June 10, 2024, 10:13 AM
Hunter Biden’s daughter speaks out about her father’s drug addiction on Friday, recounting key moments
By Paula Reid, CNN’s chief legal correspondent
Hunter Biden watches as his daughter, Naomi Biden, testifies in a Wilmington, Delaware, courtroom on Friday.
Bill Hennessy
Talking about her father was clearly an extremely painful topic for Naomi Biden. Despite being a Columbia Law School graduate, she seemed extremely uncomfortable on the stand after being called to testify by the defense in Hunter Biden’s trial on Friday.
Naomi Biden entered the courtroom with her husband on Friday, and first lady Jill Biden quickly motioned for her husband to sit next to her as Biden family and friends filled at least the first two rows of the courtroom.
Naomi Biden’s testimony focused on two occasions in 2018 when she met her father.
The first time was in August or September, when she was visiting her father in Los Angeles. Hunter Biden had contacted her to come see him while he was in rehab. He offered to make the travel arrangements, and Naomi Biden said she agreed to go, even though she hadn’t seen him in quite a while.
Naomi Biden said she met him and his sobriety coach, bringing along her boyfriend, now her husband. “He was the cleanest I’d seen him since my uncle passed away,” Naomi Biden said.
“I was proud of him and proud to introduce Peter to him,” she said.
On the stand, Naomi Biden came across as sincere and persuasive, like the child of a drug addict.
She then testified about a trip to New York City where Hunter Biden had come to pick up his car. She described meeting him in late October and said she was “hopeful.” Naomi Biden said her father looked the same as he did when they met in Los Angeles.
Under cross-examination by prosecutor Leo Wise, she again testified that she had not seen her father recently because “things had gotten bad since my uncle died” around 2015.
The prosecution got the defendant to admit that he had no idea what the defendant was like when he was using drugs because he had not seen him for a significant amount of time.
Prosecutors appeared to catch both parties off guard when they presented Naomi and her lawyer, Abe Lowell, with a series of text messages she exchanged with her father during a trip to New York.
Naomi Biden appeared a little confused and tongue-tied when confronted with text messages that suggested her father was somewhat erratic and uncommunicative as he tried to release the car.
She didn’t remember the exchange, and seemed increasingly uncomfortable when talking about the early morning text message her father had sent her about the car swap.
Naomi Biden gave her father a cold hug and kissed him on the cheek as she left the witness stand, and was seen shaking and wiping away tears as she left the courtroom.
