In an effort to prove to jurors that Hunter Biden was a drug addict who lied about taking drugs to buy a gun, federal prosecutors turned to the women closest to him.
His ex-wife recalled that he found a cracked pipe on the porch the day after their wedding anniversary. A former stripper-turned-girlfriend has told a jury how they spent a month in a Chateau Marmont bungalow where drug dealers injected cocaine through a private entrance.
Then there’s Halle Biden, who is married to his brother Beau. She briefly became Hunter’s lover in a bitter entanglement sparked by grief over Beau’s death.
“I’ve called you 500 times in the last 24 hours,” she texted Hunter two days after he bought the gun. Hunter responded that he was “smoking cocaine” in downtown Wilmington, Delaware.
Another woman in President Biden’s son’s life held his hand every day last week as they arrived and left the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, listening intently to it all: She’s the one Biden is getting married to His wife of five years, Melissa Cohen Biden.
Always sitting in the same seat — second in the front row, next to a Secret Service agent and a few feet from her husband — Melissa had a clear view of the jury, her big blue eyes Watching her husband recount.
Melissa, who was surrounded by relatives, including first lady Jill Biden, was the only family member named by defense attorney Abe Lowell in her opening statement. Pointing to her, Lowell said Melissa helped Hunter face “the true depth of his internal trauma.”
In the courtroom arena—especially in a trial in which the prosecution’s star witnesses are three of Hunter Biden’s former lovers—Melissa’s role is unique and powerful because the only audience that matters now is jury.
Hunter Biden and Melissa Cohen Biden leave court on Friday, June 7.
(Matt Slocum/AP)
Melissa, who often wears her blonde hair in a bun at the back of her head, doesn’t hesitate to express her emotions.
When the lead prosecutor urged the jury in her opening statement to find Hunter guilty, she shook her head and said, “No.” When the prosecutor pulled out a Macbook Pro 13 and handed it to the jury, she shook her head again. Shaking his head – this is Hunter’s infamous laptop, seized by the FBI from a repair shop in Delaware. She shed a few tears as her husband’s memoir was played.
One high-profile outburst occurred without jurors, as reporters mingled with Secret Service agents and Biden relatives in the narrow, fluorescent-lit courtroom hallways.
There, Melissa faced off against former Donald Trump aide Garrett Ziegler, whose nonprofit released a series of emails, text messages and nude photos of Hunter , and the stolen diary of his sister Ashley Biden. Hunter sued Ziegler in Los Angeles, saying his “unhinged and obsessive campaign” against the Biden family violated state and federal internet fraud laws. Ziegler denied this.
“You have no right to be here, you Nazi loser—” Cohen told Ziegler.
Ziegler later said he was minding his own business during the trial.
Hunter Biden (left) arrives at the federal courthouse with his wife Melissa Cohen Biden.
(Matt Slocum/AP)
Melissa’s friend Bobby Sager, who sat through the trial every day, sometimes held her hand and ate with her and Hunter every night, said: “She already knew everything, but It was so difficult to hear it all in court.
The Biden family has gone to trial on charges that are almost never brought as stand-alone cases — proving to many that he is a role model because his father is president.
The first lady crossed the Atlantic, leaving the president in France, and sat next to Melissa to testify nearly every day. The president’s sister, Val Owens, her husband and children took turns walking around the courtroom with a group of friends. Melissa hugged everyone and even blew a kiss to Anthony Bernal, the first lady’s senior adviser, during a break last week.
Attorneys and jury experts not involved in the case said Melissa’s support could be a powerful factor for jurors.
“The jury has to believe that he has been transformed” and even “redeemed,” said Julie Blackman, a trial strategy consultant and social psychologist who worked on Sen. Robert Menendez’s first campaign. Counseled Lowell in a criminal trial that ended in a deadlocked jury.
“He has evidence – his wife was sitting there, standing by his side, supporting him, even though the jury heard everything he did,” she said, noting that Melania Trump was in her husband’s This was evident in his absence during the trial.
The Bidens’ meeting in the spring of 2019 was inauspicious.
Hunter recalled in his memoir “Beautiful Things” that he had just been kicked out of the Petit Ermitage, an ivy-covered luxury hotel in West Hollywood, but he was still hanging out by the pool, smoking a crack every 20 minutes. .
The people he met there introduced him to their friend Melissa and wrote her phone number on his hand. The next night, the two met at the restaurant of the Sunset Marquis Hotel.
“You have the same eyes as my brother,” Hunter told Melissa. “I know this is probably not a good way to start a first date, but I love you.”
That night, Hunter revealed his crack addiction. She didn’t hesitate.
“Well, not anymore. You’re done,” she told him.
Within days, Hunter wrote, Melissa changed his life. She confiscated his cellphone, computer and car keys, deleted all non-Biden contacts and reset his laptop password. He likened her to a jailer, saying she handled the drugs and followed the rules to the letter.
