Welcome back. We're getting breaking news into our newsroom this morning. The jury in Delaware has reached a verdict in the federal trial for President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden. On count 1, the verdict is guilty. On count 2, the verdict is guilty, and on count 3, the verdict is guilty. It is the first time in history that the child of a sitting president has been convicted of federal charges. From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily.
Today, why a jury found Hunter Biden guilty on federal gun charges? What it will mean for his father, and what it could do to the presidential race? White House reporter Katie Rogers is our guest. It's Wednesday, June 12th.
Katie, I think we have to start by just recognizing the extraordinary and really improbable situation that we're in as of today, which is that over the past two weeks, the former president of the United States was found guilty of a crime, and the son of the current president of the United States was found guilty of a crime all during a presidential race between those two presidents.
It's just kind of staggering. It's remarkable. I was in a hotel lobby next door to the courthouse yesterday after the jury went to deliberate and happened to glance over at CNN and saw former president Trump walking to attend a probation appointment, and just the starkness of that really hit home where we're in this moment where the former president has a probation officer, and the president's son is on the precipice of being convicted of three felony gun charges.
Right. There was never any doubt that Trump's case was going to go to trial because he made very clear he was never going to accept a plea deal. But I think for a lot of us, the Hunter Biden case has been a more confusing legal saga. The last time we talked about it on this show, Hunter Biden was very deep in negotiations with the federal government to try to
reach a plea deal that would avoid a trial and then those negotiations collapse. So catch us up Katie on what happened next and how it is we got to this guilty set of verdicts. Right. And it's been a real saga. You know, as a reminder, this stems back to the administration of president Donald Trump. At the time, the president and other Republicans were itching to find ways to undercut the candidacy of Joe Biden. And one way to do that is to look into the business dealings and life
of his troubled son, Hunter Biden. So before Donald Trump leaves office, a federal prosecutor named David Weiss has been appointed to look into Hunter Biden in a wide investigation that is centered around Hunter Biden's finances. So flash forward to almost a year ago exactly Hunter Biden and his legal team have reached a deal with Weiss on tax charges and also this gun charge that would avoid jail time and basically avoid the outcome we just saw today.
But when that plea deal gets in front of a judge, it becomes clear that both sides are not an agreement about what this deal means, particularly around the issue of whether or not Hunter Biden should face future charges. The judge sends them back to negotiate, but Hunter Biden's team opts not to do that. They decide to roll the dice, essentially challenges Weiss to take this thing to trial. Weiss takes them up on it, brings the charges and that led to the trial that we saw
play out in Delaware last week. And that trial ends up being pretty narrowly focused on gun charges. Just remind us what exactly those charges are. So basically what got Hunter Biden in trouble is that during October 2018, he goes to a gun store in Wilmington, Delaware looking to buy a revolver. And he filled out a form that said at that current time, he was not an unlawful user of drugs and was not addicted to drugs. And that is one of the disqualifiers that gun sellers
use to disqualify people from purchasing a firearm. So basically prosecutors are saying that at that time Hunter Biden lied to the gun dealer on that form, lied on the form itself, and illegally possessed a handgun. Got it. They're saying he was in fact a drug user at that time. Exactly. Okay, so take us into the trial itself. How do federal prosecutors go about making their case
that Hunter Biden lied when he signed that form? Right. So essentially prosecutors have to prove that Hunter Biden was addicted and an unlawful user of drugs during this period in October where he possessed a handgun. But throughout the trial, which was interesting and the judge agreed that this was the case, they repeatedly said we do not have to prove that he was using on the day,
he purchased the gun or even during the time he had the gun. So in that sense, prosecutors have a really wide window of opportunity to essentially prove that Hunter Biden was a drug addict around this time. So prosecutors have a lot to work with. They have documents, including text messages, bank receipts, ATM withdraws to present to the jury, but they also have a 2021 memoir written by Hunter Biden that extensively detailed his drug addiction, the depths of it, and it certainly
involves a time during which he purchased this gun. He doesn't talk about it in the book, but there are passages in it in which he recounts buying drugs in Wilmington, the addiction he fell into with other family members, and snippets of that memoir, which were read in Hunter Biden's
voice were piped in by prosecutors into that courtroom. Wow. So the prosecution starts with a pretty serious mountain of problematic evidence it would sound like for Hunter Biden, including his own words, documenting drug use during the period that's at the center of his trial.
