For the second time in three months, Hunter Biden is on trial on federal charges, this time for allegedly evading $1.4 million in taxes while squandering his money on strippers and pornography.
The eldest son, who has already been convicted, is scheduled to appear in Los Angeles federal court on Thursday for jury selection in the case, which could face 17 years in prison if convicted of three felony and six misdemeanor counts.
Prosecutors have said they plan to call about 30 witnesses to testify, including a stripper who was paid by Hunter and someone who will testify about spending $30,000 on pornography between 2016 and 2019 to allegedly evade taxes. CNN reported.
Opening statements are scheduled for Monday.
Neama Rahamani, a Los Angeles lawyer and former prosecutor, said she believes the trial, which could take two to three weeks, is “very simple” and that Hunter will likely be convicted again.
“There is no chance that he will achieve any substantive success in this case,” said Rahmani, who is not involved in Hunter's lawsuit, “which is why it was a huge mistake for his lawyers to kill this deal.”
Last year, Hunter was granted lenient plea deals in tax and separate gun cases that nearly spared him harsh penalties, but the agreement fell apart when his team insisted on blanket immunity, terms that special counsel David Weiss's office could not agree to and that the judge said he could not approve.
In June, a Delaware jury convicted Biden's eldest son, who struggled with a crack cocaine addiction, of three charges related to lying about his drug use to buy a gun. During that trial, his ex-husbands, including his sister-in-law and girlfriend Hallie Biden, testified about his rampant crack cocaine addiction.
In his tax evasion trial, the defense has opposed introducing evidence of Hunter's illegal spending, arguing it was intended solely to tarnish his character, his lawyer, Mark Geragos, said at a hearing last month.
But prosecutors say the information must come to light as they try to prove that Hunter illegally wrote off expenses, including tens of thousands of dollars he spent on wild parties and pornography sites.
Hunter's lawyers argue that his alleged tax evasion was committed unwittingly while high on drugs, and that the payments he made to the US government were repaid by so-called “sugar brother” Kevin Morris.
Judge Mark Scarci, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, has said he will rule based on the evidence that emerges at trial.
But Judge Scalci ruled that the jury could not be allowed to hear that the taxes had been repaid, because they might be misled into thinking that paying the debt eventually would allow them to avoid paying the taxes.
Rahmani added that the fact that tax was repaid was “irrelevant as I had not filed any returns at the time.”
That “can be used to reduce a sentence, but it's not evidence that a crime wasn't committed,” Lahamani said.
The judge also barred the defense from calling expert witnesses to testify about Hunter's addiction, rejecting arguments that his defense tried to explain his addiction as a result of a 1972 car accident that killed his mother and sister, or the death of his brother, Beau Biden, from brain cancer in 2015.
Scalci also dealt a blow to the prosecution by ruling that the trial could not suggest that Hunter violated the Foreign Agents Lobbying Act or that the Obama administration, when Joe was vice president, engaged in wrongdoing.
Prosecutors wanted to present jurors with evidence that Mr. Hunter worked with Romanian oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu to secure multimillion-dollar deals despite his struggles with drug addiction — evidence that would undermine defense arguments that Mr. Hunter was too high or drunk to pay his taxes.
Lakhmani said most of Skarsi's rulings on the evidence in the trial favoured the prosecution, as they allowed many of their allegations, but he maintained that his rulings were correct and fair.
For example, Rahmani said it was only natural that evidence about the deaths of Hunter's family members was not allowed at trial as an explanation for why Hunter became addicted to drugs.
“It was just an act of sympathy and no judge would allow that,” the lawyer said.
“What does his brother's death have to do with whether or not someone knew they weren't filing tax returns or deducting the costs of prostitutes and drugs as expenses? The goal is to make people feel sympathy for him.”
Hunter faces up to 25 years in prison on the gun charges on November 13, but is expected to receive a much lighter sentence than that.
The president has maintained he is not considering pardoning or commuting his son's sentence, but if he changes his mind he could use his executive powers to grant Hunter a pardon before he leaves office.
