Hunter Biden watched backstage in Chicago on Monday night as his father, President Biden, strode into the spotlight of the Democratic National Convention to bask in the appreciation of the party’s faithful and to gain a measure of closure after an unforgiving 2024.
On Wednesday, half a continent away, the president’s son was set to headline a different kind of event: a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles federal court before his trial on tax charges, the final act in a legal saga that has, remarkably, outlasted his father’s candidacy for re-election.
Until President Biden withdrew last month, allies of former President Donald J. Trump saw Hunter Biden’s trials as their best chance to push an unproven narrative of a “Biden crime family” to tie the father to the lurid sins of the son, particularly after their efforts to impeach the president faltered.
While Mr. Trump gripes about President Biden’s departure after years of preparing for a rematch of 2020, House Republicans have quickly pivoted to possible investigations of Vice President Kamala Harris, and for the most part have moved on from the Bidens.
But the legal system is not done with Hunter Biden, who was convicted two months ago of lying on a federal gun application in Delaware. He still faces charges of evading a tax assessment, failing to file and pay taxes, and filing a false or fraudulent tax return.
The Delaware case was a wrenching personal ordeal for the Biden family, with graphic testimony from Hunter Biden’s former wife and his daughter about his erratic, sordid and self-destructive behavior nearly a decade ago when he was addicted to crack. (Mr. Biden has been sober for several years, and has passed numerous drug tests issued by federal probation officials, according to court documents.)
Jill Biden, the first lady, sat in the second row of the public gallery for much of that case, and the president has drawn his son close in its aftermath, turning to him for advice after a fumbling debate performance.
The tax trial, expected to start in early September, is both more serious and more complex than the gun case. Prosecutors have signaled in court filings that they are likely to revisit some of the same personal issues, and they also plan to introduce new evidence about Mr. Biden’s lucrative foreign business dealings and effort to make easy cash off his family name.
People close to Mr. Biden say he is dreading another trial, but is willing to fight because he believes his prosecution was politically motivated. Mr. Biden’s California legal team, led by a veteran criminal lawyer in Los Angeles, Mark J. Geragos, believes the trial could last as long as 10 days.
Judge Mark C. Scarsi, presiding over the case, will spend much of Wednesday’s hearing ruling on various defense and prosecutions motions regarding witnesses and evidence.
On Monday, Judge Scarsi — a Trump appointee who has sparred with Mr. Geragos in legal filings — rejected Mr. Biden’s long-shot effort to throw out the case. Late Tuesday, Mr. Geragos asked the court to allow Mr. Biden to skip the hearing; the judge did not immediately rule on that request.
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 Mr. Trump, who has vowed to prosecute the Biden family, wins.
In December, a federal grand jury in California charged Mr. Biden in a scathing 56-page indictment that chronicled his years of drug abuse, debauchery, wild spending and flouting of federal tax laws.
That Mr. Biden was even facing trial at all was not the outcome David C. Weiss, the special counsel overseeing the case, or Mr. Biden expected — or 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, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, to request appointment as special counsel.
In recent weeks, Hunter Biden’s team has been in regular communication with deputies working for Mr. Weiss, but there have been no indications that the two sides are working on another plea agreement.
That could change quickly, however, and preliminary hearings are often a forum for discussions that could lead to such a deal.
And many prosecutors view tax cases as particularly tricky because jurors tend to be more sympathetic with defendants, like Hunter Biden, who have already paid their back taxes and penalties, according to former prosecutors.
The two deputies to Mr. Weiss who are handling the case, Leo J. Wise and Derek Hines, have indicated in recent court filings that they intend to mount an aggressive prosecution by documenting how foreign interests paid Mr. Biden to influence the U.S. government while his father was vice president.
After Mr. Biden’s team had moved to disqualify evidence, Mr. Weiss’s team said it would introduce evidence about Hunter Biden’s work on behalf of Gabriel Popoviciu, a Romanian real estate magnate who faced corruption charges in his country.
Prosecutors stopped short of accusing Mr. Biden of violating foreign lobbying laws, which are not among the charges he faces, and they said they did not plan to accuse him of having “improperly coordinated with the Obama administration.”
But they said they would they make public evidence to prove how he willfully engaged in a scheme to obtain vast amounts of cash without paying taxes.
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