The defense team seems more likely to avoid taking the risky step of putting Mr. Biden on the stand, setting the stage for the jury to begin deliberations by day’s end.
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Hunter Biden, left, and his lawyer Abbe Lowell arriving at the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, Del.
Hunter Biden’s defense team is expected to wrap up arguments in his federal firearms trial in Delaware on Monday, and the jury could begin deliberating by day’s end barring any dramatic moves — like a last-minute decision by Mr. Biden to testify on his own behalf.
Mr. Biden, who is President Biden’s son, was angered by the government’s tough cross-examination of his daughter Naomi Biden Neal on Friday and told people in his orbit that he would consider testifying. But the defense, after a weekend of consultations between Mr. Biden and his lead lawyer, Abbe Lowell, now seems more likely to rest without taking the risky step of putting Mr. Biden on the stand.
Prosecutors and Mr. Lowell’s team will meet early on Monday with the presiding judge to consider a request by the defense to dismiss the case.
If the judge, Maryellen Noreika, rejects Mr. Lowell’s motions, as expected, each side will present its closing argument and Judge Noreika will issue instructions to the jury.
The government has sought to show that Mr. Biden regularly used drugs in 2018 and 2019 and that he falsely claimed to be drug-free when he filled out a federal firearms form. His lawyers have offered a spirited, if narrower, defense centered on whether Mr. Biden was actually doing crack cocaine at the time he bought the gun in October 2018 and have sought to undercut the prosecution’s witnesses by challenging their recollections.
Over two days, David C. Weiss, the special counsel in the case, summoned three of Mr. Biden’s former romantic partners, all of whom described in painful detail Mr. Biden’s unrelenting descent into crack addiction after his brother died of brain cancer. They included his former wife, Kathleen Buhle; a onetime girlfriend, Zoe Kestan; and Hallie Biden, his brother’s widow with whom he had an ill-fated romantic relationship.
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