Right. And on top of all this, on top of all of that evidence, they have witnesses who were very close to Hunter who detailed his drug use and the toll it took on them at some points, including his ex-wife Kathleen Bule who was married to him for 24 years and recounted on the stand periods in which she struggled to get him into rehab during which their marriage essentially fell
apart because he was so deep into drug use and also infidelity. And then probably most powerfully, they called Halle Biden, who is the widow of Hunter Biden's older brother, Bo Biden. Bo died in 2015 and after that Hunter Biden and Halle Biden fall into a romantic relationship during which she testified that she fell into crack cocaine use with him. Huh. So Halle testifies that not only was she aware of Hunter Biden's drug use, but she actually descends into drug addiction with him.
Exactly. So what really came through during Halle Biden's testimony was the hell she sort of described that she was in with Hunter Biden as they fell into drug addiction. She had said they were buying ping pong sized balls of crack cocaine and using them together and Hunter would disappear for days at a time, telling her that he was, you know, quote, sleeping on a car and smoking crack. And eventually, you know, she begins trying to clean out his car of drug paraphernalia. She
stumbles upon this handgun that is in a lock box in Hunter Biden's car. And as she testified and as prosecutors displayed in court, Halle Biden was texting Hunter Biden at that time saying, I panicked, I just threw it away. He's admonishing her for doing that. And it just really recounts this high drama, very messy period of time between two people who are in the throws of addiction. And it is all around the time that prosecutors are most focused on.
Katie, as all of this testimony is being given and these really pretty embarrassing and painful details are being aired, what is the mood like in that courtroom? So the mood in the courtroom was somber and serious as most trials are, but it was also surreal because for most days of this week-long trial, Jill Biden, the first lady was in the front row sitting directly behind Hunter Biden. Hmm. So the first lady of the United States keeps her eyes on Hunter, on the prosecutors, on the
defense team. Most of the trial, she left for one day to go to France and she left the president's side in France to come back to this trial. That is the starkest illustration to me of the Biden family's priorities. At one point yesterday in the courtroom, I counted at least eight members of the Biden family. Hunter's uncle, Jimmy Biden, was sitting in the front row as was his sister Ashley Biden, his aunt, Valerie Biden Owens, who raised him in the first years of his life after
his mother died was in the front row. It had become sort of a family affair. Sitting in that courtroom, watching the Biden's watch Hunter Biden on trial was a stark reminder that while some of the details of Hunter Biden's addiction have been startlingly public at times, the pain faced by the
people closest to him has largely been private and seeing people like Halle Biden take the stand and detail drug use and recount this hell she had gone through seeing Kathleen Beale take the stand and talk about the times she tried to get him sober and couldn't do it was a real reminder that this large very public facing family had privately for years been trying to outrun this, trying to move on from it. It really did feel like this first family's worst moments of private
pain were now on display for public consumption. We'll be right back. So Katie with all of that sorted testimony we heard from people like Hunter Biden's ex-wife and ex-girlfriend it feels like the prosecution went a pretty long way towards its goal of portraying Hunter Biden as somebody addicted to drugs. So what was the defense's strategy once it was their
turn in this trial? So the defense is trying to prove that during the time Hunter Biden bought that gun in October 2018 he was not addicted to drugs but in fact was working hard at maintaining his sobriety. And how do they try to prove that? They make the case that there is no proof that prosecutors can find that shows that he was actively using when he filled out that form
or during the 11 days he had that gun. And his attorney Abby Lowell who is a long time criminal defense attorney in Washington he's a very well-known Washington scandal lawyer is doing all he can to inject doubt into this very as prosecutors presented open and shut case of Hunter Biden's addiction.
