There was a fleeting moment on Monday after seven hours of jury selection in the first day of Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial when the first son and special counsel David Weiss came face to face in the courtroom.
To say the encounter was frosty is an understatement. Hunter was walking out the door with his lawyers to discuss which jurors they would cut from the jury pool of 28 with their 10 peremptory strikes and Weiss was darting from his back row seat to confer with his deputies at the front of the courtroom.
Hunter barged straight ahead with a stony face, as an ashen-faced Weiss veered around him to avoid a collision, neither man acknowledging the other.
Hunter blames Weiss for his predicament, even though the timid former US Attorney for Delaware spent five years slow rolling the criminal investigation of Hunter, allowing the statute of limitations to expire on the worst charges and turning a blind eye to obstruction from the DOJ.
But once their sweetheart plea deal collapsed under the weight of IRS whistleblower revelations, Weiss chose to save his own skin and Merrick Garland followed suit by naming him special counsel.
Weiss, 67, is a Delaware lifer, having worked in the US Attorney’s office since 1986. If anyone understands the power of the Bidens it is Weiss, which accounts for his nervous body language. Hand over his mouth, chin in his hand, hand patting his leg, whatever he did it screamed: “Get me out of here!”
The power of the Biden family in that courtroom was at near full throttle.
First Lady Dr. Jill, 73, was front row, hard to miss in a bright purple pantsuit, and gleaming blonde coiffure.
She made a point of turning around and offering her face to the jury pool as they filed in to sit on the other side of the courtroom. She was flanked on either side by Hunter’s elegantly dressed second wife Melissa Cohen, 38, and, for half the day, by Hunter’s half-sister Ashley, 42, Jill’s daughter.
Next to the women were “Sugar Brother” Kevin Morris, the Hollywood attorney who has spent more than $6 million repaying Hunter’ tax debts, buying his paintings and funding his lifestyle; Washington, DC, lawyer Peter Neal, the husband of Hunter’s daughter Naomi; and Delaware attorney John T. Owens, the husband of Joe Biden’s sister Val.
All that was missing was the patriarch president, holed up five miles away in his lakeside spread in bucolic Greenville.
And everywhere you looked there were Secret Service agents, a praetorian guard around the first family, their big black Chevy Suburbans blockading the courthouse amid the flashing lights of police cars, blocked-off roads and gigantic satellite trucks for the world’s media.
‘Wilmington’s a small place’
The power imbalance was evident as prospective jurors were questioned about their lives as carpenters, traveling salesmen, teachers, aspiring forensic scientists and bartenders.
They all knew who Hunter was. Some of them knew members of the Biden family and were excluded. “Wilmington is a small place,” said one.
But of the final 12 chosen Monday, seven had a close family member addicted to drugs or alcohol, a commonality that ought to bring comfort to Hunter, as he faces the first test of his family name’s Teflon protection.
