Federal prosecutors in the tax evasion case against Hunter Biden have opposed an effort by his legal team to exclude evidence allegedly showing how foreign interests hired him to influence the U.S. government while his father was vice president.
In a court filing dated Aug. 7, the Department of Justice stated that it also plans to present the alleged evidence at Biden’s upcoming trial.
The filing was in response to a pre-trial motion from Biden’s legal team seeking to exclude the political corruption allegations against him.
In the filing, the government alleges that the younger Biden was hired by a Romanian businessman who was accused of corruption and who sought to “influence U.S. policy and public opinion” regarding an investigation into him in Romania.
The businessman is identified in the court filing only as G.P.
G.P. faced bribery charges in Romania, prosecutors wrote in the filing.
Prosecutors said that they plan to present evidence at Biden’s upcoming trial that he and a business associate “received compensation from a foreign principal who was attempting to influence U.S. policy and public opinion and cause the United States to investigate the Romanian investigation of G.P. in Romania.”
According to federal prosecutors, Biden and his business associate “were concerned that lobbying work might cause political ramifications for the defendant’s father” and thus agreed on an arrangement that “concealed the true nature of the work he was performing.”
Biden’s business associate and G.P. therefore “signed a ‘Management Services Agreement’ whereby Business Associate 1’s legal entity would purportedly provide management services to real estate properties in Romania, but that was not actually what G.P. was paying for,” according to prosecutors.
Hunter Biden Business Associate to Testify
In reality, prosecutors said, Biden’s business associate and G.P. had agreed that the former would receive compensation for “work by Business Associate 1, the defendant, and Business Associate 2, to attempt to influence U.S. government agencies to investigate the Romanian investigation of G.P.”
“[Under the arrangement,] Business Associate 1 would pass approximately 1/3 to the defendant as his compensation and approximately 1/3 to Business Associate 2 as his compensation,” prosecutors said.
The filing does not state when the alleged agreement was made, but it notes that the deal took place during President Barack Obama’s administration, in which Hunter Biden’s father, Joe Biden, served as vice president from 2009 to 2017.
Special counsel David Weiss’s team said in the filing that the evidence is relevant to the tax case because it establishes certain income that the younger Biden received.
It also establishes when he earned the income and that “his state of mind was not consistent with someone with a diminished capacity,” at a time when he was addicted to crack cocaine.
The government further stated that it anticipates that one of Hunter Biden’s business associates will testify about his alleged agreement with the Romanian businessman at the upcoming trial.
Still, prosecutors said in the filing that they do not intend to reference allegations that Hunter Biden violated Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) laws or “improperly coordinated with the Obama Administration.”
However, they do plan to introduce evidence that his business associate “structured a business relationship in an effort to avoid having to register as a foreign agent, and that the defendant and his business partners did reach out to government officials, specifically the United States Department of State.”
Hunter Biden Failed to Pay Millions in Taxes, Prosecutors Say
“The introduction of that evidence, however, does not mean that the government will also reference allegations that the defendant violated FARA and that contacts with government officials were improper; such allegations are not relevant to the charges in this tax case,” federal prosecutors wrote. “The defendant’s motion as to these issues is therefore moot.”
Hunter Biden is set to go on trial on Sept. 5 in California on tax charges.
He is facing nine felony and misdemeanor charges stemming from his failure to pay $1.4 million in taxes for three years between 2016 and 2019, during a time when he was addicted to drugs.
Hunter Biden, who has acknowledged his past addiction to crack cocaine, also intentionally failed to file returns on time and included false deductions in one of them when he did file, prosecutors allege.
Three of the nine charges are felonies and six are misdemeanors.
The maximum sentence in the case is 17 years in prison.
Separately, Hunter Biden was convicted in June of lying about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun in Delaware.
He has not yet been sentenced in that case.
The Epoch Times has contacted an attorney for Hunter Biden for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times