Tears in court as his daughter, naomi, took the stand. naomi appearing very uncomfortable, trembling, also tearing up as she testified, telling the jury about visiting her dad in rehab and a late night text that he sent her around the time that he bought his gun saying in quote, i can t take this. i miss you so much and i just want to hang out naomi also testifying, quote, things got bad for hunter biden following the death of her uncle, beau biden, and that she did not see her father used drugs at any point in 2018. i want to go straight to evan perez. he is outside the courtroom and done hello. air right now and evan, a hunter biden s first real display of emotion during these proceedings, you were in that room, how powerful was naomi is testimony today it was the most powerful testimony that we ve seen in this trial. look, you ve seen a lot of low points for hunter biden displayed before this jury so you ve seen pictures of him with drug paraphernalia on behind him, passed out on a
Notable, given that james biden was already in the courthouse ready to testify, hunters defense team says they have not decided if hunter himself will testify, and the judge has given them until monday to make the decision. cnn s paula reid has been inside of court following all the action every day of the trial. paula, do we know why the defense change strategies here it s not clear exactly what prompted this shift in strategy. they ll no longer call james biden or some other witnesses that they intended to call, but now they have a long weekend to strategize and figure out if there we re going to put the defendant, hunter biden on the stand. but this decision came after an appearance by his daughter, naomi biden. she took the stand to testify for the defense and during your testimony, she talked about two instances where she saw her father in 2018, now, the first was late summer 2018. she said he reached out to her while he was in rehab, saying that he would arrange a trip for heard of visits, and she took them up on it and brought her then
As naomi testified in a subdued voice, her father appeared to be fighting back tears, watching her. now a 30-year-old lawyer, naomi told jurors that when she saw her father while he was in rehab in california in august 2018, a few weeks before he purchased the gun, he seemed like the clearest that i had seen him since my uncle died, referring to beau biden, who died in 2015. and when she saw him a week after he bought the gun, her dad seemed great, he seemed hopeful. that bolsters the defense case that when he bought the gun, hunter biden was not abusing drugs. but a starkly different picture emerged on cross-examination, as prosecutor leo wise confronted naomi biden with desperate text messages she sent her dad six days after he bought that gun. i m really sorry, dad, i can t take this. i just miss you so much, i just want to hang out with you. hunter texting back, i m sorry i ve been so unreachable, it s not fair to you.
Case, is to call the defendant himself to testify. margaret: plus, hunter biden s daughter takes the stand. what she said that made her father emotion all. the evening news starts now. good evening, and thank you for being with us. i m margaret brennan in for norah o donnell. the prosecution rested in the federal gun trial of hunter biden. his eldest daughter took the stand today to testify in his defense. naomi biden told the jury about visiting her father while he was in rehab, just weeks before the gun purchase at the center of the case. she said, he seems like the clearest i had seen him since my uncle died. and then i told him i was so proud of him. an emotional moment that came after prosecutors wrapped their case with testimony from law enforcement officials, who spoke about drug residue and
Bed. you ve seen all of these text messages where he s talking about buying drugs and so to have his daughter come in and try to limit or at least undo some of the damage done by hallie biden, who was beau biden s widow? oh, and who he dated back in this period in 2018, was a really important thing for the defense to try to do. she said that in 2018 18 when he was going to some rehab, she said, i was hopeful and she thought that he looked a lot better than he had looked at in the past. the prosecution in in cross-examination got her to acknowledge that she didn t see any of this paraphernalia. and so she has no idea where it might have ended up in the truck on october 23rd when hallie biden found the gun in his truck and panicked and decided that she needed to get rid of it, which is why hunter biden is now on trial. there were 11 days where he owned
Do your rehab and just get away from it, it was really refreshing because i feel like the worst thing you can be is injured and mentally burnt out as well. so, you know, i was really glad i got the opportunity to come back and and rehab away from everything. what about the prospect of success in a world cup here in the caribbean, for you personally? how would that feel? it feels amazing. and this is probably going to be the first time that, you know, i could have the majority of my friends and family play at a cricket ground. it s great in the uk, but you know, it can only get four or five maximum in that one time. obviously travel and whatnot. but you know the thought that, you know, you can have so much support and everyone behind you and you don t even have to go anywhere for it, you know, it should hopefully keep me the women s tour of britain got under way yesterday but it has already been a rollercoaster for one of the teams. 14 bikes were stolen
Putting any of the monde and this is a real turn in this trial yeah. paula and that detail about yelling in the defense room during lunch that could be significant tourists about naomi biden s testimony because as you said, it didn t go the way the defense perhaps anticipated oversaw. let s think about naomi bad in her situation. she is an adult who is a married woman. she s graduated law school, but this is an incredibly uncomfortable situation for anyone to be in accord just talking about her father s addiction and what she observed on at least two instances where she met with him in 2018. anyone who knows, someone whose parent is an addict, anyone who is the child of an addict, you can imagine how painful this is. an eid the jury was so attentive watching her every word as she testified about seeing her father and september 2018 she said gensim in awhile and he had been in rehab and reached out and said, look, i ll arrange a trip if you ll come out and she went out there with her, then boyfriend, now husband, peter, and she
Courthouse for us in wilmington. i also want to bring in former assistant d.a. for the manhattan district attorney s office catherine christian and msnbc legal analyst. so ken, the court just entered a lunch break, get us up to speed on what s happened today. reporter: chris, the testimony from naomi biden, hunter biden s oldest child, was really impactful and interesting. she s a lawyer in washington, d.c. she came into court today as a defense witness. hunter biden s attorney abbe lowell got her to testify that her dad, in her view, was doing as well as he had been in the summer of 2018 before he bought that gun. you know, she knew he had been using drugs since his brother beau died of cancer, and she knew that he was an addict, but she said she had seen him in rehab and that he seemed to be doing well. this obviously is a point for the defense because they re trying to argue that he wasn t using drugs when he bought that gun. but then on cross examination, prosecutor leo wise did some damage, chris. he got her to talk about text
Where is it? she said i have had enough of this. go to rehab. i mean, clearly there was strong understanding in at least his presence with the people he was with in a household where he was sleeping that he had a problem and he knew it wasn t a game to have bought that gun. of course. in his own words are the most chilling and haunting against him. prosecutors salivate in anticipation of maybe getting that type of evidence and they have it in this case, his own words. the argument will be that s what he believed he was on reflection when years later after rehab he realized i was an addict at the time. when he filled out that form, he will argue well, i was active, i was using. i m not using today. the answer is no. to corroborate that the guy who sold him the gun wouldn t have sold it if it looked like he was
It in the garbage across the high school. and of course london roberts coming in who is of the mother the child, the family did not want to recognize be! this is a very relatively simple case whether or not hunter is an addict and whether or not he knew what he was doing and the think is, denial of addiction out was in rehab and his own book yet she wrote, all of my energy in delaware on october ot alleges he made the application was around to smoking drugs, making arrangements to buy drugs and beating the beast that is right out of hunter s mouth. the circumstantial evidence with the laptop, is going to be damaging and i cannot imagine that the defense is going to win in this case. greg: alrighty then! coming up, one of the biggest liberal commentators mix of addiction about joe biden. [ ]