A six-year federal investigation into Hunter Biden will culminate this week as the president’s son faces trial for a second time.
He was convicted this summer on gun charges. Now he faces allegations of criminal tax evasion — and a judge has excluded one of his key lines of defense.
During the trial in Los Angeles — where jury selection is scheduled to start on Thursday — prosecutors plan to tell a story about greed, decadence and entitlement. Biden’s lawyers, meanwhile, will argue it’s actually a tale of addiction and redemption.
The political stakes of the trial, expected to last about two weeks, have lessened now that Joe Biden is no longer running for reelection. But evidence in the case is expected to highlight his son’s foreign business dealings — an issue that became a centerpiece of Republican attacks on the Biden family.
The trial also will revisit the younger Biden’s past struggles with drug abuse. Prosecutors intend to argue that, while he was dodging his taxes, Biden was spending lavishly on drugs, strip clubs, sports cars and other trappings of a lifestyle filled with partying. Some of the details of his drug addiction emerged during the gun trial three months ago, and reliving them has been a source of pain to the president and the rest of the Biden family.
In the courtroom, Biden’s defense lawyers may face an uphill battle. The judge overseeing the trial, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi, has issued a series of pretrial rulings unfavorable to the defense. Perhaps most critically, Biden wanted to tell jurors that, after he got sober, he belatedly paid all the taxes he owed. But Scarsi has blocked the defense team from making that argument.
The president said in June that he would not pardon his son or commute an eventual prison sentence. Biden is scheduled to be sentenced in November in the gun case, where federal sentencing guidelines recommend up to 21 months in prison. If he is convicted in the tax case, he could face up to 17 years in prison, according to the Justice Department.
Here’s how we got here and what to expect.
The allegations against the president’s son
Federal prosecutors led by special counsel David Weiss, who also brought the gun case, have charged Biden with three tax felonies and six tax misdemeanors. The charges include evading a tax assessment, filing a false tax return and failing to file and pay taxes.
In a 56-page indictment, prosecutors said that he intentionally avoided paying $1.4 million in taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019. During that time, prosecutors say, Biden earned more than $7 million, including for work with the controversial Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings Limited, a now-bankrupt Chinese energy company, and a Romanian oligarch facing bribery allegations.
Also during that time, Biden was grappling with addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine and grieving the 2015 death of his brother, Beau. In his memoir, Beautiful Things, Biden described partying with drug dealers and strippers at a series of Los Angeles hotels and Airbnbs in the spring and summer of 2018. But when he worked with an accountant to settle his tax affairs in 2020, he allegedly identified some of those hotel stays as business expenses — resulting in a tax write-off.
He also claimed that a $1,248 payment to fly a stripper from LA to New York was a business expense, as was a payment of $3,852 to rent a Lamborghini, according to prosecutors.
His lawyers have argued his addiction hamstrung his ability to manage his personal affairs, including his taxes. They wanted to introduce an expert witness to testify about the link between trauma and addiction. But prosecutors asked Scarsi to block that person from testifying, and the judge did so.
Prosecutors also retort that Biden’s addiction wasn’t so debilitating as to keep him from earning millions of dollars. And, they argue, if he was capable of making and spending all that money, he was also capable of paying taxes.
How investigators built their case
The federal probe of Biden stretches back to late 2018, when an IRS agent began investigating him for apparent financial crimes, according to congressional testimony.
As his father was preparing to challenge Donald Trump in the 2020 election, IRS and FBI agents drilled down on Biden’s finances. The probe, which had not yet become public, found a home base in the office of Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware.
As the investigation proceeded in secret, Trump urged the Ukrainian government to open its own investigation of Biden, citing his presence on the board of Burisma, the scandal-dogged Ukrainian energy conglomerate. Trump’s pressure campaign, which included thinly veiled threats to withhold military aid if Ukraine didn’t publicly announce a probe, led to Trump’s first impeachment.
In December 2020, a few weeks after his father defeated Trump in the presidential election, the Biden investigation became public. Biden confirmed on Dec. 9, 2020, that the feds were investigating his tax affairs. But Weiss’ probe eventually expanded to include other matters, including Biden’s purchase of a handgun in 2018 during a period when he was frequently using crack cocaine.
Two and a half years later, prosecutors announced they had reached an agreement with Biden to resolve the allegations of tax and gun crimes: Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and receive a deal related to the gun that was intended to ultimately result in charges being withdrawn. Biden would also get protection from future potential charges. But after a judge questioned its details at a hearing in July 2023, the plea deal fell apart.
Just a few weeks later, Attorney General Merrick Garland named Weiss a special counsel, empowering him to bring criminal cases anywhere in the country. Later that year, Weiss secured two indictments of Biden: one in Delaware for owning a gun as a drug user and lying about his drug use on a gun-purchase form; the other in California on the tax allegations.
The gun case went to trial in June. It showcased the destruction caused by Biden’s addiction, including with testimony from his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle. His brother’s widow, Hallie Biden, also testified that he introduced her to crack cocaine and that she became addicted to the drug. First Lady Jill Biden and numerous other members of the president’s family attended much of the trial. A jury convicted him on all charges, and he is set to be sentenced on Nov. 13.
