Hunter Biden’s gun trial starts today. Here’s what to know.

WILMINGTON, Delaware — As Hunter Biden walks into court Monday to go on trial, he’ll pass a familiar sight: a large photo of his father, sporting a reassuring grin.

The photo — hanging prominently in the lobby of a federal courthouse in dilapidated downtown Wilmington — is a vivid reminder of how the president’s political career and now his son’s legal travails both run through this struggling port city.

For years, Hunter Biden has drawn scrutiny for his links to controversial Ukrainian, Chinese, and Romanian business ventures. Congressional Republicans and former President Donald Trump have accused him of influence-peddling and corruption.

But the trial — which opens Monday morning with jury selection — isn’t about any of that. Instead, its focus is extraordinarily narrow: Biden will face three criminal counts for allegedly buying a gun while in the throes of addiction to crack cocaine.

The trial, which is expected to last between three and six days, will dramatize some of the worst moments in Biden’s life. Two witnesses who may testify against him are the mothers of five of the president’s grandchildren. It will be the culmination of years of legal trouble for Biden — and will be a source of pain for the president, who has long told associates that he is deeply concerned about his son’s criminal exposure, including that it could jeopardize his son’s sobriety.

Here’s a guide to how we got here and what comes next.

Who’s Hunter?

As the son of a U.S. senator, Hunter Biden was “raised on politics like farm kids raised on sweet corn,” he wrote in his memoir, Beautiful Things. In 1993, he married Kathleen Buhle, whom he met while they both were working in Oregon with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. They have three adult daughters.

Biden graduated from Yale Law School in 1996 and, over the following years, worked as a lawyer and lobbyist. In Beautiful Things, he said he was a “functional alcoholic” within a few years of graduation.

His brother, Beau, died of cancer in 2015. He left behind a widow, Hallie Biden, and two children. After Beau's death, according to the memoir, Biden’s substance abuse spiraled. He abused a host of drugs, and became particularly dependent on crack cocaine. Buhle told him in 2015 that she would seek a divorce, and he later struck up a romance with his brother’s widow.

“It was an affair built on need, hope, frailty, and doom,” he wrote. The relationship didn’t last, and Biden wrote that a tabloid frenzy fueled its downfall.

“Paparazzi tailed us nonstop,” he wrote. “Our relationship wasn’t just out in the open around Wilmington. It was on seventy-eight front pages around the world, from Thailand to the Czech Republic to Cincinnati.”

In 2019, after meeting a South African filmmaker named Melissa Cohen, he got sober. The two married and had a son, named Beau.

A criminal probe

In late 2018, as Biden was in the throes of addiction, a criminal investigator at the IRS started investigating him. IRS agents scrutinized his profligate lifestyle and unusual finances. Within months, the FBI was also investigating him. Investigators took a broad look at Biden’s life. It was clear he had a drug problem. They also found evidence indicating he had bought a gun.

On Dec. 9, 2020 — just weeks after his father defeated Donald Trump in the presidential race — he confirmed publicly that his “tax affairs” were under investigation.

Two and a half years later, Biden’s criminal jeopardy appeared to be nearing an end. On June 20, 2023, his lawyers announced that they had reached a plea deal to end the probe. Biden would plead guilty to tax violations and enter a diversion agreement intended to result in the eventual withdrawal of a gun charge. In exchange, the Justice Department would not prosecute him for other crimes, and Biden would be able to avoid any prison time. Republicans called it a sweetheart deal.

It didn’t last. A month later, Biden and the prosecutors appeared in the Wilmington courthouse for a hearing they hoped would lock in the deal. But instead, Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee, grilled prosecutors and the defense about the deal’s structure, enforcement, and immunity protection. Instead of greenlighting the agreement, she sent both parties back to the negotiating table to clarify its language.

Those efforts failed. Then, on Aug. 11, Attorney General Merrick Garland made David Weiss — the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware supervising the probe — a special counsel. That designation gave Weiss greater independence to charge Biden anywhere in the country.

On Sept. 14, Weiss’s team charged Biden with three crimes: unlawfully possessing a gun as a drug user, lying on a federal form when he bought the gun, and making a false statement about information required to be collected by a federally licensed gun dealer. Three months later, the special counsel brought a separate criminal case in Los Angeles charging Biden with tax crimes; that case is scheduled to go to trial in September.

The case against Hunter

The prosecutors helming the gun case, Derek Hines and Leo Wise, will lean heavily on Biden’s memoir to show he was a drug user on Oct. 12, 2018, when they say he bought a handgun from StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply in Wilmington. Biden didn’t discuss a gun purchase in his memoir, but he gave a detailed account of his drug abuse. Prosecutors have called it “his incriminating book” and cited his description of drug abuse in 2018 around the time he allegedly bought the gun.

They have also said they may call three of Biden’s exes: Buhle, Hallie Biden, and a third woman identified as Zoe Kasten. All three are expected to testify that Biden used crack cocaine around the time of the gun purchase. Hallie Biden may also testify about the gun itself; she is said to have found it and thrown it away behind a grocery store because she feared Biden would turn it on himself.

