The Contrasts Between Hunter Biden’s Trial and the Trump Trial Are Already Striking

Following the news of Hunter Biden’s trial this week after covering Donald Trump’s hush money trial for the past six, one thing is clear to me: Hunter Biden’s defense strategy is much more typical than Trump’s, and thus much likelier to produce an acquittal. The differences in defense tactics are representative of the differences in temperaments between the two men, but they could also be critical to the outcomes for both.

Hunter Biden, the son of current President Joe Biden, faces criminal charges related to lying about drug addiction on a federal form when he purchased a gun in October 2018. The first major difference comes down to how Hunter Biden and Trump presented themselves to jurors. Throughout his trial, Trump closed his eyes and appeared unresponsive during almost all the critical moments of testimony and argument. Jurors responded similarly coldly to the former president, all of them declining to look at Trump every day as they walked right past him at the defendant’s table. Hunter Biden, by contrast, is reportedly deeply engaged, even waving at one prosecution witness, a former girlfriend, when she took the stand.

Defense attorneys have attempted to portray Hunter Biden sympathetically, as a deeply flawed addict who has made some mistakes but is looking to get his life back in order. A jury that reportedly includes jurors who have had family members who have experienced addiction already seem responsive to these efforts—as CNN reported on Monday: “One juror appeared to become emotional during defense attorney Abbe Lowell’s opening statements. The juror reached for tissues in her bag and dabbed her eyes and her nose several times. It’s unclear what prompted the reaction.” Essentially, Hunter Biden has already been humanized for the jury. Trump’s defense attorneys, by contrast, tried to portray him as a very important former president who was above having to face the same criminal justice system the rest of us do. Trump’s demeanor came across this way as well. This did not work.

The second difference is in the support systems that showed up for each defendant in court every day. Trump usually had a parade of sycophantic political and media cronies around him, seemingly looking to leech off of the power of the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

In terms of family representation, Trump’s son Eric showed up many days, and his son Donald Jr. showed up a few, and daughter Tiffany showed up one, but most notable were the absences. Trump’s daughter Ivanka never showed up, nor did his wife Melania. Contrast this with Hunter Biden, who has been there every day with his sister, Ashley; the woman who raised him, first lady Jill Biden; and his wife, who has reportedly helped him get sober. (Jill even showed up on her 73^rd birthday.) President Joe Biden has not attended, but that is likely to avoid injecting politics into the case, which is the opposite of what Trump attempted to do.

Third, there is already a deep contrast in the approach that Trump’s attorneys took with adverse witnesses, compared with how Lowell, Hunter Biden’s defense attorney, is responding to prosecution witnesses in his case. During Trump’s trial, defense attorneys outright abused witnesses in a way that made them more sympathetic to jurors. This was most blatant with the woman who alleged the affair that resulted in the illegal hush money scheme, Stormy Daniels, with Trump attorney Susan Necheles using every disreputable trope in the “he-said, she-said” book to try to shame and tarnish Daniels. Again, it did not work.

Conversely, Lowell has been very tame with the women who have walked through stories of Hunter Biden’s drug addiction, only questioning them briefly and never attacking them. This was true of Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, who shared heartbreaking stories of her former husband’s addiction. But it was also true of Hunter Biden’s adult dancer ex-girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, who testified for prosecutors about his struggles with addiction during the period in question. One need not imagine how a Trump defense team would treat Kestan, given how they abused Daniels. Even Hunter himself seemed sympathetic to Kestan, with the New York Times reporting that “he gave an uncomfortable wave and a smile before looking down, head in hands” when she was asked to identify him in open court. It’s impossible to imagine Trump having similar humility or decency.

Fourth, the contrast in the way that each defendant has treated the legal system itself is stunning. Trump repeatedly antagonized Justice Juan Merchan by violating a gag order that barred him from attacking witnesses and jurors. He used the courtroom hallway to give daily speeches attacking the justice system itself and claiming to be a victim of political persecutions, with those same political supporters who showed up in court going on TV to spread the message.

Meanwhile, Democrats, for the most part, have refused to condemn this prosecution. Even President Joe Biden refused to attack the prosecutors in the case, issuing a basic statement of support for his son. “Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today,” Biden said in the statement. “Hunter’s resilience in the face of adversity and the strength he has brought to his recovery are inspiring to us. Our family has been through a lot together, and Jill and I are going to continue to be there for Hunter and our family with our love and support.” While these sorts of statements are not supposed to impact—or even reach—jurors, they do play a profound role in how the public views proceedings and the integrity of our justice system.

Finally, and most significantly, the legal cases each defense team is making are markedly different. Lowell has conceded key and obviously true elements of the prosecution’s case, while focusing in on a narrow technical point that he hopes might convince jurors to acquit. Trump attorney Todd Blanche, contrastingly, denied every aspect of the charges, even the ones that seemed impossible to deny, and threw every single possible argument at the wall in order to win acquittal. The latter approach failed for Trump, but the cleaner version might just work for Hunter Biden.

For instance, Lowell conceded that Hunter Biden was, during times in his life, a drug addict and that he bought the gun in question. Instead, Lowell has focused on whether or not Biden intended to violate the law when he said that he was not a drug “user” or “addict” on the federal form at the center of the case. “They have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter ‘knowingly’ violated the law,” Lowell told the jurors. The argument Lowell is making is that Hunter Biden was clean at times in his life, including during the period when the gun was purchased, and may not have considered himself a drug user during those times. “The terms ‘user’ or ‘addict’ are not defined on the form and were not explained to him,” Lowell has written in court filings. “Someone like Mr. Biden, who had just completed an 11-day rehabilitation program and lived with a sober companion after that, could surely believe he was not a present tense ‘user’ or ‘addict.’ ”

Lowell also repeatedly noted that Biden only owned the gun for 11 days, never used it, never took it out of the lockbox, and that it was ultimately thrown away by his ex-girlfriend and former sister-in-law, Hallie Biden. This points the jury to the notion that if this was a crime, it was a victimless one. Lowell already appears dead focused on one or two points to give jurors a reason to acquit.

Compare this to the Trump team’s approach. During closing arguments, Blanche offered a complete mishmash of arguments, failing to offer a single persuasive reason to acquit. Indeed, he even said at one point that he was going to list 10 separate reasons to acquit, clearly hoping that the jury would buy just one of them. At no point did he concede even the most patently obvious of facts, such as the idea that Michael Cohen was paid for a reimbursement of Daniels through the false documents in question and not for a nonexistent “legal retainer,” as the Trump team claimed. As Politico magazine senior writer and former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori wrote: “It was legal Trumpism—deny everything, attack indiscriminately.”

That approach failed. Ultimately, Trump does not even have his attorneys to blame for that failure, as it was clearly dictated by Trump himself. Indeed, shortly after the conviction, Blanche went on Fox News to say Trump was “very much involved” in the entire defense, going so far as to help select jurors. He even “joked” that Trump “wanted to be the litigator” himself.

It’s a fool who has himself for a client. Fortunately for Hunter Biden, he is—at least in this regard—not a fool.