LOS ANGELES (CN) — Hunter Biden wants a federal judge to dismiss the tax-evasion charges brought against him in late 2023, arguing Wednesday in Los Angeles that the charges brought by U.S. Special Counsel David Weiss were politically motivated.
President Joe Biden's son wasn't present at the three-hour hearing where his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, argued for eight separate motions to dismiss the tax charges either wholly or in part because, among other reasons, they were by driven the president's political rivals and barred by a diversion agreement between Biden and the Justice Department last year.
"Since its inception in 2018, the investigation of Mr. Biden has been compromised by politics," the younger Biden's attorneys said in one of their motions. "This case follows a nearly six-year record of DOJ changing its charging decisions and upping the ante on Mr. Biden in direct response to political pressure and its own self-interests."
U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi, a Donald Trump appointee, took the motions under submission without issuing a decision. The judge's comments and questions for the both Biden's and the government's lawyers, however, didn't indicate he was inclined to toss the case.
Among the main arguments Biden presented at the hearing was the claim that the Justice Department provided him with "sweeping immunity" under a diversion agreement made in July 2023. That agreement resolved a separate weapons charge, related to Biden's possession of a gun while he was substance abuser, but would have left Biden off the hook for any further gun, tax or drug charges.
That agreement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise argued, wasn't valid because the probation department — which would have needed to monitor Biden's compliance with the terms of the agreement — never signed off on it.
The judge was particularly puzzled how this diversion agreement pertained to Biden's plea agreement at the same time as two misdemeanor tax charges. That plea agreement wasn't accepted by the judge in Delaware at a hearing in July.
"Why would he go forward and plead guilty?" Scarsi asked Biden's attorney.
Scarsi wasn't able to get a satisfactory answer why Biden would have pleaded guilty if he already had the other agreement that provided him with immunity from those charges.
The judge also didn't appear to be persuaded that Biden's indictment for the tax charges was either a vindictive or selective prosecution as Lowell claimed.
According to Biden's attorney, after five years of investigation, the Justice Department had been ready to let him plead to two misdemeanor counts that didn't require jail time. However, the plea agreement caused an uproar and Republican lawmakers, — egged on by former president Donald Trump — denounced it as a "sweetheart deal."
That backlash, Lowell argued, eventually caused the special counsel's office to bring felony charges for tax evasion in California and separately for Biden's gun possession in Delaware.
In response to Scarsi's inquiry whether he had any evidence beyond this timeline for any undue influence on the special counsel's charging decision, Lowell admitted he didn't have transparency into the Justice Department's decision making.
"I have the kind of evidence that prosecutors use every day to go before a jury and tell them to use their common sense and connect the dots," the attorney said.
Weiss's office hit the younger Biden with three felony and six misdemeanor charges in December, accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes from 2016 through 2019 and of filing a false tax return for 2018.
Biden, 54, his attorneys said, struggled at the time with addiction, which took a turn for the worse on the one-year anniversary of his brother’s death in 2016. He paid some of his income taxes for 2016, but he did not fully pay or file by the 2017 deadline. He was also late the following years until he hired new accountants in 2019, who prepared and filed his late returns and helped him pay all his taxes and penalties in 2021.
Lowell noted that he wasn't aware of anyone else being criminally charged for tax evasion when they had paid all they owed the IRS. In fact, according to the attorney, a recent indictment of a Los Angeles lawyer who has been dodging taxes for 13 years and avoiding the IRS's collection efforts, charged this person with only one felony.
If found guilty of all the tax charges, Biden faces a maximum sentence of 17 years in federal prison although the actual sentence will be decided by the judge and most likely would be just a fraction of statutory maximum.
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