Prosecutors have also signaled they plan to prove Biden used illegal drugs by citing text messages he sent. Some of those messages come from an iCloud account they subpoenaed. Others come from a laptop Biden is said to have abandoned at a computer repair shop. Biden and his allies have maintained for years that material gleaned from the laptop — which pro-Trump operatives have distributed and published — cannot be presumed authentic. They have said some content attributed to it is altered or distorted. And they have never confirmed that the president’s son left anything at a computer store.

Prosecutors, however, have said they have confirmed the authenticity of much of the laptop’s contents by verifying texts and emails with the people Biden sent them to. They have said they will use it at the trial, and they have criticized Biden’s claims that its contents were distorted by bad actors.

“He has not provided any evidence or information that shows that his laptop contains false information, and the government’s evidence shows the opposite — the defendant’s laptop is real (it will be introduced as a trial exhibit) and it contains significant evidence of the defendant’s guilt,” reads a May 22 filing from the prosecution.

The case for Hunter

Biden’s defense plan is murkier. After his indictment, he filed multiple motions to dismiss the charges, arguing that he faced a selective and vindictive prosecution and that the gun law he allegedly broke violates the Second Amendment. Noreika rejected those motions. Biden appealed to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, and prosecutors argued the move — called an interlocutory appeal — wasn’t permitted. Appellate judges agreed, and told Biden he could appeal again after the trial ended.

In the weeks since then, Biden’s defense team and prosecutors filed motions arm-wrestling over what evidence and arguments would be allowed at the trial. At the last hearing before the trial, Lowell signaled that the defense may raise questions about whether Biden himself actually filled out the whole gun-purchasing form on which he allegedly lied about his drug use.

Two versions of the form exist: one the gun store owner emailed to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms shortly after the gun sale; and a second, which law enforcement obtained from the gun store several years later. Someone at the gun store updated the form after it was sent to ATF to add a line about Biden’s Delaware vehicle registration. Lowell indicated that this shows the process surrounding the form’s signing wasn’t typical, and that it could indicate someone other than Biden himself checked the box claiming he was not a drug user.

Biden’s team is also poised to argue he was in denial about his addiction on the day of the gun purchase.

Biden himself may also testify, his team has suggested. It’s a move that could be unwise, according to lawyer and Democratic mega-donor John Morgan.

“Hunter is not a shrinking violet, let’s start with that,” he said. “What can happen to defendants is they can become combative under cross examination because you’re sitting there selling your story, ‘I’m an addict,’ and then all of a sudden, they’re like ‘We don’t care,’ and then it becomes really adversarial, and ... they almost forget they’re on the stand. They start fighting, and then that’s when the sympathy for the addiction goes away.”

After the trial

If the jury of 12 Delawareans acquits Biden, he still won’t be out of the woods. He and his team will immediately pivot to the tax trial in Los Angeles, scheduled to begin Sept. 5. Hines and Wise are also prosecuting that case.

If he’s convicted in the gun case, a sentencing hearing will follow a few months after the verdict. Noreika would have wide latitude at sentencing, and could give Biden a sentence as mild as probation. But she could also sentence him to several years in prison. The Justice Department has said his maximum sentence would be 25 years, but that is unlikely.

Peter Tilem, a Manhattan criminal defense lawyer who has handled numerous gun cases, said he expects a conviction would lead to some jail time. Federal sentencing guidelines for defendants in Biden’s situation — no prior convictions or arrests, and no accusations of misusing the gun — recommend at least 15 months in prison, Tilem said. And he noted that a significant amount of time — nearly six years — lapsed between the date of the purchase and the trial. Biden’s lawyers would almost certainly argue at a potential sentencing that he’s changed his life since then. They would emphasize his sobriety, marriage, and commitment to family. The judge, meanwhile, would also give significant weight to whatever prosecutors recommend.

“The question is, how much does the Justice Department have their heart into prosecuting the Commander-in-Chief’s son, essentially their boss’s son?” he said. “How much is the Justice Department looking for blood?”

Before serving any prison time, however, Biden would almost certainly appeal on a host of grounds, including the Second Amendment argument he already made to Noreika. Tilem said there’s “a very good chance” he would be out on bail as his appeals were litigated.

Outside the courtroom

The politics surrounding Biden’s trial will be messy for everyone involved.

For national Democratic operatives and lawmakers, Hunter Biden has long been a source of discomfort and distaste. The White House’s allies mobilized when House Republicans launched an impeachment probe trying to link the president to his son’s peccadilloes. But no such efforts have continued in the lead-up to his trial. A common talking point from congressional Democrats has been that no one is above the law, including Hunter Biden. But bad-mouthing Biden is fraught, as the president has been crystal clear that he loves and supports his only surviving son.

Republicans, meanwhile, face a different conundrum. Their beef is with the prosecutors for neglecting to charge Biden with influence-peddling for his work linked to China and Ukraine. It’s a topic on which they’ve been consistent and vociferous. But it’s not exactly a turn-out-the-vote line. Biden’s argument for an expansive view of the Second Amendment, meanwhile, is also tricky for them to rebut –– though it’s equally discomfiting for national Democrats, who see tightening gun laws as a fruitful issue in the 2024 presidential election.