MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade said on Saturday that there is an abundance of evidence for a jury to find Hunter Biden guilty in his ongoing trial.
Biden’s trial began Monday in Delaware and he is facing three federal gun charges brought by Special Counsel David Weiss in September, including providing false statements and knowingly possessing a gun while being a drug addict.
McQuade, on “The Saturday Show with Jonathan Capehart,” said Biden’s intent is difficult to prove so circumstantial evidence is necessary to find him guilty, but the jury could reasonably reach that conclusion based on the significant amount of evidence the prosecution has presented.
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“I think what the defense would argue is that although they don’t really contest what happened, that yes, he did buy this gun, all of the facts that happened, that he was using drugs on all the dates that have been introduced, he did not believe himself to be an addict at that time,” McQuade said.
“Proving a defendant’s intent and knowledge and mindset is always the hardest thing for a prosecutor because you can’t read another person’s mind,” she continued. “And so much of the testimony has been that ‘you didn’t see him on that day, you don’t know that he was using on that day.’ There’s certainly been testimony right up around that day. And so it requires a little bit of circumstantial evidence for the jury to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But it seems like there’s plenty of evidence there from which they could draw that inference. So probably a bit of an uphill battle for the defense.”
Prosecutors obtained messages and material from Biden’s abandoned laptop, showing it to the jury as verification of Biden’s drug use around the time he bought the gun in 2018, according to CNN.
Criminal defense attorney Bernarda Villalona on Monday advised Biden to plead guilty, saying Weiss’ evidence against him is “strong” and that it may be his “best” course of action to “avoid” incarceration.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Thursday it was “really astonishing” how rapidly Biden’s defenses have “collapsed” during the trial.
First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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