“I couldn’t go to the bathroom without her following me in,” Hunter wrote.
She fights off the dealers who want their money back, changes his phone number, and finds a mid-century modern high-rent apartment in the Hollywood Hills where they can start their new life.
On May 17, 2019, they got married at the owner’s rooftop wedding at Instant Marriage LA.
“Honey,” Hunter said his father told him, “I know that when you find love again, I will get you back.”
Friends recalled that Melissa was 32 years old at the time and had been living in Los Angeles for more than ten years. Born in South Africa, she was placed in a “children’s home” as a toddler and later adopted by Zoe and Lee Cohen, a Jewish couple in Johannesburg who had three sons.
Hunter wrote that she came to Los Angeles on a gap year with plans to go to India, but ended up marrying Jason Landver, who came from a West Side jewelry business family. Three years later, he filed for divorce in 2014.
In his book, Hunter describes Melissa as an activist and “aspiring” documentary filmmaker who spoke five languages. Before meeting him, she had tried unsuccessfully to raise $30,000 for a documentary called Tribal World. Series on past, present and future”.
“She was a very sweet girl, very smart, very expressive,” said Melissa Curtin, a travel writer and former teacher who has known Cohen for about 18 years. Cohen was still single when they met by chance, hitting up clubs in Hollywood with a group of friends and traveling to Malibu for the Fourth of July. Curtin said Cohen exuded a “magnetic” energy that cared about and protected animals.
“In real life, she’s adorable, energetic, and fun — I miss hanging out with her,” Curtin added.
President Joe Biden with his grandson Beau Biden and First Lady Jill Biden in 2022.
(Manuel Balce Seneta/AP)
Seven weeks shy of her first wedding anniversary to Hunter, Melissa gave birth to their son at Cedars-Sinai in March 2020, shortly after stay-at-home orders were implemented. He shares the same name as Hunter’s late brother and president: Joseph Robinette Biden IV, or Beau.
Curtin said the last time she saw Melissa was at the Malibu Farmers Market during the pandemic, where Secret Service agents were dressed in plainclothes “like Malibu people.”
“She has a happy life and a happy child, and apart from all the other stuff, it looks great,” Curtin said.
Melissa said as much when she told ABC News in 2019, “It’s not easy on the outside, but it’s amazing on the inside.”
Since their marriage, the couple has been at the center of a storm: Hunter’s first wife, Kathleen Buhle, has failed to pay millions of dollars in alimony. It was confirmed that he had a daughter with a former stripper who worked as his assistant before they were married. The impeachment inquiry focuses on his overseas business dealings. Daily attacks from Trump and his allies. Then a trove of Hunter’s personal data was exposed, allegedly from a laptop he left behind at a Delaware repair shop – erasing any privacy he had left.
Throughout, paparazzi followed them as they strolled through the Grove, lunched at the Waldorf Astoria, hiked, shopped at Whole Foods in Malibu, and ate pizza over Christmas.
Hunter Biden (left) and defense attorney Abe Lowell.
(J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Nothing compared to the trial, with media from around the world capturing Melissa’s every move, from the courthouse door to the black SUV driving the couple.
“It’s difficult going through all this and hearing different people testify,” said Sager, a friend of the couple. He singled out prosecutors’ questioning of former stripper Zoe Kerstein, who detailed a bicoastal romance in which she helped Hunter buy cocaine in Rhode Island while he was in rehab.
Leo Wise, one of the prosecutors, asked Kestein to state how old they were at the time of the relationship: 24.
“How old is he?” Wise asked.
“Twice as old as me, so 48,” Kestan said. She had earlier noted that Hunter’s daughters were close to her age.
Later, describing the exchange, Seiger made a point that many Biden allies have made about the effort to prosecute Hunter: “What’s the point? It seems cruel.”
Jurors will begin deliberating this week on whether Hunter should be convicted of three felonies: lying on a federal background check form to purchase a gun in October 2018, lying to a gun dealer and possessing a gun while he was a gun dealer 11 days. Prosecutors are uncovering Hunter’s sordid past in an attempt to prove he was an illegal drug user, contrary to what he wrote on the form.
A second trial for alleged tax crimes is scheduled for September in Los Angeles, with prosecutors alleging Hunter failed to pay timely taxes on more than $7 million in income and misclassified living expenses as business costs. (He has since paid all taxes and penalties.)
Jury expert Lee Meihls has advised the defense or prosecution in 500 trials, including the acquittals of Robert Blake and Michael Jackson, and most recently in Los Angeles The county convicted Danny Masterson and Robert.
“This is a way to create an emotional connection between Hunter Biden and the jurors because it’s personal,” Myers said, adding that some jurors need this as they filter the evidence and make their decisions. kind of connection. “This is his wife. His dirty laundry was exposed and she was still there – she didn’t run away from him.
