It's the first time the child of a sitting president
has gone to trial.
The first witness being heard right now in the historic
trial of Hunter Biden.
The younger Biden is accused of three felony charges after
obtaining a firearm in 2018 when prosecutors say he was
in the throes of drug addiction.
Those same prosecutors telling the jury no one is above
the law.
Doesn't matter who you are or what your name is.
Our national correspondent and my Co anchor here on ABC
News Live, Terry Moran, is outside court there in Wilmington,
DE.
So, Terry, we understand that an FBI agent has now
taken the stand.
Bring us up to date.
What what have we learned so far?
Well, Kara, they've just broken for lunch.
But yes, this FBI agent was bringing the jurors through
and they beginning the prosecution's case with Hunter Biden's own
words in his own voice, much of it reading the
audio.
They played the audio book version read by Hunter Biden
of his memoir Beautiful Things and the passages where he
describes his flagrant over the top debauched addiction to crack
cocaine.
This is a man who has recovered from addiction, he
says.
And part of that, of course, is taking responsibility and
owning up to what happened.
And that's what these passages were.
I must say his, his daughter and his, his mother,
the first lady, Jill Jill Biden were both very emotional
at times while this these passages were being played.
But the prosecution's trying to show that this was a
man who had no business purchasing a firearm, that he
was clearly, they said in their opening statement that he
was smoking crack every 15 to 20 minutes from the
moment he woke up until when until the time he
went to sleep.
Now, in in opening statements, I should say the defense
lawyer said that's all well and good, but he claims
he's found a hole in the prosecution's evidence that Hunter
Biden was not doing that in the days leading up
to his purchase, that he'd gotten out of rehab, stumbled
a bit and was trying to go clean.
And so they believe that they have an opportunity, the
defense does, to show the prosecution through Biden's own relatives.
We know what he was like on crack and he
wasn't before he purchased the gun.
So that's really the factual drama in the trial right
now.
Yeah, exactly.
I, I mean, on paper, the case is pretty straightforward,
right.
You just just pointed out he talked about, you know,
buying the gun.
The prosecution argues that his memoir and his text messages
just confirm that he was using drugs at the time.
So given all the facts here and even his admissions
around his addiction, you know, how's the defense going to
push back on this?
That's a great question.
And we heard really for the first time in in
an expansive way, what the defense in this case is
going to be.
It's going to focus on one of the words in
that form, the federal form to purchase a gun that
Hunter Biden wrote it that that word is are are
you an abuser of drugs or addicted to drugs?
Are the present tense.
And Abby Lowell, the defense lawyer, pointed out other parts
of that phone saying are you now or have you
ever?
So there are other parts where they wanted to refer
to the past tense that they used.
Have you ever They didn't in the crucial section of
that form and then Abby Lowell turned to one word
in the charges against Hunter Biden knowingly did the defendant
knowingly create a falsehood on that federal fault form.
And so it'll all boil down boiled down to what
Hunter Biden was doing at the time in the days
leading up to the purchase of that farm.
Now, all addicts know, in fact, Abby Lowell began his
statement with a very dramatic moment.
He said, as you know, he said to the jurors,
as everybody knows, a person who is recovering from alcohol
or drug addiction always refers to themselves as an addict.
And so I am Abby Lowell and I am an
addict.
It's a very dramatic moment, no question about it.
They acknowledge that.
But the key question for the criminal trial is, did
Hunter Biden intend to commit this crime?
The prosecution has to prove that and they say no
matter, you know what the what we all know is
that an addict is an addict until they're not.
In this chapter of his life these days leading up
to the purchase of his gun, he thought he was
getting clean.
And that they think could cause reasonable doubt in some
of the jurors minds.
Well, as things have gotten started, Terry will continue to
check in with you, of course, throughout the afternoon.
Thanks, Terry.