Hunter Biden’s Ex-Wife, a Key Witness, Is Expected to Testify in Gun Trial

As the government deepens its argument against Hunter Biden, prosecutors are expected to start calling his former partners to the stand on Wednesday, inviting them to air sordid details of his life and the depths of his addiction to crack cocaine.

The trial resumed at 9 a.m., with Mr. Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell attacking what he sees as a major weakness in the government’s case: The lack of documentary evidence, in the form of texts to drug dealers or the defendant’s written accounts, that prove he was using drugs at the precise moment he bought a gun in October 2018.

On Tuesday, prosecutors presented texts that showed Hunter Biden’s desperate scramble to obtain crack cocaine in the spring and summer of 2018. A day later, in his cross-examination, Mr. Lowell was able to get an F.B.I. agent to admit that none of the material covered his activity in the fall.

In his effort to prove that Mr. Biden lied about his drug use on a federal firearms application in 2018, the special counsel, David C. Weiss, has signaled that prosecutors will call Mr. Biden’s former wife, Kathleen Buhle, who is locked in a yearslong fight with him over alimony payments. The two divorced in 2017 after nearly a quarter-century of marriage and have three daughters.

Ms. Buhle is one of three women expected to testify about their relationships with Mr. Biden and his struggles with alcoholism and addiction. The remaining witnesses will include Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother, Beau, who is his onetime girlfriend, and Zoe Keston, who dated Mr. Biden from December 2017 to October 2018.

The presence of Mr. Biden’s family and friends, including his mother, Jill Biden, who appeared on Wednesday in a pink pantsuit, has underscored how the trial is all but certain to be a painful and personal ordeal for President Biden’s family.

Like Mr. Biden, Ms. Buhle published a memoir of her own in 2022, detailing the toll of Mr. Biden’s yearslong addiction.

Prosecutors have said that even after her divorce from Mr. Biden, Ms. Buhle often searched Mr. Biden’s cars and found drugs and drug-related paraphernalia.

“I also found a few crack pipes. I took them out because our daughter was driving the car,” Ms. Buhle wrote in a text message to Mr. Biden in March 2018.

Mr. Biden is charged with three felonies: lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the federal firearms application and possessing an illegally obtained gun in October 2018.

If convicted, Mr. Biden could face up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines. But nonviolent first-time offenders who have not been accused of using the weapon in another crime rarely receive serious prison time for the charges.

Almost all the events covered in the trial happened in 2018, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was out of office.

Prosecutors played excerpts from the audiobook of Hunter Biden’s memoir on Tuesday to narrate his spiral into addiction. Mr. Biden, the first lady, Jill Biden, and other family members sat in rapt attention as his disembodied voice began to describe his drug abuse.

The government’s case turns on a relatively straightforward question: whether Mr. Biden was abusing drugs when he filled out the federal firearms application claiming he was not an “unlawful user” of controlled substances. “Addiction may not be a choice, but lying and buying a gun is a choice,” Derek Hines, a top deputy to Mr. Weiss, told jurors on Tuesday.

Mr. Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said he would disprove the government’s core contention that Mr. Biden “knowingly” broke the law by answering “no” on a question asking applicants whether they were using drugs at the time they sought to purchase a gun.

Mr. Lowell drew a sharp distinction in the handling of the gun. After Mr. Biden bought the gun, he never loaded it, never removed it from its lock box in his truck and never used it during the 11 days he owned it, Mr. Lowell said. It was his girlfriend at the time — Hallie Biden — who found the gun, removed it from the box, placed it in a pouch that contained drug residue and tossed it in a trash can at a nearby grocery store.

The trial is one of two that Mr. Biden faces this year. The other, expected to begin in Los Angeles in September, centers on a series of tax offenses related to Mr. Biden’s failure to file returns for a number of years.

Zach Montague contributed reporting.