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A very Delawarean tragedy played out in room 4A at the district courthouse in Wilmington Thursday as Hallie Biden testified for the prosecution at her former lover Hunter Biden’s felony gun trial.
The president’s widowed daughter-in-law was supposed to become the first lady of Delaware, maybe first lady of the United States, a Wilmington native told me while observing the day’s drama.
But Joseph Robinette “Beau” Biden III died in 2015 of brain cancer, aged 46, leaving Hallie bereft and dashing Joe Biden’s dream that his first-born golden child’s political career as Delaware attorney general would soar to the heights that he, himself, would reach five years later.
So, instead, here was Hallie, 50, in the witness box, having to tell strangers about the torrid affair and crack addiction she shared with her late husband’s black-sheep brother in the ensuing three years.
‘I regret that time’
“It was a terrible experience I went through, and I’m embarrassed and I’m ashamed,” she told the jury.
“I regret that time of my life.”
The slender brunette dressed soberly in a black pantsuit and V-necked silk blouse, with her hair pulled back in a low bun, as she walked through the courtroom to the witness box at 9:12 a.m., running the gauntlet of Biden family and friends packed into the rows behind Hunter and his lawyers.
Hunter’s second wife Melissa Cohen sat in the front row beside his aunt Valerie Biden Owens, the president’s sister, who has taken Jill Biden’s seat while the first lady is in France for D-Day commemorations.
Aunt Val whispered in Melissa’s ear from time to time through the morning.
According to text messages on Hunter’s abandoned laptop, Aunt Val is no fan of Beau’s widow, with Hunter telling a friend that Val tried to stop Beau from marrying Hallie.
No doubt the family dynamics in the courtroom were evident to Hallie from the minute she walked past the president’s portrait in the lobby of the federal building, a reminder of the power of her former father-in-law who had paid her a curious late night visit 12 days earlier.
She testified that it was Hunter who “introduced” her to crack cocaine in late 2015 or early 2016, soon after they began a “romantic relationship,” as prosecutor Leo Wise delicately put it.
She had been clean for two months on Oct. 23, 2018, when she threw his new Colt Cobra handgun in an open trash can outside the family’s neighborhood gourmet grocery store, where it was scooped up by a man scavenging for recyclables and went missing for six days, triggering a police operation to retrieve it.
Now Hunter is standing trial as a consequence, with prosecutors alleging he lied about his drug addiction on a federal background check from when he bought the gun.
“Do you want me to relapse?”
Hallie asked Hunter as he remonstrated with her for removing the gun out of his unlocked truck.
It was one of a series of text messages from Hunter’s abandoned laptop that were shown to the jury to illustrate the deterioration of their relationship.
“For a long time,” texted Hunter in response.
Like her one-time nemesis, Kathleen Buhle, Hunter’s ex-wife who testified in similarly pinched fashion Wednesday, Hallie cut a sympathetic figure with the jury, able to testify to Hunter’s extreme drug abuse and their valiant but ultimately doomed efforts to get him sober.
For Hallie, at least there is a happy ending. She remarried last weekend to wealthy Ohio financial broker John Hopkins Anning II and had a large diamond on her ring finger to prove it.
She broke into smiles when she spotted Anning in the courtroom, sitting on the opposite side from the Bidens.