Hunter Biden�s Laptop Makes a Brief Appearance at His Trial

Hunter Biden�s Laptop Makes a Brief Appearance at His Trial
As the prosecutor waved the silver Apple MacBook Pro, the jury gazed at it
as if expecting sparks to fly from it. Listen to this article � 3:26 min

By Robert Draper
Reporting from Wilmington, Del.
June 5, 2024
On a day dominated by lurid tales of Hunter Biden�s years as a crack
addict, told by the defendant�s former wife as well as an ex-girlfriend, a
brief sighting in the courtroom of a major headliner passed with almost no
comment. At about 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, a federal prosecutor, Derek
Hines, brandished the headliner in question � Mr. Biden�s notorious
laptop, a silver Apple MacBook Pro encased in a plastic cover. He waggled
it about with his left hand while reminding a government witness, Erika
Jensen, an F.B.I. special agent, of all the data that had been seized
during the Department of Justice�s investigation of Mr. Biden. The jurors
and courtroom spectators gazed at government Exhibit 16 as if expecting
sparks to fly from it. Three seconds later, Mr. Hines returned the laptop
to the prosecutors� table, soon to be buried under a heap of other
government evidence. It received no further mention. The laptop�s cameo
appearance, after making a similarly brief appearance the day before,
underscored how anticlimactic its role has been in the various
investigations relating to the conduct of what right-wing critics term
�the Biden crime family.� House Republicans failed to glean from its
contents anything warranting impeachment of President Biden, the
defendant�s father. Nothing has yet emerged from it that ties the son to
criminal activity other than drug-related misadventures to which the
younger Mr. Biden has already confessed. The government�s case against Mr.
Biden, who has been charged with illegally purchasing a gun, centers on
whether he lied on a federal firearms application when he said he was not
abusing drugs. In the trial, the government�s case has relied mainly on
bank statements, descriptions from Mr. Biden�s own memoir and data
procured from his iCloud account. Up until now, far more attention has
been paid to two other key possessions of the defendant: the .38-caliber
Colt Cobra revolver he bought on Oct. 12, 2018, and his Ford Raptor truck,
in which his brother�s widow, Hallie Biden, discovered the gun and,
fearful that Mr. Biden would use it to take his own life, threw it in a
trash can at a Wilmington grocery store, setting off a chain of events
that led to Mr. Biden�s indictment last September. The laptop, which Mr.
Biden left unclaimed at a Wilmington repair shop and which made its way to
allies of President Donald J. Trump a month before the 2020 election, was
implicit, however, in testimony on Wednesday from Mr. Biden�s former
girlfriend Zoe Kestan. During her 11 months with Mr. Biden, Ms. Kestan
told the court, Mr. Biden was addicted to crack and single-mindedly
focused on scoring and doing drugs. She said he faithfully carried with
him an armada of paraphernalia: pipes, butane lighters, pen caps and
chopsticks to clean the pipes, and baking soda to help convert powder
cocaine into crack. As dedicated as he was to his addiction, Mr. Biden was
correspondingly hapless with his electronic equipment. During that same
period, Ms. Kestan testified, Mr. Biden lost �five or six iPhones� and
left a laptop behind at a hotel. His phones and laptops were chronically
in disrepair, necessitating trips by her to an Apple Store. She finally
relinquished her laptop to her boyfriend when two of his would no longer
work.