One of the 12 jurors who voted to convict Hunter Biden on three felony counts tied to an illegal gun acquisition has disclosed the reasoning behind their decision.
The juror and fellow panelists pointed to a collection of incriminating text messages exchanged between Hunter Biden and his sister-in-law as crucial evidence in securing the conviction.
According to a juror interviewed by the New York Post, these messages between Hunter and Hallie Biden, the widow of his late brother Beau Biden, with whom Hunter had a romantic involvement, played a significant role in demonstrating Hunter’s mental state and circumstances at the time of the gun purchase.
“[The text messages showed], in my opinion, he was training to get drugs,” said a juror whom the outlet described as a black 51-year-old woman from upper Delaware.
During the trial, Hallie Biden testified that she was shown a text message dated October 13, 2018, one day after Hunter Biden bought the gun.
The message mentioned that he was waiting for a crack dealer named Mookie while sitting in a car.
Hallie stated in her testimony that she believed “he was buying crack cocaine.”
Another text from Hunter the next day indicated that he was smoking crack and sleeping in a car.
Hunter Biden “looks kind of defeated. He looks kind of helpless to me,” the juror said. “I think he just needs to get away somewhere and get some real rehab if he hasn’t. Hopefully, he’s still not using.”
According to The Post, the verdict was quickly reached on Tuesday, which was surprising considering an informal vote on Monday where it seemed unlikely.
A juror mentioned that five members had changed their minds overnight.
Additionally, The Post reported that the final juror initially had doubts about Hunter’s crack usage during the gun purchase but re-evaluated the evidence and concluded that he indeed was.
The juror from upper Delaware commented that the group collaborated effectively, stating, “We worked together really well.”
“I was expecting all of us to be at each other’s throats, you know, because of who his father is and how the political climate is in this country,” she said.
Juror 10, interviewed by CNN on Tuesday following the verdict, indicated that Joe Biden and his family did not factor into the deliberations. Instead, the jury primarily considered the evidence at hand and did not delve into Hunter Biden’s family or personal life.
“We didn’t use Jill. We didn’t use President Biden,” he said, adding Joe Biden’s “name was only brought up once during the trial.”
“No politics came into play, and politics was not even spoken about,” he noted further, adding he did not think that Hunter belonged in jail. The first son faces up to 25 years in prison and a fine of $750,000.
“Deliberating, we were not thinking of the sentencing, and no, I really don’t think that Hunter belongs in jail,” the juror said. “If you looked at this case and you realize that when Hallie dumped that gun in a trash can, and it was retrieved, and Hunter Biden did not want to press charges because he was the victim of a theft of the firearm, he did not want to press any charges against Hallie and another thing that I also thought was they asked him, ‘did you want your gun back?’ And he said ‘no,’ he did not want that gun back.”
“When he said he did not want that gun back. And that gun sat in evidence for almost five years, I think that may have been what led to his downfall,” the juror continued. “Had he taken possession of that gun, I don’t know if we would even had the trial because he may have sold the gun, got rid of the gun, sold it back to a gun shop, or whatever,” he continued. “And it wasn’t like it was sitting in evidence … I believe that means it was sitting in evidence and somebody got a hold of that and say, ‘hey, let’s check this out a little bit more. And see exactly how he obtained that gun.”
