All eyes are on Delaware as Hunter Biden stands trial this week, accused of lying about his drug use on application forms when he bought a gun in 2018.
It is the first time the child of a sitting president has found themselves a defendant in a criminal case – and if found guilty, Hunter, 54, could face 25 years in prison.
Yesterday, his ex-girlfriend and the widow of his late brother, Beau, testified that she had found a gun and ‘remnants of crack’ cocaine in his truck in 2018 after he disappeared for ‘weeks’ in the latest shocking insight into his personal life.
But for five years, the exploits of the younger Biden have enthralled and horrified the nation in equal measure.
Most famously, the retrieval of a laptop belonging to Hunter and containing data critics claim implicates members of the family in a corruption scandal which threatens to undermine confidence in the president himself.
But Hunter is not the only Biden accused of criminal wrongdoing. As the case in Delaware exposes life inside America’s first family, DailyMail.com explores through its other dark secrets.
Hunter Biden (L) and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden (R) and Valerie Biden Owens leave the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building on June 06, 2024 in Wilmington, Delaware
Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden walk to board Air Force One in Carpiquet, France on June 6 after taking part in ceremonies to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy
Hunter Biden
In Delaware, Hunter Biden is accused of lying about his drug use on application forms when he purchased a gun in 2018.
The charges include two counts of making false statements and one of illegal gun possession. Biden has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Hunter has said himself that he was in the throes of a ‘full blown addiction’ to crack cocaine at the time.
But prosecutors say he reported when buying a Colt Cobra special revolver that he was ‘not an unlawful user of and addicted to any stimulant narcotic drug’ at the time of purchase.
The third charge related to his possession of a firearm while allegedly a drug user.
He is understood to have kept the pistol for 11 days. The gun was discarded and found at a grocery store in Greenville, leading investigators to the forms.
The case has exposed some of Biden’s difficulties with addiction, drawing in testimonies from former lovers and associates to speak on Hunter and his relationship to drugs.
Ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan told jurors this week that Hunter would prepare crack at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, spending days in hotels getting high in the months before he bought the gun.
‘He would want to smoke as soon as he woke up,’ she told the court on Wednesday, claiming he was using crack cocaine ‘every 20 minutes or so’ when they met.
Hallie Biden, another former partner who connected with Hunter after the death of her husband his brother, Beau, in 2015, told the court Hunter abused alcohol and crack cocaine as he mourned the tragic loss.
Beau Biden died from cancer earlier that year, aged 46.
Hunter Biden leaves the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Delaware on June 6, 2024
Hallie Biden arrives at the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building on the fourth day of trial, on June 6
Zoe Kestan departs from federal court in Wilmington on Wednesday, June 5, 2024
Hallie said she had searched Hunter’s truck for drug paraphernalia in October 2018, hoping to clean out the car in case her children found anything.
She said she found the gun in the center console, put it in a bag and tossed it in a trash can at a local market.
‘I realize it was a stupid idea now. But I was just panicking,’ she told jurors.
Hallie’s testimony revealed the hurt and tragedy around enveloping Hunter at the time and her pleas for him to return to treatment.
It is not the first time the President’s son has faced legal scrutiny for his conduct.
In December 2023, Hunter was charged with evading $1.4mn in tax payments – the second indictment following the gun-related charges brought in September.
If convicted in the tax case, Hunter could face 17 years in prison. The three felonies and six misdemeanors include failure to file and pay taxes, false tax return and evasion of assessment.
Prosecutors allege the president’s son spent his money on ‘drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes’.
They claim he ‘continued to earn handsomely and spend wildly’, claiming his expenditures rose with his income.
The charge sheet noted that between 2016 and 2019 he had paid more than $188,000 for ‘adult entertainment’.
But in 2018, Biden texted his ex-wife to say he could not make his alimony payment due to ‘insufficient funds’.
Prosecutors claim he ‘had sufficient funds available… to pay some or all of his outstanding taxes when they were due’ but failed to do so.
In July last year, Biden pleaded not guilty to tax charges for failing to pay $100,000 in taxes over a period of two years, after agreeing to plead guilty in June.
Biden separately faced scrutiny over the contents of a laptop he reportedly dropped off at a computer repair shop in Delaware in April 2019 and never picked up.
DailyMail.com revealed the authenticity of thousands of emails found on the drive, which included some 217 gigabytes of data.
