Exes and experts: Here are the key witnesses at Hunter Biden’s trial

WILMINGTON, Delaware — When Hunter Biden goes on trial this week on federal gun charges, some of the witnesses against him will be his exes.

Prosecutors have indicated they may call three women who used to be romantically involved with the president’s son, including his ex-wife.

Those women, prosecutors believe, can help prove that Biden was addicted to drugs at the time of his alleged crimes in October 2018. Special counsel David Weiss charged Biden last fall with illegally possessing a gun as a drug user and lying about his drug addiction when he bought the gun.

In court, the witnesses will serve a straightforward evidentiary purpose. But beyond the Wilmington courthouse, their testimony could reverberate in other ways by airing embarrassing and painful details about the Biden family.

Biden’s defense team, meanwhile, has its own slate of witnesses prepared. One is an expert who will try to undermine the physical evidence the prosecution plans to offer. And the defense also could call a politically fraught witness of their own: Hunter Biden himself.

The trial, which begins Monday with jury selection, is expected to last three to six days. Here’s a look at some of the important figures who might take the stand for each side.

Hallie Biden

A key witness whom prosecutors have indicated they plan to call is Hallie Biden, the widow of the president’s other son, Beau. According to prosecutors, she will testify that Hunter Biden stayed at her home in the fall of 2018 and that she and her children found drugs and paraphernalia in his possession multiple times.

Hallie and Hunter Biden became romantically involved after Beau died of brain cancer on May 30, 2015. Their relationship generated substantial tabloid attention.

Hallie Biden’s testimony will likely be her most detailed public discussion of her relationship with her deceased husband’s brother and his addiction.

Kathleen Buhle

Prosecutors also plan to call Kathleen Buhle, who was married to Hunter Biden from 1993 to 2017 and has three daughters with him. Throughout 2018, according to prosecutors, Buhle would search Biden’s car because “she did not want their children in a vehicle with drugs.” She found drugs or drug paraphernalia about 12 times, prosecutors said in a court filing.

Buhle’s testimony could include details of the problems that his addiction caused to his family. It won’t be her first time opening up about her marriage. In 2022, she wrote a book, If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction, and Healing.

Zoe Kestan

Another woman who was romantically involved with Hunter Biden, identified by prosecutors as Witness 2 and by The New York Post as Zoe Kestan, is slated to testify. According to prosecutors, she will say that she saw Biden using crack “every 20 minutes except when he slept.”

Michael Coyer

Michael Coyer is a forensics expert who has served as a research director at various forensic toxicology laboratories. Biden’s defense team wants to call him to testify about a key piece of evidence prosecutors are expected to present: the discovery of cocaine residue on the pouch in which Biden’s gun was allegedly found. The pouch was found in a trash can behind a grocery store less than two weeks after Biden is said to have purchased the gun.

Coyer is expected to testify that there is no way to know when the residue got onto the pouch and that “it is not possible to determine who used or left the residue,” according to a court filing from Biden’s lawyers.

Ronald Palimere

Biden’s lead lawyer, Abbe Lowell, indicated during a May 24 pretrial conference that he has a series of questions for Ronald Palimere, the owner of StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply, the Delaware gun store where Biden allegedly purchased the gun.

Lowell said he expects to question Palimere about how and when the federal gun purchase form was filled out — and whether Biden really completed the entire form himself. Two of Biden’s three felony charges stem from allegations that he lied about his drug use on that form. But Biden’s defense team has noted that there are two versions of the form associated with Biden’s purchase. First, there’s a copy that Palimere emailed to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms shortly after Biden is said to have bought the gun. Next, there’s the actual hard copy of the form, which someone altered by adding a note about Biden’s vehicle registration.

Lowell also signaled that he plans to question Palimere’s employee Gordon Cleveland, who is said to have sold the gun to Biden.

Hunter Biden

Biden could take the stand in his own defense — a prospect that his team said remained a possibility at the May 24 pretrial conference. If he testified, he could describe what he has called his struggle with addiction and his efforts to redeem himself. And he could provide his own account of what happened at the gun shop in October 2018.

Prosecutors would surely cross-examine him aggressively. And they have signaled that if he does take the stand, they want to question him about a separate criminal case he faces in California charging that he deliberately failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes over four years. That case is slated to go to trial in September.

John Morgan, a major Democratic donor and attorney, told POLITICO that Biden is “not a shrinking violet,” and that there would be a high risk that Biden would turn combative if he took the stand. If that happened, he could lose any jury sympathy — meaning it probably wouldn’t be worth the risk.

Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.