For the second time in three months, Hunter Biden will face trial on federal charges — this time, he’s accused of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes while spending the money on strippers and pornography.
The first son, who already has a felony conviction, will appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday for jury selection in the case that could land him in prison for up to 17 years if convicted of the three felony counts and six misdemeanor counts he faces.
Prosecutors said they plan to call about 30 witnesses to the stand — including a stripper Hunter paid and someone who will testify that he spent $30,000 on pornography while allegedly evading his taxes between 2016 and 2019, CNN reported.
Opening statements are scheduled for Monday.
Los Angeles attorney and former prosecutor Neama Rahmani said the case, which could last two to three weeks, is “very straightforward” and he believes Hunter is likely to be convicted – again.
“There’s really no way he’s going to win this case on the merits,” said Rahmani, who is not involved in Hunter’s case. “That’s why his lawyer scuttling this deal is a huge mistake.”
Last year, Hunter was on the verge of winning a sweetheart plea in the tax case and another gun case that would have allowed him to avoid harsh sentences. But the deal fell apart when Hunter’s team insisted that he be granted full immunity — a condition that special counsel David Weiss’s office could not agree to and that the judge said she could not approve.
In June, a Delaware jury convicted the eldest son, who had struggled with crack addiction, on three counts related to his lying about his drug use to buy a gun. The trial featured testimony from his exes, including his sister-in-law turned lover Hallie Biden, about his rampant crack addiction.
At the tax evasion trial, the defense objected to admitting evidence of Hunter’s alleged questionable spending, arguing that it was intended solely to assassinate his reputation, his lawyer Mark Geragos argued at a hearing last month.
But prosecutors said the information will have to be made public as they seek to prove that Hunter illegally wrote off the costs – including tens of thousands of dollars spent on wild parties and pornography sites – as business expenses.
Hunter’s team claimed that any tax crimes he allegedly committed were unintentionally committed while high on crack, and they noted that his bill to Uncle Sam has since been paid off by his so-called “sugar brother” Kevin Morris.
Judge Mark Scarsi, appointed by former President Donald Trump, said he would decide the evidence as it is presented at trial.
But Scarsi ruled that jurors will not be allowed to hear that the taxes were repaid because that could mislead them into believing that it is possible to avoid paying taxes as long as they eventually pay the debt.
Rahmani added that the fact that the tax bill was refunded is “irrelevant because he did not file the returns at that time.”
This can be used as a “mitigating circumstance in sentencing, but it does not constitute proof that a crime was not committed,” Rahmani said.
The judge also barred the defense from calling an expert witness to testify about addiction and rejected Hunter’s team’s attempt to explain his addiction as stemming from the 1972 car crash that killed his mother and sister or the brain cancer death of his brother Beau Biden in 2015.
Scarsi also dealt the prosecution blows when he ruled that it could not suggest at trial that Hunter violated foreign agent lobbying laws or that the Obama administration — when Joe was vice president — committed any wrongdoing.
Prosecutors wanted to show jurors evidence that Hunter’s work with Romanian oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu, which allowed him to secure multimillion-dollar deals while he was in the throes of drug addiction, undermined the defense’s argument that he was too high or too drunk to pay his taxes.
Rahmani said most of Scarsi’s rulings on the evidence presented at trial were in favor of the prosecution because he had granted more of their motions. But the lawyer insisted the rulings were correct and fair.
For example, Rahmani said it made sense for the judge not to allow evidence of Hunter’s family deaths to be introduced at trial as an explanation for why he became addicted.
“It’s just a game of pure sympathy and no judge will allow that,” the lawyer said.
“What does his brother’s death have to do with anyone knowing he wasn’t filing taxes or deducting prostitution and drug expenses as business expenses?” Rahmani said. “The goal is to make people feel bad for him.”
Hunter faces up to 25 years in prison at his Nov. 13 sentencing in the gun case, although he is expected to get much less than that.
The president has said he has no plans to pardon or commute his son’s sentence, but if he changes his mind, he could exercise his presidential powers and hand Hunter a get-out-of-jail-free card before he leaves office.
New York Post
