Hunter Biden’s trial on tax charges in Los Angeles turned into a political afterthought the moment President Biden withdrew from the 2024 race in July. But the personal stakes for his son, who is staring down the possibility of prison time, have never been higher.
Mr. Biden, 54, has long been willing to negotiate a plea deal after the collapse last year of a far-reaching agreement that would have spared him prison time. But as both sides prepare for the start of jury selection on Thursday, there are no indications that any deal is likely, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.
If anything, the special counsel overseeing the case, David C. Weiss, appears determined to aggressively seek a second conviction by portraying Mr. Biden as a dissolute, reckless and high-living tax cheat, after securing a guilty verdict against him three months ago on charges of lying on a gun application in Delaware.
He is charged with evading a tax assessment, failing to file and pay taxes, and filing a false or fraudulent tax return.
It is possible that the two top Weiss deputies handling the case, Leo J. Wise and Derek Hines, are tightening the legal screws as a prelude to driving a far tougher plea bargain than the earlier agreement that ultimately fell apart. But the government’s tone in filings that read as a moral judgment on Mr. Biden’s actions during a time when he was addicted to drugs and alcohol suggests otherwise to the defense.
“They want the character assassination; they want to slime him. That is the whole purpose,” Mark J. Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Biden, said last month during a testy preliminary hearing to determine which evidence, arguments and witnesses can be introduced at a trial that is expected to last at least two weeks.
House Republicans had once seen Mr. Biden’s legal troubles as a key element in their plan to undermine his father’s standing with voters. But their exhaustive attempts to prove that the son and the father conspired to create a “Biden crime family” never materialized, and prosecutors have made it clear that the California case will not include evidence of official wrongdoing by President Biden when he was vice president.
In recent weeks, Hunter Biden’s team has been in regular communication with Mr. Weiss’s team over procedural matters, but there have been no indications that the two sides are close to a plea agreement.
Mr. Biden already faces a maximum of 25 years on the gun conviction, although his sentence is likely to be much lower as a first-time felon who has been clean and sober for several years. Mr. Biden faces up to 17 years behind bars if he is convicted of the charges that he evaded federal taxes on millions in income from foreign businesses when he was addicted to drugs and alcohol.
The California trial, whatever its outcome, is in itself an ordeal for the Biden family.
During the gun trial, Mr. Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware, called Mr. Biden’s romantic partners — including his former wife and a former girlfriend who was also the widow of his brother, Beau Biden — to testify about the darkest period of his adult life. At the time, he was addicted to crack, mourning his brother’s death and wreaking emotional, political and financial havoc on those around him.
At the preliminary hearing last month, Mr. Wise and Mr. Hines said they planned to revisit many of the same personal issues raised in Delaware. They suggested that they would introduce damning new evidence about Mr. Biden’s extravagant lifestyle, reckless spending and lucrative foreign business dealings that allowed him to make millions while doing next to no work in return.
During the hearing, Mr. Geragos, who has represented a range of high-profile defendants — including Michael Jackson, Roger Clinton and the singer Chris Brown — previewed a defense that also echoed arguments deployed in Delaware.
He urged the court to permit evidence and witnesses that would allow the jury to consider two powerful traumas that they say pushed Mr. Biden to the edge: the death of his mother and baby sister in a 1972 car crash and the death of his brother from cancer in 2015.
Judge Mark C. Scarsi, a Trump appointee who is presiding over the case, repeatedly rejected Mr. Geragos’s efforts to do so. Such an argument, he contended, was irrelevant to the central issue in the case, Mr. Biden’s decision not to pay his taxes.
Judge Scarsi handed Mr. Geragos one modest victory during the wrangling over evidence and witnesses: motions. He blocked the prosecution from introducing documents showing that Mr. Biden was discharged from the Navy in 2014 for testing positive for cocaine, a potentially damaging revelation that would undercut the defense argument that Mr. Biden’s behavior deteriorated after 2015.
The judge indicated that he intended to finish selecting a jury, along with alternates, by Friday, from a pool of 100. He has told lawyers to prepare to deliver their opening statements on Monday.
President Biden has repeatedly said he would not pardon his son, although some in his orbit have questioned whether he would hold the line as his one-term presidency ends — particularly if Donald J. Trump, who has vowed to prosecute the Biden family, wins.
That Mr. Biden was even facing trial at all was not the result Mr. Biden, or Mr. Weiss for that matter, wanted.
A deal reached in early 2023 that would have granted Mr. Biden broad immunity from future prosecution imploded under intense questioning from a federal judge in Wilmington, Del., that July. The collapse of the deal prompted Mr. Weiss to request appointment as a special counsel.
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