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By Matthew Impelli
Life & Trends Reporter
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Hunter Biden's current defense may seem "ridiculous" but it could work to his benefit in his current federal gun trial, a lawyer said this week.
On Monday, former Whitewater lawyer Sol Wisenberg appeared on Fox News' Fox & Friends to speak about the current gun trial against President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, and how the defense may seek to use jury instructions in their favor.
"There's gonna be a big fight over jury instructions. So, I think the argument is going to be something along the lines of, 'Hey, you showed that he used drugs before. You showed that he used drugs after, but he had just gotten out of a detox program, the question is what evidence is there that he was using drugs or addicted to drugs contemporaneously and that he thought he was when he filled out that form,'" Wisenberg said.
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"It may sound ridiculous but Abbe's [Lowell] a very inventive lawyer and what they're trying to do is give a hook to a juror who is actually inclined to acquit. To give a hook to that juror, to say to the other jurors: 'Look, they haven't proven their case,'" Wisenberg added.
Newsweek reached out to Hunter Biden's attorney, Abbe Lowell, via email for comment.
Hunter Biden is on trial in Wilmington, Delaware, for federal charges of illegally possessing a firearm after allegedly lying about his status as a drug user when buying a pistol in 2018. The trial began last week and is expected to continue in the coming days. Many of Hunter's relatives, such as First Lady Jill Biden and Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter Biden's brother Beau Biden, who died in 2015, have been in attendance at the trial.
While Hunter Biden's past drug use has been well-documented, he has pleaded not guilty to the gun charges, arguing that he completed a rehab program shortly before he purchased the weapon and checked off "no" on a federal form that asked whether he was an "unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance."
The trial judge had asked both sides for their proposed jury instructions, the list of instructions that judges routinely read to juries to help them understand the charges in a criminal case. Biden's lawyers wanted the judge to instruct the jury that Biden could have been acting in "good faith" when he wrote on the form that he didn't have a drug addiction.
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However, prosecutors rejected the proposal from Biden's legal team which said that to be guilty of the crime in question, Biden would have to "knowingly" fill out the form incorrectly, and therefore his actions could not be both "knowingly" wrong and also be done "in good faith."
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