Hunter Biden's legal strategy takes shape as tax trial looms

Hunter Biden may be out of the spotlight since his father, President Joe Biden, withdrew his re-election effort, but behind the scenes the First Son is preparing for a potentially ugly trial that will bring unwanted public attention back to him.

As the September 9 trial in California approaches, Hunter Biden has reshuffled his defense team and scaled back his once-aggressive approach to dealing with years of unfavorable headlines and congressional inquiries.

Hunter Biden's lead defense attorney Abbe Lowell, a prominent Washington, D.C., attorney known for representing political figures such as former North Carolina Democratic Senator John Edwards, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, has reduced his role in the First Son's tax trial.

Mark Geragos, a Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney, took over as Lowell's attorney in early July and has been helping the First Son through the pretrial process since then, court records show.

A possible plea

Although Lowell is still listed as an attorney in the case, the switch from Lowell to Geragos came after negotiations over a guilty plea between Hunter Biden and special counsel David Weiss failed to reach an agreement this summer, CNN reported.

Hunter Biden could always agree to a deal with Weiss before the trial. However, after the high-profile failure of a deal between the two in 2023, the first son may no longer find the terms of a second deal so attractive.

Geragos did not respond to a request for comment on the negotiations. Weiss' office declined to comment.

Former US Attorney John Fishwick told the Washington Examiner that a deal would be in Hunter Biden's best interest, as the trial, if it goes ahead, would be an unflattering ordeal for the First Son. It would involve “huge payments to him for little or no work, and he paid no taxes on those large payments,” Fishwick noted.

Hunter Biden faces charges including failure to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes, tax evasion and filing false tax returns. He eventually paid back his taxes and pleaded not guilty. Fishwick predicted the First Son would accept a settlement, no matter how unfavorable.

“Most of the people on his jury have paid taxes every time they get a paycheck. He's definitely going to plead guilty,” Fishwick said.

The 2023 deal would have allowed Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two counts of tax offenses and eventually have a crime related to a gun purchase expunged from his record. But Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Delaware, surprisingly rejected the deal, citing unusual provisions in it.

Weiss and the eldest son reached a stalemate over how to address Noreika's concerns. Weiss then charged the eldest son with three felony counts related to the gun purchase, three felony counts of tax evasion, and six felony counts of tax violations.

Weiss secured a conviction on the weapons charge after a week-long trial in June that revisited some of the darkest periods in Hunter Biden's life from 2015 to 2019, when he was addicted to crack cocaine and lost his brother to cancer.

The tax process is more complex and spans the same period of time, so it could take much longer and be just as embarrassing for Hunter Biden and his family.

Like Hunter Biden, the Justice Department would benefit from avoiding a lengthy and complex trial for the sitting president's son. However, if Weiss were to plead guilty to fewer than nine charges against the First Son at this stage, it would almost certainly provoke immediate and fierce reactions from Hunter Biden's critics, who argue he has already gotten off lightly.

Despite the numerous charges, some of which carry heavy prison sentences, some suggest that Hunter Biden has so far evaded other charges. For example, Weiss prosecutors recently confirmed in a court filing the well-documented fact that Hunter Biden lobbied for foreign companies during his father's tenure as vice president, potentially violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Prosecutors said they would not accuse Hunter Biden of violating FARA at trial, but would present evidence that a Hunter Biden associate “established a business relationship” with Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu “in order to avoid having to register as a foreign agent” because of the “political implications” for then-Vice President Joe Biden. Prosecutors noted that as part of his business relationship with Popoviciu, Hunter Biden “established contact with government officials, particularly the U.S. State Department.”

Tristan Leavitt, attorney and chairman of the whistleblower advocacy group Empower Oversight, told the Washington Examiner that the lack of a FARA charge and charges for previous tax years was a sign of the Justice Department’s “favorable treatment” of Hunter Biden.

“The most recent example of this is that the Justice Department presented evidence to the court that Hunter Biden violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act to avoid 'political consequences for his father' – and yet allowed the statute of limitations to expire on the FARA charges just as it did on the earlier tax charges,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt has supported Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler, two IRS criminal investigators who raised concerns with Congress last year about the Justice Department's handling of the case. He said Weiss' plans to present evidence of other crimes Hunter Biden may have committed in court without charging the First Son with them were “further validation of what Shapley and Ziegler have been saying all along.”

Leavitt's comments underscore the pressure Weiss faces to avoid leniency for the firstborn, who Republicans widely condemned the settlement in the first case as a “favor deal.”

Subtle retreat from the limelight

Hunter Biden, for his part, has been able to address his legal troubles largely out of the spotlight over the past month as Joe Biden's political relevance wanes in the run-up to the presidential election.

But Hunter Biden was already changing course before July 21 after his father dropped out of the race.

In addition to unsuccessful plea bargaining, the First Son also stopped relying on Lowell's expensive services and instead used Geragos because he was having what CNN called a “financial crisis.” Kevin Morris, an entertainment lawyer and confidant of Hunter Biden, had loaned the younger Biden millions of dollars to pay back his taxes and helped him with his legal fees. But Morris has stopped funding the First Son's legal ventures, according to the source.

The first-born son also sought a delay in his two criminal cases. He pointed to the difficulties in obtaining expert witnesses and the effort of organizing two trials practically one after the other, which suggests that his defense team was overwhelmed.

This may explain why Hunter Biden has taken a step back after going on the offensive last year and filing lawsuits against several companies that used his laptop data against him.

While he is still in a legal battle with the nonprofit organization Marco Polo and its founder Garrett Ziegler, who are responsible for the most massive dissemination of the data, Hunter Biden has, for some unknown reason, withdrawn a lawsuit against Fox News. He also withdrew his lawsuit against Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, citing the latter's bankruptcy problems.

Despite these subtle retreats, Hunter Biden still faces a massive fight if and when his tax trial continues.

In court documents, his defense team urged the judge to exclude from the trial any evidence or mention of Hunter Biden's “extravagant lifestyle,” including references to strip clubs and pornography, on which Weiss said the First Son spent thousands of dollars during the years in question. Weiss has told the judge the evidence is relevant to the case.

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Court records also show that, as in the gun trial, women with whom Hunter Biden had intimate romantic relationships, including his brother's widow, Hallie Biden, are expected to testify against him.

Judge Mark Scarsi, who is presiding over the case, has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to review the numerous arguments about what can and cannot be used in the trial.