Hunter claimed the laptop, which some Republicans said contained damning evidence of corruption, had been tampered with and sued Rudy Giuliani for allegedly violating federal and state computer privacy laws by ‘hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over’ the data.
Democrats have dismissed the probe as probably disinformation, perhaps pushed by Russian operatives to discredit the President.
The New York Post’s 2020 report on the story received widespread attention, alleging some of the emails were related to Hunter’s foreign business dealings.
House Republicans also referred to the laptop in their investigations into the family’s ‘shady’ overseas dealings – and whether the president also benefitted from influence peddling while deputizing Barack Obama.
In 2019, Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate links between the Biden family and Burisma, a gas company based in Kyiv with Hunter on the board.
Fake theories claiming Joe Biden had improperly withheld a loan guarantee and taken a bribe to hush a corruption investigation were spread in an apparent effort to discredit Biden.
In December last year, the House backed an impeachment inquiry into the President over allegations about the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor that had reportedly already been debunked by ‘at least nine government witnesses’.
The above form shows Hunter Biden checked ‘no’ when asked if he is ‘an unlawful user of, or addicted to’ a controlled substance. But the president’s son detailed in his own book that he relapsed in 2018 – the same year he purchased the firearm
The president’s son has acknowledged struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine during that period in 2018, but his lawyers have said he didn’t break the law (pictured 2023)
James Biden
Hunter Biden was named alongside James Biden, the president’s brother, in new criminal referrals accusing them of making false statements to Congress as part of the GOP’s yearlong impeachment inquiry.
The Republican leaders of the House Oversight and Accountability, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees sent a letter to the Justice Department recommending the prosecution of Hunter Biden and James Biden and accusing them of making a ‘conscious effort’ to undermine the House’s investigation.
The false statements in question, according to the House committee chairmen, include references Hunter Biden made about what position he held at a corporate entity that received millions of dollars from foreign clients.
The president’s son also ‘relayed an entirely fictitious account’ about text messages between him and his Chinese business partner in which Hunter Biden allegedly invoked his father’s presence with him as part of a negotiation tactic, according to the GOP investigation.
There is also a focus on statements James Biden made about whether the president, while a private citizen, met with a former Biden family business partner.
Both Hunter and James Biden sat for lengthy interviews with lawmakers even as they failed to uncover evidence directly implicating Joe Biden in any wrongdoing.
Rep. Jason Smith, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said testimony from IRS whistleblowers shows that Hunter Biden lied to Congress at least three times in his Feb. 28 deposition.
‘I think the Justice Department needs to look at that and act accordingly. When you lie to Congress, that is a serious violation of the law. It’s a felony,’ said Smith, R-Mo. ‘The president’s son should not be treated any differently than any other American.’
Since former President Donald Trump’s conviction on charges in New York, Republican leaders have assailed the Justice Department for what they claim is a ‘two-tiered’ system of justice that targets conservatives.
They play down the department’s current prosecution of Hunter Biden and the fact that other prominent Democrats have faced federal investigation during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s attorney, said in a statement that the referrals are ‘nothing more than a desperate attempt by Republicans to twist Hunter’s testimony so they can distract from their failed impeachment inquiry and interfere with his trial.’
James Biden, brother of U.S. President Joe Biden, arrives for a closed deposition at the O’Neill House Office Building in Washington, U.S., February 21
James Biden (C), the brother of U.S. President Joe Biden, arrives with attorney Paul Fishman for the deposition where he was interviewed as part of the House Republican’s impeachment inquiry into the U.S. President
Frank Biden
The younger brother of Joe Biden, Frank, was found partially legally responsible for the death of Michael Albano in August 1999, but only began repaying the family after revelations emerged 20 years later that he had not been paying damages.
Albano died when he was on foot crossing the road on Highway 101 in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, beside Encinitas, California, when the high-powered Jaguar XK8 convertible rented by Frank Biden hit him at as much as 80mph. The speed limit was 35mph.
Frank, then 43, was riding shotgun when he shifted the 290hp car into manual and told the driver, Jason Turton, 25, to ‘punch it,’ just before hitting Albano.
He was allegedly heard saying ‘keep driving’ and Turton fled the scene, telling police someone advised him to, while another passenger in the car said ‘everyone was drinking’.
Frank nonetheless stayed at the scene after Turton ran off, but the police report suggested he was uncooperative on key points of the investigation.
