By JACK QUEEN and TOM HALS Reuters
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WILMINGTON, Delaware — Hunter Biden’s former girlfriend testified about his near-constant crack cocaine use at lavish hotels at the criminal trial where prosecutors are trying to prove that U.S. President Joe Biden’s son lied about his addiction to illegally buy a gun.

Jurors heard that Hunter Biden would prepare crack at the ritzy Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles or spend days in hotel rooms getting high in the months before his 2018 gun purchase, according to his former girlfriend.

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“He would want to smoke as soon as he woke up,” Zoe Kestan told jurors, as she described meetings with a “scary” drug dealer and hunting for instructions on the internet to cook powder cocaine into crack.

Kestan testified at the first trial of a U.S. president’s child, where prosecutors are trying to prove that Hunter Biden knowingly lied about his drug use on screening paperwork when he purchased a revolver in October 2018.

Kathleen Buhle, who divorced Hunter Biden in 2017, also testified for about 20 minutes to describe how she first discovered he was using drugs.

Prosecutors also said they plan to call Hallie Biden, the widow of his late brother Beau Biden.

Hunter Biden, 54, has pleaded not guilty to three felony charges accusing him of failing to disclose his use of illegal drugs when he bought the gun and of illegally possessing the weapon for 11 days.

Biden has publicly acknowledged his past drug use, including in his memoir. He told the judge in the case at a 2023 hearing that he had been sober since 2019.

His defense lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has countered that Hunter Biden was not using drugs at the time and did not intend to deceive. Lowell pressed an FBI agent to acknowledge that prosecutors had evidence of Biden’s addiction only before or after rather than during the time he owned the gun.

Kestan also described a message from Hunter Biden in which he said a month after the October 2018 gun purchase that he might get sober but “I’ll always be an addict.”