They stopped short of accusing Mr. Biden of violating foreign lobbying laws but said they would show how foreign interests paid him to influence the government while his father was vice president.
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Lawyers for Hunter Biden have wrangled for weeks with the special counsel over what evidence can be introduced when he is to be tried in September on charges of evading taxes on millions in income from foreign businesses.
Prosecutors signaled in a court filing on Wednesday that they intended to mount an aggressive strategy in Hunter Biden’s tax trial in California, saying they would show how foreign interests paid him to influence the U.S. government while his father was vice president.
The special counsel in the case, David C. Weiss, has wrangled for weeks with Mr. Biden’s lawyers over what evidence can be introduced when he is to be tried in September on charges of evading taxes on millions in income from foreign businesses. Already, Mr. Weiss has overseen Mr. Biden’s conviction tied to the purchase of a gun in Delaware in 2018.
Mr. Biden’s team had moved to disqualify evidence about his lucrative foreign business activities and lifestyle from a time when he was addicted to crack cocaine and alcohol. Mr. Weiss’s deputies rejected those arguments on Wednesday, in a preview of what promises to be a bare-knuckled courtroom strategy.
Prosecutors stopped short of accusing Mr. Biden of violating foreign lobbying laws, which are not among the charges for which he faces trial. While they intend to introduce evidence that Mr. Biden and his business partners contacted government officials, they said they did not plan to accuse him of having “improperly coordinated with the Obama administration.”
Instead, they plan to cite evidence related to his foreign business dealings to prove how he willfully engaged in a scheme to obtain vast amounts of cash without paying taxes.
To that end, prosecutors said they would introduce testimony from an American business associate of Mr. Biden’s to detail a lucrative arrangement with a Romanian real estate magnate who faced corruption charges at home.
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Source: nytimes.com