It took 20 years for Frank to pay any of the $1mn he owed Albano’s family in damages.
Albano’s daughters had repeatedly asked Joe Biden to intervene, but nothing happened for years until he was running for Vice President and stories emerged about his liability commitments.
When they wrote to then-Delaware Senator Joe Biden for help in 2008, his aide wrote back claiming Frank ‘has no assets with which to satisfy the judgment’ – despite a string of executive jobs, luxury cars and exotic vacations documented by DailyMail.com.
He only began to repay the family after DailyMail.com revealed the scandalous debt-dodging in 2020.
Frank has had multiple alcohol-related driving offenses and was ordered by a judge to attend rehab for three months after a 2004 arrest for driving with a suspended license.
He was also arrested on August 20, 2003 for a DUI.
He had an open and almost empty 375ml bottle of Popov Vodka in his car, ‘red watery eyes, slurred speech, flushed face,’ and he ‘did not know where he had been or where he came from’, a police affidavit said.
Frank’s license had already been suspended a total of four times. He was given six months’ probation for the 2003 offense, public records show.
A photo of Frank was uploaded to a gay porn website GuysWithiPhone.com in 2018. Frank admitted he was the man in the picture but denied uploading it himself
Frank has been in a long-term relationship with his partner Mindy Ward, a former Hooters waitress-turned-American Airlines flight attendant, since 2010
Frank is 11 years the former vice president’s junior and the youngest of his three siblings
Caroline Biden
Caroline Biden, niece to the President, admitted to $110,000 worth of credit card fraud in 2018, concluding a probe that began with her arrest in 2017.
Ms Biden ultimately had her felony conviction thrown out in June 2018 for an unauthorized shopping spree at a pharmacy in Greenwich Village, permitted to re-plead to the lesser charge of petit larceny.
She was ultimately handed a short stint of community service at a children’s hospital and did repay the full restitution of $110,810.04.
Prosecutors said the victim had given Biden permission to make a single purchase worth $672 before going on to spent nearly 165 times as much.
Biden told a New York judge she took responsibility for her conduct and deeply regrets the harm it caused.
‘I can assure you that I have made amends, full restitution, completed community service and that nothing like this will ever happen again,’ she told Justice Curtis Farber, as reported by the New York Post at the time.
Biden was also charged in 2013 with hitting a police officer during a dispute with her roommate.
She got anger management treatment, and the case was dismissed, remaining closed.
Caroline was ultimately handed a short stint of community service at a children’s hospital (pictured at a New York court)
Caroline Biden had her felony conviction thrown out in June 2018
Caroline Biden and Hunter Biden are pictured together, undated
Ashley Biden
President Biden’s daughter, now 42, found herself embroiled in controversy back in 2009 when a ‘friend’ tried to sell a video that allegedly showed her snorting cocaine.
The New York Post refused to pay the $2million the anonymous ‘friend’ demanded for the video, later brought down to $400,000, and reported on it anyway.
According to the Post, the video showed a woman in her 20s ‘with light skin and brown hair taking a red straw from her mouth, bending over a desk, inserting the straw into her nostril and snorting lines of white powder’.
The woman in the video is then said to stand up and talk to people in the room.
Lawyers claimed to have identified a boyfriend of Ashley in the video.
‘At one point she pretty much complains that the line isn’t big enough,’ one said, as reported by the Post. ‘And she talks about her dad.’
The story caused national outrage as then-Senator Joe Biden spearheaded the War on Drugs in the mid-1980s, at the height of the crack epidemic.
Joe authored the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, bringing into law ‘mandatory minimum’ prison sentences for various drug offences.
Since then, the President has issued a softer touch in an effort apparently intended to appeal to younger voters.
‘Sending people to prison just for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit,’ Biden posted on the social media platform X earlier this year. ‘It’s time that we right these wrongs.’
In 1999, Ms Biden was arrested for marijuana possession while at university in New Orleans, according to The Telegraph.
Three years alter, she was arrested for shouting at a Chicago policeman trying to arrest a ‘disorderly friend’ outside a club, the outlet reported.
In both cases, the charges were dropped.
Joe Biden and Ashley Biden attend the Bloomberg & Vanity Fair cocktail reception in Washington DC on April 30, 2016
Senator Joe Biden with Ashley after announcing his candidacy for President in Wilmington in 1987
