Juror in Hunter Biden's gun case reveals where the defense went wrong

A juror in Hunter Biden’s gun crimes trial slammed the First Son’s defense lawyer in an interview with DailyMail.com and revealed the moments that most likely led to the his historic guilty verdicts. Juror 10 told DailyMail.com that top attorney Abbe Lowell seemed ‘not prepared well’, was ‘fumbling things’ and did not give a ‘compelling’ case for Hunter’s innocence. The man, who spoke anonymously, also revealed he believed Hunter's exes Hallie Biden and Zoe Kestan - who said the president's son 'smoked crack every 20 minutes'.

One of the defining moments of the trial, he said, was Hallie describing how she found drug paraphernalia in Hunter's truck at the time he bought the Colt Cobra Revolver in October 2018. Hunter, 54, now could face a maximum of 25 years in prison and a $250,000 fine after he was found guilty on all federal firearms charges. The judge is yet to set a sentencing date, but it is usually 120 days from when the verdicts are read.

‘I thought in the very beginning he was bottling things,’ the juror said. ‘He wasn’t prepared well. I was thinking, for somebody like Hunter Biden that has this kind of money, he’s got a lawyer that’s – I’m not saying he was incompetent or anything – but he clearly did not have things together like the prosecution did.’ 

Hunter’s position as First Son did not come into Juror 10’s decision, he said. ‘I was not thinking of him as the son of the sitting president,’ the juror said. ‘Honestly, I did not think of President Biden throughout the trial, except for one time they mentioned him. And I was like, oh crap, yes, this is the President’s son. But after that we got back into the case. I stopped even thinking of President Biden.’ 

‘Their biggest defense was that at the time of buying the gun, Hunter was not addicted,’ the juror said, pointing out how Lowell emphasized the present tense questions on Hunter’s gun purchase form asking ‘are’ you an addict. ‘He kept saying “are”. But Hunter was taking drugs in the days leading up to the sale, and the days after,’ he said. ‘There was not a wide window of time Hunter was sober and clean.’ The juror said that he believed prosecution witnesses including Hunter’s ex-lover and brother’s widow Hallie Biden, and his ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan.

Kestan said Hunter was smoking crack every 20 minutes up to two weeks before he bought the gun. Hallie said she found drug remnants in his car after he bought the weapon. Juror 10 also criticized Lowell for bringing Hunter’s daughter Naomi to testify. He said the defense ‘made a mistake’ in calling her, that she was ‘put on the spot’ and that she ‘shouldn’t have been called’. ‘That didn’t help sway us one way or the other,’ he said. Juror 10 described the moment that they delivered the verdict as ‘solemn’. ‘If anything, that is where I felt sorry for his family. I glanced at them for a minute. I didn’t look at Hunter,’ the juror said.

The juror said that the 12 took a poll as soon as they went to deliberate, and it was a 6-6 split of guilty to not guilty. He revealed he was among the six initially voting not guilty, but explained that it was only because he and the others ‘didn’t want to rush to judgment’. ‘Those of us that said not guilty, only said that because we didn’t deliberate yet. We didn’t want to jump too fast. It wouldn’t have been fair to Hunter.’ He added that they didn’t really discuss the case for that hour on Monday afternoon, instead ‘decompressed’, then went home at 4.30pm. 

He said they took a poll again on Tuesday morning at 9am when they resumed deliberation, and it was now unanimously guilty for the second and third count, of lying on a gun form and possessing a gun as an addict, an 11-1 split in favor of finding Hunter guilty for the first count, also about lying on the federal form. He said the one female juror ‘wasn’t really a hold-out’, but that she wanted to think some more about one element of the remaining count: that Hunter ‘knowingly’ lied. But after two hours of talking it over, she was convinced and they convicted on all counts, Juror 10 said. ‘We strongly told her, your opinion matters. She admitted nobody was going to force her to change her mind. It wasn’t like she was strong-armed,’ he said. 

In the end, he said it was Hallie’s testimony that convinced that juror. Juror 10 said he himself was convinced Hunter knew what he was doing. ‘Hunter was a lawyer. Even when using, hunter could interact and talk and function well doing crack,’ he said. ‘He was doing it every 20 minutes. That’s a lot.’ The juror said he has personal, harrowing experience of addiction in his family. He said both his brother and his brother-in-law died due to their addictions to meth and alcohol respectively.

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