Drugs, Guns, and Hunter Biden

Hunter Biden probably bought a gun while he was addicted to crack. Yes, that's a crime. The case is also nasty, lurid, and unnecessarily punitive.

The prosecutors rested their case against Hunter Biden on Friday. The best he can hope for is a modicum of sympathy that leads to a mistrial. It’s a real possibility. The witnesses who testified to Hunter Biden’s use of crack-cocaine seem to be painting a rather sympathetic portrait.

One witness was Zoe Kestan. She testified that she met Hunter Biden on Dec. 17, 2017, while she worked at a strip club in midtown Manhattan. Hunter Biden booked her for a private dance. According to Ms. Kestan, Hunter was smoking crack while playing music by the Fleet Foxes on his phone.

The federal prosecutor might think this kind of behavior makes Hunter look like a degenerate junkie. But the testimony veered into much more intimate and friendly territory for Hunter’s case.

“I felt really safe around him,” Ms. Kestan testified.

Ms. Kestan described meeting up with Hunter a week after they met at the club. They spent five days together at a hotel in Soho, where he smoked crack every 20 minutes or so (that’s kinda how crack works….). She tesified that Hunter was, “just so charming and so nice. At the time, I felt myself having feelings for him.”

Instead of being depicted as a violent “crack-head” who likes to play around with illegal guns, this exchange could lead a jury to a completely different conclusion about Hunter Biden. That he is a harmless, formerly drug addicted man coping with heavy loss and trauma by smoking his pain away while having to pay people to hang out with him, all so that he’s not alone with his own dreadful thoughts and feelings.

At 55.3 drug overdose deaths per 100,000 resdients, Delaware is high above the national average (in 2022: 32.6 deaths per 100,000). That means potential jurors in the state have probably witnessed addiction up close and personal in their own life. Their own experience could generate sympathy for someone like Hunter Biden, whose narrative of addiction fits the traumagenic eitology of substance use disorder to a tee. Hunter was in a violent car accident as a child that killed his mother and one-year-old sister. This loss haunted him his entire life, which was lived in the public eye thanks to his father being a very public figure. And then, his older brother Beau died of a rare cancer at the age of 46, making Hunter the sole surviving child of Joe Biden’s first wife.

Hunter is the poster-child for Gabor Mate’s theory that chaotic substance use stems from childhood trauma. That addiction is a manifestation of the need for one to feel comforted, cared for, and soothed in a lonely, violent world. Trauma plots and trauma narratives like this have become ubiquitous today. And Delaware jurors could be viewing Hunter’s story this framework.

If even one juror is inclined to believe that people can change, that addiction need not hang around one’s neck like a scarlet letter for life, then they might be inclined to give Hunter Biden another chance at redemption.

He just needs one juror.

The Trial

The President’s son is staring down three felonies in a Delaware federal court:

1. Lying to a federally licensed gun dealer

2. Making a false claim on the federal firearms application

3. Possessing an illegally obtained gun.

All thee charges stem from the allegation that Hunter Biden was addicted to crack-cocaine when he purchased a gun. To buy a gun, you have to fill out certain forms. One of those forms is a question that asks: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug or any other controlled substance?”

Hunter Biden answered: “No.”

The prosecution relied on Hunters own addiction memoir, text messages with drug dealers, incriminating photos and other documentary evidence of his drug use, much of which was captured by his own cell phone and written in his own words. Additionally, there’s a handful of girlfriends and ex-lovers testifying that Hunter Biden was high all the time. Straight up, the evidence doesn’t look good. Hunter’s own book, his own cell phone, and his intimate companions all point in the direction of a guy who had a serious cocaine habit.

(NOTE: Addiction memoirs, at their core, are an exploitative genre. I remain very glad I never wrote one. Even when an executive editor at Simon & Schuster encouraged me to do so. Had I written down all the stuff I’d done while addicted to opioids, playing up the lurid behavior and desperation for a good story, I’d be forever mortified and constantly fantasize that whoever I’m talking to knows extremely intimate details about my life while I know nothing about them, creating asymmetric dynamics in every social situation I encounter forever. Maybe my worst nightmare would be sitting in a court room while a federal prosecutor reads my own words describing my own descent into addiction in order to convict me of federal crimes. That’s a nightmare!)

