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Judge pushes back Hunter Biden’s L.A. tax trial from June to September

Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, participates in the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House on April 1 in Washington, D.C. (Kent Nishimura)
By Yvonne Condes and Perry Stein Washington Post

LOS ANGELES – Hunter Biden’s trial on nine federal tax charges will move from late June to Sept. 5, a judge in Los Angeles ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark Scarsi had originally scheduled the trial for June 20. But attorneys for the president’s son argued in court Wednesday that the trial schedule was too close to a separate criminal trial on gun charges set to begin in Delaware on June 3.

The judge warned that he wouldn’t push the trial date back any further unless an appeals court intervenes. If the September trial date remains firm, Hunter Biden would be on trial in the final weeks of his father’s presidential re-election bid.

Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe D. Lowell, said that the Delaware trial in early June would make it impossible to prepare for the Los Angeles tax case just a couple weeks later. He also said that it’s been hard to find a tax expert willing to testify during the trial because of the public scrutiny that comes with being involved in such a high-profile case.

Prosecutor Leo Wise said it isn’t difficult to find an expert witness, telling the judge, “you can get an expert to say anything.”

Just because politicians and others are talking about an upcoming trial doesn’t make the legal issues are any more challenging, Wise argued. “It’s a simple tax case,” the prosecutor said.

Ruling from the bench, Scarsi sided with Biden and agreed to push back the tax trial. The judge apologized to the 20 or so witnesses scheduled to testify at the trial later this month and told the lawyers that there would be no more delays in the case.

A federal indictment charged last year that Hunter Biden failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes from 2016 through 2019. The charges include failing to file and pay taxes, tax evasion and filing false tax returns. Three of the charges are felonies, six are misdemeanors.

Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to the charges.

He also pleaded not guilty to a separate three-count federal indictment in Delaware that alleges that he made false statements in 2018 when he completed paperwork to purchase a pistol. That case is set to go to trial in a few weeks, provided Hunter Biden does not strike a deal with prosecutors before then.

Hunter Biden has been public about his struggle with drug addition and blamed at least some of the alleged behavior in the indictments on a drug-fueled spiral after his brother died of brain cancer in 2015. But prosecutors charge that he failed to pay all the taxes he owed even after he said he was sober and building a new life in Los Angeles.

The long-running investigation into the president’s son started during the Trump administration, and Republicans have heavily criticized what they see as the slowness of the probe.

Hunter Biden’s two indictments – on the tax and gun charges – almost didn’t happen. Over the summer, he reached a tentative agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax-related charges and admit to the facts of a gun charge.

But that plea deal fell apart after a Delaware judge questioned some of its terms. Soon after, Attorney General Merrick Garland named U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, who had been leading the investigation, as special counsel – a move that gave him clear authority to file charges outside of Delaware and paved the way for the tax indictment in California. Garland has said that Weiss has complete independence to lead the investigation.

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Stein reported from Washington.