So for instance Lowell tries to poke holes in the prosecution's argument that Hunter Biden would frequent a particular 7-11 in Delaware to buy drugs by saying there's no absolute proof through text messages through location data or otherwise that Hunter was actually in that 7-11
buying drugs at one point Lowell says you don't know if he's just there to buy a cup of coffee and that is the work of a defense attorney to say unless there is hard evidence showing him with a dealer that could have been for any other reason then to buy drugs and Hunter Biden could have been or believed himself to be sober. I'm curious who the defense called to the witness stand in their effort to try to muddy this picture of Hunter Biden as someone addicted to drugs in this period.
So the defense actually most notably called Hunter Biden's eldest daughter Naomi Biden to the stand and they try to use Naomi as a witness who understands that her father was by her own words hopeful and the best she'd seen him in a long time during this period of time. But upon cross examination prosecutors pull out text messages between Naomi Biden and her father
that show a different story during the time Hunter Biden had this gun. Naomi Biden is trying to meet up with him in New York City and is unable to reach him and at one point she tells her father she's really sad she can't handle this she just misses him and wants to hang out with him and prosecutors use those communications to establish that in fact this was actually not great his
own daughter could not reach him when they were in the same city. So the defense's theoretically best witness to this idea that he was not a drug addict at this time that he might have even been sober or on his way to being sober ends up being someone who essentially confirms the prosecution's claims
that Hunter Biden is still not okay during this period. Right so by the time Naomi Biden leaves the stand walks across the room and wraps her dad in a hug for about a minute it becomes clear that this testimony and this cross examination especially did not go the way Hunter Biden and his team hoped it would have. And of course we know that this defense strategy didn't work because we now know
the guilty verdict. It seems clear that this jury ultimately looks at all this evidence and says that while perhaps they didn't have a time stamped photograph of Hunter Biden you know using drugs or being high on drugs the day that he bought this gun it very much seems from the testimony that the jury believed the prosecutions portrayal of him as someone very much in the throes of drug addiction at the time that he bought that gun. Right and in the end jurors took only three hours
to return a guilty verdict. Right so let's turn to the reaction to this verdict starting with Hunter Biden's father president Joe Biden. Right so minutes after the verdict is announced and the first lady walks out of the courthouse holding Hunter Biden's hand the president releases a statement reiterating his support for his son how proud he is of what he called seeing some one you love come out of the other side of an addiction like this but also he says he is going to accept
the outcome of the trial. Last week he was asked if he would pardon Hunter Biden and president Biden said no. So to me that's drawing a clear line of being a supportive father who backs his son no matter what and a president who is not going to overreach and pardon someone who was just convicted in a court of law. Right and that simultaneously seemed to be president Biden drawing a contrast
with former president Trump. Right so in an election that has been all about drawing a character contrast with Donald Trump the statement itself strikes a contrast with Donald Trump who has railed against the outcome of his own trial has essentially lashed out at every aspect of this legal process. President Biden by contrast has quietly accepted the outcome and continued to
say that he will keep embracing his son. Since you raised it the question of this conviction and the election I think is going to be on many people's minds how does the conviction of the incumbent president's son on gun charges potentially impact the course of this election. Well at the very least a conviction of the president's son shows that there were consequences in a legal trial that had some serious weight to them all along Republicans have alleged that you know the Biden
led justice department was going to let the president son off easy. So the fact that Hunter Biden was convicted takes some of the steam out of the Republican argument that he would get some sort of sweetheart deal or be treated more favorably than Donald Trump would have been
during his own hush money trial. That said Republicans will use this and Donald Trump will use this to bolster this idea that the Biden's are a crime family that corruption runs through the family and in fact Hunter Biden is going to stand trial later this summer on tax evasion charges and Republicans are certainly hoping to in the heat of a campaign season attack the Biden's again on the grounds that the Biden's can't be trusted essentially. I would expect to hear more of that
in a drum beat as this campaign goes on. Katie I'm curious in a country that's ravaged by a drug epidemic. Is it possible that this conviction and watching Joe Biden reach out to his son and this family go through what it's gone through might not just be something that doesn't hurt Biden and this admittedly gets kind of complicated and cynical when it comes to politics but potentially makes Biden more relatable to some voters and in some sense is a political virtue.
