Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial in Delaware is coming up quickly. The special counsel said Thursday in a court filing that Biden shouldn’t be able to call two expert witnesses because the defense bid was late and the evidence was “otherwise inadmissible.”
Expert witnesses Dr. Elie Aoun, a clinical psychiatry professor at Columbia University and an expert on drug addiction, and Dr. Michael Coyer, a chemist with decades of experience in forensic toxicology, would testify in a way that would help the jury better understand Biden’s drug addiction and would call into question FBI lab tests that found “cocaine” on the brown leather pouch that had Biden’s allegedly illegally bought and possessed gun inside, the defense has said.
According to special counsel David Weiss, President Joe Biden’s son lied to the ATF on a form saying that he was not addicted to or using drugs illegally. As a result, he illegally had a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver from Oct. 12, 2018, to Oct. 23, 2018, even though he “knew” he was addicted to crack cocaine.
For the defense, Aoun’s evidence is important because it “rebuts the offense charged in this case—centered around the definition and understanding of a ‘user’ and a ‘addict’ as used on Form 4473.”
This is what the defense said in their filing: “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, as well as information about other relevant facts such as rehabilitation, substance abuse disorder, and the cycles of sobriety, recovery, and rehabilitation, which the Special Counsel may not like but will help the jury decide various facts at issue.”
Coyer’s testimony would instead go against Weiss’s expert witness, FBI chemist Jason Brewer, by pointing out “chain-of-custody concerns” with the leather pouch that was said to have “white residue” on it that was later identified as cocaine. This was five years after Hallie Biden allegedly dumped the pouch and gun in a trash can and someone “third-party” found them and turned them in.
Before the government got the proof from a trash collector, other people held, touched, and controlled it. The cocaine that was found wasn’t checked to see if it had been there for years or if it had just been sitting there (for example, in 2018). The defense said this. “The FBI-Chemist’s test or analysis doesn’t look at any dating history at all.” Without a doubt, the test did not show who put the powder there.
Coyer would talk about the “reliability, durability, and chemical composition of cocaine evidence” in this case at the trial, which is set to begin on June 3.
But the special counsel said that the defense shouldn’t be able to call these experts because Biden’s team “untimely disclosed” its plans and didn’t show why they were important in any other way.
According to the government’s move, experts should be kept out of this case because they were revealed too late and still haven’t said where they got their information or what their opinions are, less than a week before the trial, Weiss said. “A little more than two weeks before trial, the defendant was given his first, inadequate disclosure.” The trial in this case starts on Monday, and it’s now Thursday. The defendant still hasn’t given enough information as needed by Rule 16, even though the government did so on time with its expert disclosures.
There is no harm in just not allowing the defendant’s planned experts to testify because they don’t offer relevant, admissible testimony that meets Rule 702. In fact, Dr. Aoun has only offered irrelevant or Rule 704(b)-violating testimony so far, he said.
