FILE – Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, speaks during a news conference outside the Capitol, Dec. 13, 2023, in Washington. Hunter Biden is pushing for a delay in his federal gun trial, asking an appeals court to pause the Delaware trial set to begin next month. Defense attorneys argued Monday, May 20, 2024, there isn’t an urgent need to start the trial on June 3, shortly before the scheduled start of another trial on tax charges in California. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
Hunter Biden shouldn’t be allowed to call two expert witnesses at his fast-approaching federal gun trial in Delaware, the special counsel argued Thursday in a court filing calling the defense bid belated and the testimony “otherwise inadmissible.”
The proposed expert witnesses, Dr. Elie Aoun, a drug addiction expert and clinical psychiatry professor at Columbia University, and Dr. Michael Coyer, a chemist with a wealth of knowledge over decades of experience in forensic toxicology, would testify in a way that would help the jury better understand Biden’s drug addiction and to poke holes in FBI lab testing that found “cocaine […] on the brown leather pouch that had [Biden’s]” allegedly illegally purchased and possessed gun inside, the defense has argued.
Special counsel David Weiss is prosecuting President Joe Biden’s son because he allegedly falsely “certified” to the ATF on a form that he was not an unlawful user of or addicted to drugs and, as a result, unlawfully possessed a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver from Oct. 12, 2018 to Oct. 23, 2018 — for 11 days — while “knowing” he was addicted to crack cocaine.
Aoun’s testimony, the defense maintains, would be “relevant to rebutting the offense charged in this case—centered around the definition and understanding of a ‘user’ and an ‘addict’ as used on Form 4473.”
“Dr. Aoun’s opinion concerns what constitutes general testimony regarding how individuals in the category the government alleges Mr. Biden to be (e.g., certain alcohol and substance abusers) view themselves and information about other relevant facts such as rehabilitation, substance abuse disorder, the cycles of sobriety, recovery, and rehabilitation, which although the Special Counsel may not like, will be helpful to the jury in deciding various facts at issue,” a defense filing said.
Coyer’s testimony would focus instead counter Weiss’ expert witness Jason Brewer, an FBI chemist, by identifying “chain-of-custody concerns” with the leather pouch that allegedly had “white residue” on it deemed to be cocaine five years after that pouch and gun were allegedly dumped in a trash can by Hallie Biden, only to be turned in by a “third-party.”
“The evidence was held, touched, and controlled by others before the government obtained it from a trash collector. The cocaine that was found was not tested to determine whether it had been recently left on the evidence (e.g., 2018) or put there years before,” the defense said. “There is no dating history whatsoever as part of the FBI-Chemist’s test or analysis. Surely, the test did not indicate who put the residue there.”
Coyer would testify at trial, set to start June 3, on the “reliability, durability, and chemical composition of cocaine evidence” under these circumstances.
But according to the special counsel, the defense should be barred from calling these expert witnesses because Biden’s team “untimely disclosed” its intent and otherwise fell short in showing the relevancy.
“As set forth in the government’s motion, exclusion is appropriate here where experts were untimely disclosed and still, less than a week before trial, have not specified their bases, reasons, and sources for their opinions, or even what their opinions will be,” Weiss said. “The defendant’s initial, insufficient disclosure was provided a little over two weeks before trial. It is now Thursday and trial in this case begins on Monday and the defendant, who benefitted from the government’s timely expert disclosures, still has not provided sufficient disclosures as required by Rule 16.”
“Because the defendant’s proposed experts do not offer admissible, relevant testimony that satisfies Rule 702, and, in fact, Dr. Aoun so far offers only irrelevant testimony or testimony that violates Rule 704(b), there is no prejudice in simply excluding them,” he added.
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