I think there's a lot of truth to that and Americans have showed in polls that what they see of Joe Biden is a father supporting his son and that's not a political calculation
on Joe Biden's part. I think if you know anything about the president and his relationship with his kids it was forged out of great tragedy at the beginning of president Biden's career and they're extremely close because of that and they're incredibly loyal to each other because of that and you just see that play out through the presidency you're seeing it play out today. The president rearranged his schedule really quickly after the verdict to go fly home to Wilmington
to see his son met Hunter Biden on the tarmac and give him a hug. So there is that cynical part of you that thinks this is a play for sympathy or a play for Americans to see this family in a different way but also several of those jurors had family members who suffer from addiction.
Most Americans know somebody or are related to someone who suffers from this. It's an incredibly universal problem that Americans deal with and for the president of the United States to be dealing with the fallout of that is relatable. Katie, I think it makes sense to end this conversation where we began which is grappling with the fact of these two criminal convictions, not just of Hunter Biden but of Hunter Biden and Donald Trump.
When Hunter Biden was convicted it struck me at least that if we're being really honest with ourselves both Donald Trump and Hunter Biden would probably never have been put on trial for these particular charges, a gun charge in the case of Hunter Biden, a hush money payment in the case of Donald Trump had they not been president or been the president's son, right? That just feels like
an objective reality. Trump came into the crosshairs of a Democratic district attorney, Hunter Biden came into the crosshairs of a Trump appointed U.S. attorney. Right. And so what does all of this say about the way that our legal system is now interacting with our political system? Well, essentially we've entered an era where politicians are trying to use the legal system to their benefit and where the courts are going to feel more pressure to carry out
their wishes. And you know, to be clear, that doesn't mean all of these cases are without merit or are going to be without merit, but they're now going to be carried out in this environment where politics at the very least will be the backdrop or at the most will be a major factor. So to me, it's looking a bit like it's the price of admission to presidential politics.
And as we're seeing with future cases against Hunter Biden and Donald Trump, this is clearly a phenomenon Americans are going to have to keep grappling with. Right. They're politicians and even their politicians children on trial. Exactly. Well, Kitty, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Hunter Biden is likely to be sentenced in the next few months. He faces up to 25 years in prison, but because he is a first time nonviolent offender, the judge in the case may choose a more lenient punishment. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. In secret recordings made last week, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told a woman posing as a conservative Catholic that compromise in America between the left and the right might be impossible.
And one side or the other, one side or the other is going to win because there are differences on fundamental things that really can't be done with us. It's not like we're going to split the difference. At another point, Alito told the woman who in real life is a liberal activist that he agreed with her claim that the United States must return to a place of godliness. People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that to return our country
to a place of godliness. The unguarded remarks made at an annual dinner attended by Supreme Court Justices reinforces Alito's reputation as a committed social conservative intent on safeguarding the place of Christianity in American life, and they're likely to intensify questions about Alito's impartiality. Alito is already under fire for allowing two flags associated with the January 6th riots at the U.S. Capitol to fly over his homes at various times following the 2020 election.
Today's episode was produced by Shannon Lynn, Stella Tan and Will Veed. It was edited by Devon Taylor, contains original music by Dan Powell, Mary and Luzano and Alicia Bae YouTube, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lanzferr of Wonderly. That's it for the day already. I'm Michael Baudo. See you tomorrow.