When Hunter Biden went out in his father’s black Cadillac one evening in October 2018 and bought a Colt Cobra revolver from a local gun shop, it was perhaps the least disturbing detail of his darkly chaotic life.
He admits he was so addicted to crack cocaine that he was smoking it every 15 minutes and so careless of discovery that he left crack pipes lying around for his estranged wife and children to find.
He was simultaneously drinking “insane amounts of alcohol”, frequently hiring prostitutes and obsessively trawling the internet for pornography.
Six years later, however, it is the .38 Special calibre gun purchase rather than the drug addiction or the tawdry sexual habits that have landed Hunter — and the re-election efforts of his devoted father President Joe Biden — in serious trouble.
Yesterday, 54- year-old Biden Jnr became the first child of a serving US President to face criminal prosecution when opening statements were delivered in his trial for illegally buying a gun while a drug addict.
A federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, the town where Hunter Biden was born and raised, heard that he bought the gun and ammunition while addicted to crack and living a life of ‘non-stop debauchery’.
Biden denies the three charges: he has been accused of lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application by saying he was not a drug user, and illegally possessing the gun for 11 days.
Prosecutors say he committed a crime by ticking a box indicating ‘No’ next to a question asking if he was an unlawful user of a controlled substance, or addicted to a controlled substance.
If convicted, he faces up to 25 years behind bars but, whatever the verdict, the trial is likely to dwell in depth on his addiction problems and on the inner workings of the Biden family — just when its patriarch least needs such attention as he tries to woo a sceptical electorate.
The temperamental President has frequently been taunted by his nemesis, Donald Trump, about Hunter, and faces his first TV debate with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee just days after the expected end of Hunter’s trial.
Ordinary Americans, still recovering from Mr Trump’s historic conviction last week in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial, now face several more weeks of unedifying courtroom evidence about the grubby conduct of their once vaunted ‘First Family’.
Some have also expressed fears about its emotional effect on the President, who has warned that his son might start using again if he is convicted and sent to prison.
Prosecution lawyer Derek Hines said Hunter lied when buying the gun and was “addicted to crack before, during and after his purchase of the gun”.
He told jurors Biden wasn’t in court because he was an addict, adding: “We’re here because of the defendant’s lies and choices. No one is above the law. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your name is.”
Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell told the court they weren’t disputing any of the salacious details about his sordid life at the time.
But he stressed that prosecutors had to prove Biden knowingly broke the law, and he argued that, in the grip of his addiction, Biden hadn’t known.
The defence reportedly feels encouraged by the selection of a jury which has seven black members and a number of jurors have revealed they had close family members who had struggled with drug and alcohol problems.
In his opening remarks, Lowell appealed for sympathy for a hopeless drug addict, telling the jury about a tragic life in which Biden had lost his mother and younger sister in a car crash when he was a child, followed by his brother, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46.
Hallie Biden — his lover at the time he bought the gun — didn’t just know it existed, she reportedly found it and disposed of it by putting it in a bin behind a grocery shop for fear that Biden would use it on himself.
He also revealed the defence would be calling the President’s brother, James Biden, as a witness. James and Hunter are close, with the uncle helping his nephew through rehab stints in the past.
Meanwhile, prosecutors say they’ll be calling a string of Biden’s exes, including first wife Kathleen Buhle, Hallie Biden — widow of his brother Beau — and Zoe Kestan.
All are expected to testify that he was using crack cocaine around the time he bought the revolver from Wilmington shop StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply.
Ms Kestan says she saw him smoke the drug every 15-20 minutes except when he was asleep, the court heard.
Hallie Biden — his lover at the time he bought the gun — didn’t just know it existed, she reportedly found it and disposed of it by putting it in a bin behind a grocery shop for fear that Biden would use it on himself.
All my energy revolved around smoking drugs and making arrangements to buy drugs — feeding the beast.
Prosecutor Hines said Hallie “had been a drug user, too” after Hunter “introduced” her to crack cocaine.
“Hallie will testify about her own crack use,” with Hunter, he said, acknowledging that the testimony will be “embarrassing”.
