Jury selection is set to begin Thursday in Los Angeles for the second criminal trial of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter — a case that over the next few weeks could detail for a jury his lavish lifestyle while he was addicted to drugs.
The younger Biden was convicted by a Delaware jury in June on three felony gun charges in an unrelated case that stems from the same period of his life, from around 2015 to 2019.
But the tax trial will unfold at a moment when there is less political scrutiny on Hunter Biden, now that his father has decided not to seek reelection. Still, it takes place as the president is attempting to bolster his legacy and focus on the few months he has left in office.
Hunter Biden is accused of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes from 2016 through 2019. Prosecutors also allege that when he filed his taxes, he wrongfully wrote off payments as business expenses — including payments to sex workers, membership to a sex club and fancy car rentals. The charges include failing to file and pay taxes, tax evasion and filing false tax returns. Three are felonies and six are misdemeanors.
Biden has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, to oversee the Biden prosecutions as special counsel — an appointment that gives Weiss more independence and clear authority to bring charges outside Delaware.
Hunter Biden’s attorney, Mark Geragos, said at a pretrial hearing last month that Biden paid his taxes for much of his adult life but that and his mindset while he was actively using and addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine led him to being delinquent. The lawyer said the fact that his client eventually paid his taxes in full is evidence that he wasn’t trying to evade the government.
“Why would somebody file the tax return, why would they clean up or try to clean up their mess, and then subsequently pay if they were trying to evade,” Geragos said at the hearing. “And why are they so afraid of a jury hearing that inference — that information?”
Federal prosecutors argued that Biden’s payment after the fact is irrelevant to the charges. They plan to detail the extravagant ways Biden spent his money instead of paying his taxes.
In a blow to the defense, Judge Mark Scarsi ruled that Biden’s attorneys cannot tell the jury that Biden eventually paid his taxes. Scarsi, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2020, also limited how much Biden’s legal team could discuss his addiction and the personal traumas that they say led to his drug use.
Criminal prosecutions of tax evasion are rare, and legal experts say it is even rarer for someone to be charged once they have already paid their taxes.
“You don’t spend those resources chasing those cases,” said Brian Galle, a tax law professor at Georgetown University and a former prosecutor in the Justice Department’s tax division. “One of the things that the criminal penalties in the tax system is supposed to do is to get people to cooperate and pay. So if you have someone who does cooperate and pay, usually that is going to be a lower priority.”
Biden has altered his legal team since his Delaware trial, with his recent top lawyer Abbe Lowell taking a lesser role in the upcoming case. Instead, Biden has enlisted Geragos, a well known Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney whose past clients include Michael Jackson; President Bill Clinton’s brother Roger Clinton Jr.; singer Chris Brown, who pleaded guilty to assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna; and Colin Kaepernick, the former 49ers quarterback who sued the NFL.
Prosecutors said they plan to call fewer than 30 witnesses. The judge estimates the trial will take about two weeks.
The gun trial in Delaware — in which Biden was convicted of lying about his drug use on a federal form required to purchase a gun — focused heavily on his addiction. There was little discussion of Biden paying prostitutes or how Biden earned his money.
The Los Angles trial, however, is expected to delve into some of the controversial foreign business deals Biden pursued while his father was vice president and his payments to sex workers.
In some of their filings, prosecutors have focused in particular on Hunter Biden’s arrangements with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, Chinese energy executives and a Romanian real estate tycoon named Gabriel Popoviciu. Biden was being paid millions of dollars from those deals during the time period in which he was not paying taxes.
The exhibits that prosecutors may draw from, according to legal filings, are tax forms for Hallie Biden — who is Hunter Biden’s former sister-in-law and ex-lover — and for her sister, Elizabeth Secundy, as well as divorce and financial records from Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle.
The judge granted an order to compel Hallie Biden and Secundy to testify, according to court filings.
Another person who could figure into the trial is Lunden Roberts, a woman with whom Hunter Biden had a child. After DNA testing confirmed the child was his, they settled a long-standing child support case last year. Prosecutors have listed as possible evidence text messages and emails involving Roberts, as well as tax forms from a period in which she was working for Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden has a close relationship with his father, and the two have spent much of the past two weeks vacationing with the rest of their family in private, in California and at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.
This week marks a shift, with President Biden back at the White House and starting to campaign with Harris, and Hunter Biden preparing to report to federal court. Around the time the proceedings are scheduled to begin in the Los Angeles federal court, the president is scheduled to depart the White House for La Crosse, Wis., to deliver remarks on his administration’s policies in a key swing state.
Since a jury found him guilty of the gun charges in Delaware, Hunter Biden enters this second trial as a convicted felon. If he is convicted again, that criminal history would likely make his sentence on the tax charges more severe.
One way to try to avoid a harsh sentence would be to consider a plea deal. There has been little indication of any such talks gaining much traction, according to people familiar with conversations between prosecutors and the defense team. But discussions can move quickly in the final hours before a trial begins.
Allies of Hunter Biden have speculated that his father might consider pardoning him before leaving office, even though the president said he would not do so after the Delaware verdict — and his spokesperson has reiterated that.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked on Aug. 14 whether he would press for Harris to pardon his son, were she to win the election.
“That’s a hypothetical,” she responded. “He said he would not pardon his son. And I’m just going to leave it there.”