Hunter Biden hired a new hotshot criminal defense lawyer last month to help prepare for his upcoming tax fraud trial — as his legal slush fund dries up without a plea deal in sight.
Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos, who has represented both celebrity clients and family members of US presidents in high-profile cases, joined Hunter’s legal team in July, court filings show, which came as the 54-year-old first son had already been facing a “financial crunch,” CNN reported.
Plea talks have also broken down between Hunter’s attorneys and special counsel David Weiss, two sources told the outlet.
Hunter’s patron and “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, another high-power Hollywood lawyer, had privately confessed three months before that resources were “pretty dire” and he was “completely tapped out.”
“The reason Kevin got involved financially in the first place was that he could see that no one was going to help Hunter,” one person close to Morris told Politico in May.
After having earned a fortune repping clients in Hollywood like the creators of “South Park,” Morris, who met Hunter at a political fundraiser for his father in late 2019, was able to loan the first son more than $6.5 million.
At least $2 million of that went toward paying off Hunter’s back taxes owed to the IRS.
In June, Abbe Lowell, a partner at Winston & Strawn based in Washington, DC, had led Hunter’s defense in his Delaware trial on three felony gun charges related to buying a handgun while he was addicted to crack cocaine.
The trial ended with a conviction on all counts.
Hunter had already tossed another attorney, Christopher Clark, off his legal defense team weeks after he exclaimed in a sensational July 2023 federal courtroom dust-up in Delaware that a probation-only plea deal for both the tax and gun charges was “null and void.”
Geragos has since taken the lead in several motions filed in California federal court last month — including one to dismiss the case based on the alleged unlawful appointment of Weiss that prompted the federal judge overseeing the case to threaten sanctions.
Geragos’ previous legal victories include winning a dismissal for Roger Clinton, the half-brother of former President Bill Clinton, on alcohol-related charges.
He also represented singer Michael Jackson in his molestation case, rapper Chris Brown for domestic violence charges against former girlfriend and singer Rihanna, and disgraced actor Jussie Smollett after his 16-count indictment for filing a false police report about a hate crime attack against him in Chicago.
Federal prosecutors in recent weeks have hinted at having sufficient proof that Hunter improperly lobbied US officials as part of his lucrative overseas business dealings, while signaling that it will not be introduced as evidence in his tax trial.
Weiss, who serves concurrently as Delaware US attorney and special counsel, indicted the president’s son in December on three felonies and six misdemeanors for evading $1.4 million in tax payments between 2016 and 2019.
During that period, Hunter Biden “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills,” federal prosecutors allege, adding that the first son shelled out for “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes.”
Weiss’ team in a Monday filing said the prosecution will show how the payments were written off as “business” expenses — even though Hunter wrote in his 2021 memoir about how they went toward “partying and using drugs, not conducting business as he claimed.”
“The timing of the defendant’s memoir is highly relevant. He signed a contract to produce it in the fall of 2019,” wrote Weiss, principal senior assistant special counsel Leo Wise and senior assistant special counsel Derek Hines.
“The government’s evidence will show that draft chapters were completed in advance of him filing his taxes in February 2020,” they said. “Chapter 9 of ‘Beautiful Things’ details his time in California in 2018, describing the very same hotels, by name, where he was partying and using drugs that he later claimed as business expenses on his 2018 taxes.”
“Therefore, at the very same time he was writing a memoir in which he identified staying at luxury hotels in Los Angeles and partying and used drugs there, the defendant was also falsely claiming those same hotels were business expenses to his tax return preparers,” they added.
Hunter is scheduled to head to trial on Sept. 9 — and will not be sentenced in the Delaware gun case until after Election Day, on Nov. 13.
In the latter case, the first son faces up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentences often fall well beneath the maximum guidelines. The tax charges could earn him a 17-year sentence.
President Biden pledged not to pardon Hunter in either case before suspending his 2024 re-election campaign.
A spokeswoman for Weiss’ office declined to comment. Geragos did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
