Hunter Biden juror reveals where the defense went wrong, how Hallie's testimony was a turning point and why he believed ex who said he smoked crack 'every 20 minutes'
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.
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 juror added that he believed the testimony of Hunter's stripper ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, who told the court he smoked crack 'every 20 minutes'
‘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.’
‘Now, I’m not saying he was incompetent,’ the male juror said. ‘But he wasn’t prepared well.
‘I just don’t feel as though their defense gave a very compelling case of his innocence.
Hunter and Joe Biden hug on the tarmac at the Delaware Air National Guard Base in their first meeting after the federal gun trial guilty verdict
‘A lot of what [the prosecution] said, they did not dispute.’
‘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.
The juror said Hunter’s ultimate ‘downfall’ was stepping into StarQuest Shooters gun store in Wilmington on October 12, 2018, where he bought this revolver
‘He chose that day, and that was the downfall for him, to go into the gun store and purchase the gun,’ the juror said
The prosecution tried to undercut Kestan's testimony in their closing arguments by claiming she wasn't believable, but the jury didn't buy it
The court was shown images from Hunter's laptop, including one of him appearing to weigh crack cocaine
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.
Biden preached about his record on gun safety hours after the verdict, but didn't mention his son's legal woes
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.
The juror said that on Monday afternoon when they first entered the deliberation room, they were all talking over each other, but on Tuesday they were more genteel: taking turns to speak and even holding up their hands to go next.
‘It worked very well. Each one of us took our turn, we raised our hands,’ he said. ‘There was never any heated arguments. And everybody got to voice their opinion.’
Juror 10 said Naomi’s testimony ended up highlighting problematic details for the defense.
He pointed to the difference in Hunter’s truck from when she borrowed it on October 17, 2018, when it was clean and the center console was locked, to when Hallie searched it on October 23, when she testified finding drug remnants, paraphernalia, and the gun in the broken and ajar console.
‘Hallie described it differently than what Naomi did. Naomi’s claiming that the lockbox was working.
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.
'The truck was clean, no residue of any drugs were apparent to her,’ the juror said.
‘But when Hallie was talking about the truck… she went out and checked, the windows were down, the lock was not working.
‘The defense did not hesitate to say wait a minute or object. But there was no objection to what Hallie said about the truck.’
The juror said he thought about Hunter’s late brother while he heard the testimony about the First Son’s debauchery and relationship with Hallie, saying it was ‘tragic’.
‘That was the hardest part for me. Knowing that it was Beau’s widow. I know about Beau’s service for the US military.
'I saw Beau as being a potential good politician. Unfortunately Beau got sick and died.'
The trove of evidence also showed Hunter's tables littered with bottles of booze
‘What possessed Hallie to go with Hunter I don’t know. Why would you get into a relationship with your brother-in-law? That to me is really complicated and hard to figure out, why she would do that.’
He said the most ‘shocking’ thing was Hunter’s life ‘spinning out of control’.
‘The thing that hit me one of the hardest was – and it could have been the motivation behind him buying a gun – was when he admits he went to a tent [in Los Angeles’ skid row] and a dealer pulled a gun on him.
‘That's when, in my mind, he was thinking, Okay, I need to protect myself.’
But he said Hunter’s ultimate ‘downfall’ was stepping into StarQuest Shooters gun store in Wilmington on October 12, 2018.
‘He chose that day, and that was the downfall for him, to go into the gun store and purchase the gun,’ he said.
The juror said that in the deliberation room, they all picked up on something about Hunter’s gun purchase form that was not discussed in the trial: an alleged hesitation to tick the box saying he was not an addict.
‘We didn’t see it in the court, but when we saw the paper up close, we saw there was a little hesitation when he did that. Because his ‘x’ was just a little bit different than the rest of it.
‘That was another key point. Was he thinking, he wouldn’t have been able to buy the gun?’
The juror said he was unmoved by Lowell’s arguments casting doubt around the 16 minutes between when Hunter got a background check for his gun purchase, and when he paid at the register – or what the jury heard about irregularities in the gun sale.
‘I personally know how background checks are done,’ he said. ‘I do them myself. I’m not a gun salesman or anything like that. But in what I do I have to also do a background check.
‘They were trying to say within that 16-minute period, what was Hunter doing? Why was he buying the things he was buying. I was kinda thinking, he went to buy a handgun.
‘When it came down to it, Hunter signed for it, Hunter bought a gun knowing he was a drug addict, knowing he was using. So whether the form was filled out properly or not wasn’t relevant to the case.
‘The defense was trying to say he was clean when he bought that gun. Clearly he was not.’
The juror said that certain texts, published by DailyMail.com on Monday morning and then introduced by the prosecution at the last minute, after they rested their case, were ‘key pieces of evidence’.
The texts showed Hunter setting up a drug deal the day before he bought his gun.
‘That led up to him purchasing the gun. Those key pieces of evidence, they showed he was trying to get some drugs. So when he filled out that form, that’s what made me believe, ok, he’s still a crack addict, he’s still doing drugs,’ Juror 10 said.
‘I believe he was still doing drugs up to the time he went into the store.’
The juror said he doesn’t think justice would be best served by Judge Noreika giving Hunter jail time.
‘I’ve seen other cases that were much more serious than Hunter’s. I think he should be treated just like anybody else,’ he said.
‘Really he needs more help than he needs jail. Jail’s not going to help somebody, especially if you’re an addict.
‘If he does jail time, it’ll be for lying about being an addict and purchasing the gun.’
Juror 10 said he had no doubts about the authenticity of the messages and other material they were shown from Hunter’s abandoned laptop – despite the defense questioning it.
‘[FBI agent Erika Jensen] showed the device, she showed the laptop, she showed the hard drive they used to retrieve information from the cloud,’ he said.
‘I think we all ought to be aware, and I saw first-hand, you need to be careful what you’re doing with your cell phone. It’s never gone.’
He added that Hunter’s memoir helped land him with his felony convictions.
‘His book didn’t help him. Especially it being an audio book, hearing his own voice,’ the juror said. ‘He came out and admitted it: I am a drug addict.’
