First son Hunter Biden is moving to exclude evidence from his upcoming tax trial of his allegedly improper overseas business dealings and potential lobbying of US officials on behalf of foreign principals, according to a Sunday court filing submitted by his legal team.
Attorneys for the president’s son accused special counsel David Weiss in the motion of “seeking to insinuate extraneous, politically-charged matters into the trial which have no relevance to the tax offenses Mr. Biden is accused of,” the filing in US District Court for the Central District of California shows.
“The Court should not allow a side show in which issues far beyond the charges have to be explained and litigated in a tax case,” the attorneys wrote to Los Angeles Judge Mark Scarsi, calling the evidence “irrelevant” and “politically-charged.”
“Disallowing this unnecessary detour will ensure that Mr. Biden, like any other person accused, gets the fair trial that he deserves,” they argued.
Hunter will head to trial on Sept. 9 for evading $1.4 million in tax payments between 2016 and 2019 on income, much of which he earned from foreign business deals with Romanian, Chinese and other foreign entities.
Weiss introduced evidence of the alleged wrongdoing in a filing last Wednesday that revealed how Hunter and two of his partners — Rob Walker and James Gilliar — entered into an agreement to conceal their business relationship with a Romanian real estate tycoon.
The agreement ostensibly claimed the three were providing “management services” to the oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu, whereas they were, in fact, working to influence US government agencies to thwart a Romanian investigation into the tycoon’s real estate business.
Walker, who testified before a grand jury about the document, had “structured [the] business relationship in an effort to avoid having to register as a foreign agent,” according to Weiss’ Wednesday filing, which noted that Hunter and “his business partners did reach out to government officials, specifically the United States Department of State.”
But Hunter’s legal team, led by high-power white-collar criminal defense attorney Abbe Lowell, disagreed in their Sunday filing with the special counsel’s gloss of Walker’s testimony, calling it “inflammatory and incomplete, and therefore misleading.”
“While the Special Counsel later mentions in its response that [Walker] has not said that Mr. Biden (or he) engaged in improper political influence (and therefore claims there is no risk of confusion of the issues or misleading the jury),” the filing states, “the whole of the Special Counsel’s filing and its characterization of [Walker]’s grand jury testimony gives the contrary impression, as was widely reported by the mainstream media.”
The attorneys further noted that allegations of improper political influence were not included in Weiss’ December indictment of the 54-year-old first son — and that this “change of tactic merely echoes the baseless and false allegations of foreign wrongdoing which have been touted by House Republicans to use Mr. Biden’s proper business activities in Romania and elsewhere to attack him and his father.”
The House Oversight Committee, which is one of three investigative panels conducting an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, uncovered bank records last year showing that Walker’s LLC received $3 million from Popoviciu’s firm Bladon Enterprises between November 2015 and May 2017.
At least $1 million of those foreign funds flowed to nine Biden family members, the Oversight Committee also found, including Hunter and his sister-in-law-turned-lover, Hallie Biden, who is testifying on behalf of the prosecution in the September tax trial.
Walker testified to the committee in January that Joe Biden had not been “involved” in any of his son’s foreign business dealings — but had earlier revealed to the FBI that the former vice president had still dropped by an important lunch with Hunter and the chairman of CEFC China Energy, Ye Jianming, in early 2017.
The Chinese state-linked energy conglomerate ended up paying accounts tied to Hunter and first brother James Biden more than $7 million later that year — $5.1 million of which was wired within 10 days of Hunter sending a threatening text message to one of the company’s associates that he was “sitting here with my father.”
A 10% stake of the proposed joint business venture was designated by Gilliar to be “held by H for the big guy” — with Hunter and his associates later confirming that the moniker was indeed referencing Joe Biden, but denying that the former vice president netted any of the money.
In his Wednesday filing, Weiss noted “the evidence will show the defendant performed almost no work in exchange for the millions of dollars he received from [CEFC and Burisma Holdings],” a Ukrainian natural gas company.
Hunter Biden also received up to $1 million annually to sit on Burisma’s board from 2014 to 2019.
“The source of such income or the purpose for which it was paid are irrelevant,” his attorneys wrote in their most recent filing, saying that Weiss’ prosecutorial team “does not need to explain how Mr. Biden earned his income to prove its tax charges.”
They also claimed that Walker’s grand jury testimony was “irrelevant” to Hunter’s “intent,” given that the president’s son did not miss some of his tax payments on the income until 2018 and did not become delinquent until 2020.
“At the close of trial, the jury is not going to be instructed on what type of foreign influence is improper, on the requirements of [the Foreign Agents Registration Act], the propriety of coordination with the Obama administration, or the investment strategy and compensation method of a joint ventures with a Chinese
business,” Hunter’s attorneys added.
“Jurors will simply be left with the impression Mr. Biden did something wrong, even if that is irrelevant to the actual tax charges they must decide.”
He was already convicted in Delaware of three gun charges brought by Weiss last year, for which he will be sentenced Nov. 13.
