By LOS ANGELES — Lawyers for Hunter Biden sparred with prosecutors in federal court here Wednesday over what evidence should be allowed in his tax trial next month, giving a glimpse into what sordid details could be revealed about the lavish spending and sex life of the president’s son while he was addicted to drugs.
The trial is scheduled to begin with jury selection on Sept. 5 and opening statements on Sept. 9, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi said. Prosecutors and defense attorneys said they expect the trial to take up to eight days in court, plus two days for jury selection.
A Delaware jury found Biden guilty in June in an unrelated trial on three felony gun charges. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 13.
In Los Angeles, Biden is accused of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes from 2016 through 2019. 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 and has said he has since repaid the government his delinquent taxes.
Wednesday’s pretrial hearing coincided with the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where his father celebrated Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy after deciding not to run for a second term in November.
With the elder Biden out of the race, the once-intense political interest of Republicans in Hunter Biden’s legal troubles may wane. But the trial will still once again spotlight the Biden family’s dark years after Hunter Biden’s brother, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer.
Both federal indictments focus on a period when Hunter Biden admits he was addicted to crack cocaine. At the time, he earned money from controversial contracts he had with foreign businesses.
The gun trial showcased the behind-the-scenes drama in the Biden family, with relatives taking the witness stand to describe Hunter Biden’s years of drug addiction. He was convicted of lying in 2018 about his drug use on paperwork to buy a gun, and of illegally possessing that gun.
The Los Angeles trial will center on more-complicated tax charges and could delve into Biden’s sex life — much of which he chronicled in his 2021 memoir. Among the accusations laid out in the nine-count indictment is that Biden wrote off money he paid sex workers as business expenses on his tax forms.
Prosecutors said Wednesday that discussing such details in court — and potentially calling witnesses that can speak to his relationships with the sex workers — is necessary to make their case.
Biden’s attorney Mark Geragos said such salacious details are not necessary for a trial about tax charges and are only intended to impugn his client’s character in the eyes of the jury.
“They want the bad acts, they want the character assassination, they want to slime him because that is the whole purpose — making him look bad is hopefully what will get the jury past the idea of ‘Wait a second, he did file the taxes?’” Geragos said in court.
Scarsi suggested that he would allow details about Biden’s sex life, but warned that testimony could not get too graphic.
“I really want to stay away from any explicit testimony that can’t be sanitized — we don’t need to know specifics about actions that occurred between two people. Witnesses have been allowed to meander into areas that weren’t appropriate, and I don’t want to get into that here,” Scarsi said.
The judge ruled on a few other motions dictating what would be allowed at trial, including saying that defense attorneys could not mention the long-ago death of Biden’s mother and sister to explain his drug addiction and the actions alleged in the indictment. But Biden’s team is allowed to discuss the more-recent death of his brother to the jury, though not as a way to justify his actions.
Biden’s indictments on the tax and gun charges almost didn’t happen. Last summer, he reached a tentative agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax-related charges and admit to the facts of a gun charge.
But that plea deal fell apart after a Delaware judge questioned some of its terms. Soon after, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland named U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, who had been leading the investigation, as special counsel. The appointment gave Weiss more independence than a typical U.S. attorney has, along with clear authority to file charges outside Delaware, paving the way for the tax indictment in California.
Stein reported from Washington.
