OAN’s Brooke Mallory
1:33 PM – Wednesday, June 5, 2024
In the first son’s federal gun trial on Wednesday, Hunter Biden’s ex-wife told the jury that her husband “was not himself” when he used crack cocaine, but that he was still able to function.
Hunter, President Joe Biden’s son, was also described by a former girlfriend as an addict who smoked crack “every 20 minutes.”
The testimonies of Kathleen Buhle, 55, and Zoe Kestan, 30, seem to refute claims made by Hunter’s defense team, who argued that his outwardly upstanding behavior showed that he had not been experiencing a drug relapse on October 12th, 2018, the day he purchased a .38-caliber handgun.
Buhle is the author of a 2022 memoir titled “If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction, and Healing,” where she recounts her life while married to him
During her approximately 25-minute testimony, Buhle—who was married to Hunter from 1993 until 2017—recounted the moment she discovered he was abusing the highly addictive street substance.
“I found a crack pipe on July 3rd, 2015… in an ashtray on the side porch of our home,” Buhle said in regards to her discovery in the former couple’s Washington, D.C., residence.
“I went looking for my husband and asked him what it was,” added Buhle. “He said it was a crack pipe. He acknowledged smoking crack.”
Given that the Biden son had been expelled from the Navy the previous year after testing positive for cocaine, Buhle expressed that she believed Hunter had used hard drugs prior to that time as well.
“I was worried, scared,” she continued. “He was not himself. He was angry, short-tempered, acting in ways he hadn’t when he was sober.”
Buhle, who has three daughters with him, said that she began routinely searching their vehicle for hard drugs and paraphernalia so that their kids would not discover any proof of his concerning secret. She also mentioned past fears about being pulled over by the police while the substances or pipes were in the car.
Months after their divorce was finalized, she continued the routine in 2015 and 2019, claiming to have discovered even more cocaine in Hunter’s car multiple times.
According to Buhle, Hunter was still able to work and communicate normally with friends and family despite his addiction.
She also mentioned that he often used drugs and alcohol together.
Later, Hunter’s ex-girlfriend, Kestan, a native of Brooklyn who testified under oath, described how she first met Hunter in December 2017 at a Manhattan gentlemen’s club where she worked part-time. She also described how, one time, she and another woman had given him a 30-minute private dance. Kestan said that Hunter would smoke crack through the sliding door to the private room was open.
In January 2018, Hunter and Kestan reunited at the Soho Grand Hotel in Manhattan. During their five days together, Hunter smoked crack “every twenty minutes or so,” according to Kestan.
Kestan maintained that she was simply a “distraction” for Hunter and that she attempted to somewhat reduce his regular drug use, but she also recalled witnessing Biden use chopsticks or a dissembled pen to clean out his crack pipe. Additionally, she mentioned an occasion when Hunter purchased a “ping-pong ball”-sized quantity of the drug from a dealer named Frankie at a Four Seasons hotel.
Hunter “used cash for a lot of things. I know a good amount of it was for buying drugs,” Kestan continued.
She noted Hunter’s impressive ability to appear “normal” when high, despite defense attorney Abbe Lowell’s assertion the day before that “there is no such thing as high-functioning crack addicts.”
“I thought to myself, ‘It’s crazy his demeanor doesn’t seem to be changing,’” Kestan said. “I never saw an immediate change in his behavior, which really confused me.”
Kestan added, though, that over their nine months together, she did witness him misplace or break his phone at least five or six times.
Earlier on Wednesday, during the cross-examination of FBI Special Agent Erika Jensen, the first trial witness, Lowell attempted to expose weaknesses in the prosecution’s case against the first son. Yet, the punches landed flat.
For almost ninety minutes, Lowell interrogated Jensen, attempting to imply that Hunter was dealing with alcoholism rather than drug addiction when he purchased a weapon.
At one point, the defense tried to suggest that Hunter’s gun application had been falsified. However, prosecutors were already prepared with their own proof to refute both claims.
Lowell tried to prove that Biden was only a heavy drinker at the time by presenting credit card receipts that showed Hunter purchased alcohol at least eight times in October 2018.
However, soon after, Jensen was questioned by prosecutor Derek Hines, who rhetorically asked, “Do drug dealers accept credit cards?”
“Not in my experience,” the agent answered.
When none of Lowell’s other arguments seemed to be getting across, he claimed that someone could have changed the paperwork after Hunter filled it out and when law enforcement utilized it in their investigation.
Hines questioned Jensen and asked if there was any evidence to suggest that the paperwork could have been tampered with. She said, “No.”
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