The case against Hunter is legit kinda nasty. The prosecutors’ strategy is blatantly lurid, attempting to pick apart the life of an admitted crack-cocaine habitué who, years later, is now in recovery and trying to live his life under intense public scrutiny all because his dad, like so many dads right now, refuses to retire.

Hunter’s case feels vindictive and gratuitous. Hunter has sought out addiction treatment many, many times, and after many, many attempts, he is now in recovery. My heart goes out to anyone trying to kick stimulants because the same treatments that existed in the 1930s and the 1970s are the same treatments still used today. There’s zero medications approved for stims. Treatment for stimulants is mainly a mix of group therapy and individual therapy, while keeping the person far away from stimulants. Typically in a secluded place while that person craves the drug intensely, between lots of sleeping and mood swings. The hope is that the person slowly begins to eat food and sleep like a normal, non-nocturnal creature once again. And once the former stimulant user is back to a somewhat normal homeostasis, the person might actually feel better and able to make sound decisions. That life now is better than their past life buzzing around on stimulants driving both themselves and everybody around them nuts.

Plus, on stimulants, while not eating or sleeping, you’re liable to make really bad decisions like lying on a form to buy a gun. Do you think someone should really goto a federal prison for that?

What I’m saying is, Hunter already did the hard thing. He kicked. Now, he’s living somewhere in Los Angeles painting stuff. What is the actual point of prosecuting him?

Ankush Khardori, of POLITICO Magazine, and a former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, asked and answered this question for himself:

“If I had been asked to prosecute a case against a former drug addict using his memoir of recovery as the centerpiece of the case, I do not think I would have been able to bring myself to do it. That’s particularly true because it is far from clear that the conviction of Biden — to say nothing of a potential prison sentence — would serve any meaningful purpose.”

Under the past three presidents—and, yes, even under Trump—the Department of Justice has claimed to be on a journey moving away from a “tough on crime” posture, being harsh for the sake of being harsh, and moving toward a “smart on crime” paradigm that prioritizes a more rehabilitative framework. Punishment for punishment’s sake is not viewed super favorably at old Lady Justice. So why go after a guy who was clearly addicted to drugs and now isn’t, who blew up his life and has been trying to piece it back together? What’s to gain? Why bring this firearm felony to trial when it’s a stand-alone charge?

Typically, prosecutors go after this sort of thing when it’s just one facet of a broader criminal case. Like when people are lying on forms to buy guns for felons who can’t legally purchase a firearm, and then that weapon is used to commit serious and violent crimes. None of that is going on here with Hunter’s gun.

Here’s what happened to this gun:

On Oct. 23, 2018, just 11 days after Hunter Biden bought the gun, Hallie Biden (Beau’s widow) found the weapon in Hunter’s car and panicked. She then drove it to a grocery store in Delaware and is captured on security video throwing it in a trash can. Hunter was in possession of the gun for less than 2 weeks. This gun wasn’t used to do a crime. It was thrown away at Whole Foods less than 2 weeks after it was purchased.

There’s an air of hypocrisy about all this. Especailly from the 2nd Amendment absolutists who believe it is their G-d given right to own as many guns as humanly possible. If any of these 2A freaks smoke weed or are even alcoholics, then they’re also lying on their purchase forms and could face multiple felonies.

If government drug use surveys are any indicator, then there’s tens of millions of Americans who cannot ever own a gun because they’re a drug user / addicted. As Jacob Sullum notes in Reason, there’s potentially 20 million Americans who are both drug users and gun owners that are actively guilty of the same crime Hunter Biden is being tried for. That’s twenty million walking felons who will never be prosecuted for this. That is, unless their dad becomes president.

The Delaware Jury

Throughout jury selection, dozens of potential jurors explained that they had personally encountered addiction in their life. Many of them were struck from being selected. “I think after everybody is recovering, they need a second chance,” one potential juror who didn’t make the cut said. “My daughter has been given a second chance, everybody needs a second chance.”

A juror selected as an alternate mentioned that she knew many people dealing with addiction. “I feel it’s an everyday part of the world these days,” she said.

One potential juror explained to the lawyers that his older brother was addicted to PCP and heroin. He said his older brother also owned a gun. The federal prosecutor asked, “Do you have any views as to whether someone like your brother, someone who is addicted to drugs, should be able to have a firearm?”

The man replied, “No, they shouldn’t.”

Hunter Biden’s lawyer then asked, “What about somebody who has had that abuse and then no longer did?”

“Well, I believe that there is room for change,” the man said.