retorted. Hunter's legal team has employed this tactic frequently throughout the trial in an effort to cast doubt on the credibility of the witnesses and the actual transpiring of events.
For instance, on October 13, 2018, the day after he purchased the firearm, Hunter texted Hallie he was "buy...ing." That night, Hunter messaged he was with "Bernard who hangs at 7/11" waiting for a drug dealer named "Mookie." The next day, Hunter texted: "I was sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th street and Rodney." Lowell questioned if the FBI agent in charge of the investigation, special agent Erika Jensen, independently verified that what Hunter texted was true — that there was, in fact, a drug dealer called "Mookie" or if Hunter really did smoke crack on a car parked at the downtown Wilmington intersection.
Lowell also sounded the alarm on different colored ink the federally licensed gun dealer used to certify the form, suggesting it was tampered with to frame Hunter. The salesman explained that it's store policy to use red ink under certain sections, making them easier to find, so it expedites the auditing process.
Next up was former Delaware State Police Lt. Miller Greer, who testified about his eventual recovery of the firearm. It turns out that an elderly man by the name of Edward "Ed" Banner stumbled upon the gun Hallie had discarded in one of the grocery store's trash cans.
Lowell emphasized that at this point in the investigation, Hunter was considered the victim of a firearm theft and could have pursued prosecution against Hallie or the geriatric Banner.
Then, Lowell prompted Greer to meticulously go over the sequence of events again.
After easily tracking the old man down, since there's not much dumpster diving going on in affluent Greeneville, Greer recovered the gun from Banner, who had excitedly taken his discovery home with him.
The two went to his house to retrieve it, but Banner had accidentally locked himself out. So, they waited until his wife woke up from her midday nap to unlock the front door and let them in.
Among other pointless exercises, Lowell had Greer give the court a crash course on assembling a semi-automatic, since Banner also had in his possession a Sundance .25 pistol, completely unrelated to Hunter's Colt Cobra.
According to Greer's recounting of events, the retiree had stashed Hunter's gun upstairs in his old General Motors lunchbox, supposedly stuffing it in a pair of rolled-up socks.
Latching on to this detail, Lowell began rapid-firing questions at Greer: how many socks were there, where were these socks placed, how were the socks folded, what does sock-rolling entail, and so on.
Tongue-in-cheek spectators observing from the overflow room started shouting out some hard-hitting follow-up questions:
"What color were they?!"
"Were they tube socks?!"
"Please say they were orthopedic!"
The people want answers, Lowell.
The man supposed to provide those answers shuffled out: Banner himself.
A Pixar character brought to life, the bespectacled Banner — reminiscent of the old man from the movie "Up" — struggled to lower himself into the witness chair. The court equipped him with a pair of headphones connected to the courtroom's audio system, but both parties decided to just crouch down next to the stand so Banner could hear better.
"I don't know nothing about no socks," the 80-year-old Navy veteran emphatically declared when Lowell pressed him on the sock-stashing quandary and hoped to catch any inconsistencies in his statements.
Lowell's gotcha-moment was soiled by the optics of a Washington lawyer squeezing a hard-of-hearing senior citizen, who rummages through trash receptacles for recyclables to earn a few cents off of his findings. "I got a nick' a piece for them," Banner told the court, but now he only pockets as much as 75 cents a pound these days. Times are tough in this economy, "especially now with gas prices!" Banner griped.
It may not be the best defense strategy to test the failing memory of an octogenarian, though we have one in the White House.
Judge Noreika joked that questioning a witness up close isn't what it looks in the courtroom dramas.
"No, it's not the same as when Perry Mason did it," Lowell remarked.
At the end of Day 4, Lowell said they're still not sure whether the first son will take the witness stand. If Hunter does, he will have to undergo intense cross-examination about his drug-fueled debauchery.
Meanwhile, the prosecution is ready to rest after it offers two more witnesses Friday: a forensic chemist and a DEA agent.
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