Key defenses taken off the table
In the tax case, Biden’s main lines of defense have been twofold: first, that he was debilitated by his addiction when he allegedly committed the tax crimes, and second, that after he got sober, he paid off his tax debt with penalties and interest.
Biden’s lawyers said in court filings that they wanted to cite the belated payment of his tax debt to undermine prosecutors’ argument that he willfully failed to pay. But Scarsi wasn’t convinced, and on Aug. 27 granted prosecutors’ motion to bar Biden from citing the payment.
“In tax cases, courts routinely exclude evidence that a defendant untimely filed tax returns or untimely paid outstanding tax debts,” he wrote.
That ruling wasn’t the Biden team’s first difficult episode with the judge, a Trump appointee and former patent lawyer. Earlier in the summer, they tried to have the case thrown out, citing Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling in the Florida-based prosecution of Trump by special counsel Jack Smith. Cannon ruled that Smith’s appointment as a special counsel was unconstitutional, and Biden’s legal team, helmed by Mark Geragos and Abbe Lowell, made a similar argument. In doing so, they wrote that Weiss waited until he became a special counsel to bring criminal charges against Biden.
But, without prompting from prosecutors, Scarsi threatened to sanction Biden’s lawyers for making false statements. The noted that Biden had faced criminal charges before Weiss was made special counsel — namely, in court documents filed in Delaware as part of the failed 2023 plea deal.
“This Court has little tolerance for lack of candor from counsel,” Scarsi wrote in a document ordering Biden’s lawyers to show why they shouldn’t be punished for lying.
In their response, Biden’s lawyers said that they “never tried to mislead the Court,” that their wording was inartful and that they should have said Weiss waited until he was made special counsel to bring “indictments,” rather than “charges.”
Scarsi replied that he doubted “the veracity of that explanation,” because changing the word “charges” to “indictments” wouldn’t have made sense. But, acknowledging that Geragos was new to the Biden case, he said he wouldn’t order sanctions.
Ultimately, Scarsi rejected the defense’s constitutional argument that the case should be tossed.
New allegations of influence peddling
In another unwelcome development for the president’s son, prosecutors revealed in pretrial skirmishes that they have evidence indicating that Biden agreed to lobby the U.S. government for Romanian oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu.
Biden’s team had moved to block the prosecutors from introducing evidence of alleged corruption, and prosecutors replied that they plan to call one of Biden’s former business associates as a witness. That person — unnamed in court papers — is expected to testify that, while Biden’s father was vice president, Popoviciu looked to hire Biden to get the U.S. government to investigate Romanian authorities who were investigating the Romanian. But Biden worried that lobbying would damage his father’s political career. So instead, prosecutors say, his associate signed a deal with Popoviciu to provide real estate management services — when, in fact, Popoviciu knew the associate would funnel money from that deal to Biden and expected Biden to lobby the U.S. government for him. That deal resulted in a $3.1 million payment to the associate, who passed on roughly a third of it to Biden, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors added that Biden also worked with CEFC China (a Chinese energy conglomerate) and Burisma. But, they emphasized, they are not charging him with illegal lobbying.
“Rather,” they wrote, “the evidence will show the defendant performed almost no work in exchange for the millions of dollars he received from these entities.”
The court filing about Popoviciu, made public less than three weeks after the president bowed out of the 2024 campaign, showed just how bruising the trial could have been for Biden’s reelection campaign. It was the first public statement from the Justice Department alleging that the younger Biden made money — around $1 million — from a client who was led to believe that the then-vice president’s son would work to shape U.S. government policy on his behalf.
Painful personal details
Beyond their focus on Biden’s finances, prosecutors also plan to highlight episodes that have been painful and embarrassing for the Biden family.
Lunden Roberts, an Arkansas woman who is the mother of one of Biden’s children, is under subpoena and is expected to testify next week, according to her lawyer. Biden initially disputed that he was the child’s father, and the president did not publicly acknowledge the grandchild until last year, when she was 4. Roberts sought child support in court, and those proceedings delved into how Biden managed his finances, including his tax affairs.
Hallie Biden, Beau’s widow, was also subpoenaed to testify and was granted immunity. Her sister, Elizabeth Secundy, has been subpoenaed and granted immunity as well. Prosecutors have not revealed any significant detail about the women’s anticipated testimony. But congressional Republicans have said they obtained financial documents showing Biden paid tens of thousands of dollars to both of them.
And a court filing on Aug. 29 indicated that Biden’s sexual history could also be a focus. The document listed names and entities that prosecutors and defense lawyers believe could come up in the trial so that the court stenographer could confirm their spellings. The list included a strip club, a members-only sex club, the sex club’s founder, and an entity called “Emerald Fantasy Girls.” It also named two lawyers who have helped Biden’s ex-wife navigate her divorce. One of those lawyers previously wrote that Biden’s profligate spending, including on prostitutes, drugs and alcohol, created financial hardship for the family.
Biden has said he got sober in the summer of 2019. He has remarried and has a young son, and he credits his sobriety to his wife and family.
“What I’ve been through — what I’ve done — is something I can never purge, never forget,” he wrote in his memoir. “But I’m learning to live in the moment without constantly feeling guilt or shame.”
