LOS ANGELES — Weeks before Hunter Biden is set to stand trial on federal tax charges, the legal team for President Joe Biden’s son and prosecutors will appear in a California courtroom Wednesday as the judge weighs what evidence can be presented to the jury.
Hunter Biden is accused of a scheme to avoid paying at least $1.4 million in taxes in the case headed for trial in September in Los Angeles. It’s the second criminal trial in just months for the president’s son, who was convicted in June of three felony charges in a separate federal case over the purchase of a gun in 2018.
Prosecutors and the defense have been fighting for weeks in court papers over what evidence and testimony jurors should be allowed to hear. Among the topics at issue is evidence related to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, which have been at the center of Republican investigations into the Democratic president’s family.
Prosecutors say they will introduce evidence of Hunter Biden’s business dealings with a Chinese energy conglomerate, as well as money he made for serving on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Prosecutors say the evidence will show Hunter Biden “performed almost no work in exchange for the millions of dollars he received from these entities.”
Special counsel David Weiss’ team also plans to tell jurors about Hunter Biden’s work for a Romanian businessman, who prosecutors say sought to “influence U.S. government policy” while Joe Biden was vice president.
Prosecutors want to call as a witness a Hunter Biden business associate to testify about the arrangement with the Romanian businessman, Gabriel Popoviciu, who was seeking help from U.S. government agencies to end a criminal investigation he was facing in his home country, according to prosecutors.
Hunter Biden and his business associate were concerned their “lobbying work might cause political ramifications” for Joe Biden, so the arrangement was structured in a way that “concealed the true nature of the work” for Popoviciu, prosecutors allege. Prosecutors say Hunter and two business associates split more than $3 million from Popoviciu.
The defense has said evidence about his foreign business dealings is irrelevant to the tax charges and would only confuse jurors. They have accused prosecutors of inappropriately trying to insert “extraneous, politically-charged matters” into the trial.
Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have indicated they will argue he didn’t act “willfully,” or with the intention to break the law. Pointing to Hunter Biden’s well-documented addiction struggles during those years, they’ve argued his drug and alcohol abuse impacted “his decision-making and judgment, such that Mr. Biden was unable to form the requisite intent to commit the crimes he has been charged with.”
Prosecutors have said that while avoiding his taxes, Hunter Biden was living an “extravagant lifestyle,” spending money on things like drugs, escorts, exotic cars and luxury hotels. The defense is urging the judge to keep those salacious allegations out of the trial.
“The Special Counsel may wish to introduce such evidence for the very reason that it is salacious and would pique the interest of the jury, but for the same reasons and because such evidence would distract the jury from the crimes charged, such information would also be highly prejudicial to Mr. Biden,” defense lawyers wrote in court papers.
Hunter Biden was supposed to plead guilty last year to misdemeanor tax offenses in a deal with prosecutors that would have allowed him to avoid prosecution in the gun case if he stayed out of trouble. But the plea deal fell apart after a Delaware federal judge raised concerns about it, and he was subsequently indicted in the two cases.
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Richer reported from Washington.