Hunter Biden’s attorneys had a difficult Wednesday in California federal court, where they faced numerous rejections to requests they made regarding the first son’s upcoming tax trial.
Biden’s lead defense attorney in the case, Mark Geragos, argued to Judge Mark Scarsi that prosecutors for special counsel David Weiss wanted to “slime” Biden, according to a courtroom report from CNN.
“It’s actually a form of character assassination,” Geragos said.
Parties in the case had filed a slate of motions in preparation for the trial, which is set for Sept. 9. Biden is facing nine tax charges, including failure to pay taxes and filing false returns. The purpose of the hearing was to sort through pretrial motions, which primarily centered on what could and could not be introduced as evidence at trial.
Throughout the hearing, Scarsi was “largely siding with prosecutors,” CNN reported.
Scarsi reportedly ruled during the hearing that the first son could not reference at trial how he later repaid his taxes. He also reportedly prohibited Biden from using an expert witness to testify about his prior addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol. Biden’s attorneys had wanted to use the witness to highlight that Biden was not of sound mind from 2015 to 2019, the tax years cited on his indictment, despite the first son conducting multimillion-dollar foreign business deals during those years.
“No matter how many drugs you can take, you don’t suddenly forget that when you make $11 million, you have to pay taxes,” government prosecutor Leo Wise said during the hearing.
The status of other pretrial motions is unclear.
According to court papers, Biden’s defense team had also urged Scarsi to exclude from trial any evidence or mentions of Biden’s “extravagant lifestyle,” including references to strip clubs and pornography, which prosecutors have said the first son spent thousands of dollars on during the tax years in question. Prosecutors have said Biden failed to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes during those years and that evidence of the first son’s frivolous expenses is material to the case.
Biden’s defense team also asked to exclude allegations of “improper political influence,” a reference to prosecutors revealing in a recent court document that Biden’s lucrative foreign business dealings included a Romanian deal that was structured to avoid complying with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
FARA provides a public record of people in the United States who are doing business on behalf of foreign entities, which is intended to help avoid covert foreign influence in the U.S. Weiss said he would not accuse Biden of violating FARA at the trial but that the first son’s activity abroad, avoiding FARA registration while communicating with the State Department while his father was vice president, helped showcase Biden’s “state of mind” during the tax years referenced in his indictment.
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Legal experts have said it would be in Biden’s best interest to plead guilty ahead of the trial, where he will face a mountain of evidence that is unfavorable to him. A plea agreement would allow Biden to avoid a weekslong event focused on one of the darkest periods in his life, after his brother died from cancer and he was in the throes of addiction.
A plea agreement would, however, likely require Biden to plead guilty to felonies and potentially even serve jail time after the first son rejected a plea offer last summer with far milder terms.