The jurors heard the first excerpts, narrated by Biden himself, from his candid 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things, that prosecutors say they intend to rely on as evidence that he was in thrall to crack cocaine around the time he bought the gun.
Among excerpts they plan to mention, he describes returning home to Delaware — “in no shape to face anyone or anything” — in the month he bought the gun.
He goes on: “All my energy revolved around smoking drugs and making arrangements to buy drugs — feeding the beast.”
Prosecutors quoted him in court describing in his book his “superpower of finding crack anywhere, any time”.
The Bidens had hoped to avoid the spectacle of such a trial so close to this November’s Presidential election but a plea deal collapsed last year after Inland Revenue Service whistleblowers claimed the Justice Department had given Hunter favourable treatment while investigating alleged tax fraud.
Hunter has claimed he has been “the target of the unrelenting Trump attack machine” for six years.
Republicans counter that forever no longer America’s pro‑Democrat media has dutifully left the troubled and feckless President’s son alone, often justifying this by arguing it had to be sensitive towards a family racked by tragedy.
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said this week that the trial “is an albatross around President Biden’s neck and weighs very heavily on his psyche”.
He remains deeply protective of his wayward son, the only survivor of his marriage to first wife Neilia, and in recent weeks they have been spotted together so much — from a state dinner for the president of Kenya to a bike ride last weekend — that conservatives have accused the President of trying to signal to the Justice Department that he remains devoted to his son.
However, while First Lady Jill Biden sat in court — highly visible in the front row of the public benches — on Monday and again yesterday, the President has stayed away from the trial and refused to comment on it.
The White House said yesterday that the trial will “absolutely not” interfere with his ability to do his job.
On Monday, however, Biden Snr released a statement saying: “I am the President, but I am also a Dad. Jill and I love our son and we are so proud of the man he is today. Hunter’s resilience in the face of adversity and the strength he has brought to his recovery are inspiring to us.”
After graduating from Yale Law School in 1996, Biden Jnr worked as a lawyer and lobbyist but — he claims — was a “functioning alcoholic” within a few years.
The contents of Biden’s so‑called laptop from hell have already proved enormously humiliating for Biden.
He was discharged from the US Navy Reserve in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine but says his substance abuse drastically increased after his brother Beau died.
Critics contend that his failings cannot all be blamed on addiction and an unhappy past.
They have accused of him of shamelessly exploiting his father’s name, influence‑peddling and pursuing shady business ventures in Ukraine, China and Romania that earned him millions of dollars.
Both Hunter and Joe Biden deny there was ever any conflict of interest. While Biden faces a second trial in September, this time on tax fraud charges in Los Angeles, the Delaware case is confined to the gun purchase.
Biden’s first wife Kathleen Buhle could prove a particularly unhelpful witness for him. In 2022, she published a memoir that was excoriating about Hunter’s behaviour.
They married in 1993 after they met while working for the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Oregon. He later spent years in and out of rehab, leaving her to make excuses to their daughters — Naomi, Finnegan and Maisy — all now adults, she said.
Ms Buhle, who says she would find crack pipes lying around his car, asked for a divorce from Biden in 2015.
She says she later discovered he had started an affair with his brother’s widow after their children saw incriminating text messages on his phone.
Biden has defended that shocking fling “as built on need, hope, frailty and doom”, partly blaming incessant media attention for the relationship not lasting.
A now notorious laptop Biden left in a repair shop has been submitted as evidence in the trial.
The contents of Biden’s so‑called “laptop from hell” have already proved enormously humiliating for Biden, particularly when it was found to contain dozens of homemade porn videos in which he’d filmed himself having sex with prostitutes.
He then posted the videos on the porn site Pornhub. Biden says he got sober after meeting a South African filmmaker named Melissa Cohen in 2019.
They married and had a son they named Beau. Melissa was also in court this week. Not all of the President’s colleagues apparently share his immense sympathy for his son.
Some senior Democrats have reportedly tired of Hunter’s sleazy behaviour and the ammunition it’s given the Trump camp.
And if Biden Jnr goes to prison, even if only for a short time as seems most likely, it would take the sting out of Trump’s claim that he is the victim of a partisan Justice Department out to get him.