Hunter Biden smoked crack “every 20 minutes or so,” his ex-girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, testified against him in the gun trial on Wednesday, regarding their rampant drug use during their relationship from 2017 to 2018, the year of the gun incident.
Kestan’s testimony shows Hunter was high during the time he bought a gun, prosecutors believe.
Hunter is charged with one count of false statement in the purchase of a firearm, one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance, and one count of false statement related to information required to be kept by a federal firearms licensed dealer.
Hunter used crack when he purchased the firearm, according to a wide variety of photos from the time on his abandoned laptop, and the gun was found discarded in a public trash can next to a school. The Secret Service allegedly intervened in the investigation of that incident.
Hunter Biden arrives at the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building on June 4, 2024, in Wilmington, Delaware. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Kestan met Hunter at a gentleman’s club that she worked at in December 2017, she told the jury.
“It was late at night,” she said, noting Hunter asked for one final private dance. He smoked something from an unusual pipe, she recalled. “I assumed it to be crack cocaine.”
The prosecution showed the jury an image of Kestan and Hunter during their relationship. “It’s a used crack pipe,” Kestan said of a pipe on a bathroom countertop in the image.
Another image prosecutors showed the jury was a photo of Hunter wearing a shirt with “ADDICTED” printed on it. “I thought that was funny because he didn’t smoke weed,” Kestan recalled.Kestan testified that she helped Hunter buy drugs. During a night in New York City’s Four Seasons, Kestan brought a drug dealer named Frankie up to the room, she said, according to CNN’s court reporters:
She also said she witnessed Biden clean out a crack pipe, using “chop sticks and disassembled pens.”
Biden also asked her to get cash for him to buy drugs, she testified, using his mobile banking app to give her a code to use at the ATM.
Kestan said that he told her that he also used this maneuver with dealers, so they could directly withdrawal cash from his bank account.
After the hotel stay of ten days, Kestan went to California but shortly returned to NYC. “He was very stressed out, and he was talking about attempting and trying to get sober,” she said.
During this time, the Biden family business was in full swing. Biden family members accepted money from a deal with CEFC China Energy Co. The House Oversight Committee revealed in 2023 that CEFC controlled State Energy HK Limited, a company linked to the $1.3 million collective payments to the Biden family members.
Through the Biden family’s suspicious activity reports (SARs), the committee also discovered a Biden associate, Rob Walker, received a $3 million wire transfer from CEFC. In turn, four Biden family members — Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unidentified “Biden” — received a collective $1.3 million cut from the $3 million wire transfer.