Month: June 2024

Hunter Biden’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle and former girlfriend Zoe Kestan both testified Wednesday on Day 3 of his federal gun trial. The case marks the first time the child of a sitting president was ever put on trial during their father’s presidency.

The trial proceeded with cross-examination of an FBI witness concerning Biden’s laptop and a discussion of a timeline of his addiction with Buhle, who was married to Hunter Biden for 20 years and shares three daughters with him; and Kestan, who was involved with Biden around 2017-2018. A third woman romantically linked to Hunter Biden — Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter Biden’s brother Beau — is expected to to take the stand on Thursday. Hallie Biden found and discarded the gun at the center of the case.

Biden’s defense attorney Abbe Lowell resumed his cross-examination Wednesday morning of FBI agent Erika Jensen in front of U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika. Jensen was the first witness under cross-examination to discuss the well-publicized laptop, which was subpoenaed in 2019 and entered into evidence Tuesday. They went over the timeline of Biden’s past drug use and how he allegedly lied on a federal form that asks about addiction in relation to gun ownership. Jensen said under cross-examination that Biden might not have been using drugs continuously from 2015-2019.

Biden’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle took the stand after Jensen as the prosecutor’s first witness, testifying that her 25-year marriage to Hunter Biden deteriorated due to his past drug and alcohol use, but that she never personally saw him consume drugs. Buhle said that she would often find drug remnants in his car and that she saw him frequently work and interact with friends or family while she believed he was under the influence of crack cocaine, but he would try to hide it from people close to him.

Biden’s ex-girlfriend Kestan also took the stand, saying she met Biden in December 2017 at a Manhattan strip club and dated him for several months, testifying that he would smoke crack very often in private and admitting at times she would help him buy drugs at his request by using his mobile banking app at an ATM. She said at times she would see Biden smoke crack “every 20 minutes or so,” but that he remained “cognizant and coherent,” and would often drink alcohol while on drugs.

Also on the stand on Wednesday was Gordon Cleveland, the man who sold Hunter Biden the firearm. Cleveland testified that Hunter Biden did not seem confused by the form, while defense attorney Abbe Lowell tried to show how Biden was not addicted at the time to drugs, but rather alcohol.

And the end of proceedings on Wednesday, the prosecution said they have six witnesses remaining, and it is “possible” they will rest their case on Thursday; with Biden’s lawyer sharing that the first witness for the defense could potentially come Friday morning.

If convicted on all counts, Hunter Biden could face up 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines, according to court filings. However, because Biden does not have a violent past and is an alleged first-time offender, it is possible he could get a lighter sentence.

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Amanda Knox was re-convicted of slander by an Italian court on Wednesday, upholding the only conviction still standing in association with the brutal murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher in 2007. Knox was an American student living in Italy at the time of the murder of Kercher. She spent nearly four years in an Italian prison after she and then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were initially convicted of murder in 2009, a ruling that was overturned in 2011. She was again convicted of murder in 2014, after which the country’s highest court definitively acquitted her and Sollecito of murder in 2015. Rudy Hermann Guede was convicted and served 13 years for the murder; he was released in 2021.

Knox was re-convicted in Florence for wrongly accusing Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner she had been working for part-time in Perugia at the time of Kercher’s killing; however, she will not serve more jail time in Italy as her new three-year sentence has already been satisfied by time she served on the reversed murder conviction.

The European Court of Human Rights had ruled in 2019 that Italian law enforcement violated Knox’s rights during questioning, which led to Italy throwing out her slander conviction. The country’s supreme court then asked the Florence court to begin a new trial to decide whether there had been slander in the note.

Knox was accompanied by her husband, Christopher Robinson, with whom she shares two children, in court. The court said Knox would have to pay the legal fees of and damages to Lumumba, the sum of which is said to still to be determined.  Knox’s lawyers said she would appeal Wednesday’s ruling, and they have 45 days to file their appeal with Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation in Rome. That court only rules on whether a lower court’s ruling has been reached in line with legal procedures, however, not on the merits of any particular case. The Florence court was to publish the reasoning for its decision within 60 days.

Editorial credit: Alessia Pierdomenico / Shutterstock.com