A federal judge in Los Angeles on Wednesday will consider Hunter Biden’s bid to dismiss nine tax-related charges, with the president’s son claiming he is being vindictively prosecuted by the Justice Department and his rights trampled by two IRS agents who publicly revealed his confidentiality. tax records.

Biden’s legal team and federal prosecutors under special counsel David Weiss are expected to face off during an afternoon hearing before U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi, who was appointed to the bench by Donald Trump, at the court hearing.

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Street

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Our home in downtown LA. Biden is not expected to appear in court.

Biden’s defense, led by prominent Washington, D.C., attorney Abbe Lowell, filed eight separate motions to dismiss the case in whole or in part, with arguments ranging from technical arguments such as whether Biden lived in L.A.

while during

some of the alleged tax violations

occurred

on the contractual, such as whether an immunity agreement signed by prosecutors is valid. (Biden insists this is so.)

Weiss’ office accuses Biden of failing to pay his taxes on $7 million on time

of dollars

of income

from front

2016 to 2019, a period during which prosecutors say he did very little actual work. Biden then paid his taxes

the debt

with penalties and interest, in 2021.

Three of the nine counts in the indictment involve charges of tax evasion and two counts of filing false tax returns. The emphasis is on the way he reported his 2018 taxes. Prosecutors allege he misclassified several personal expenses as business expenses that year, including $30,000 for his daughter’s college tuition, $1,500 paid to an exotic dancer and $11,500 to an escort, according to the indictment.

Weiss has separately sued Biden in Delaware

for

allegedly lying on a federal firearms form.

Biden, 54, has pleaded not guilty

in

both cases. He has filed similar motions to dismiss in the Delaware case, and the judge there has not ruled

no ruling yet

.

The two charges came after the collapse of a plea deal last summer that could have allowed Biden to avoid a plea deal

possible

felony conviction and prison time, as well as negative headlines about a trial that coincided with his father’s re-election campaign. Now he faces two trials this year, although the LA case is more serious and complex than the Delaware one.

Many of Biden’s arguments for eliminating the tax

-related

The indictment focuses on the months before and after the plea deal fell apart last summer.

At the time, Weiss and his team faced a barrage of attacks from Trump and others over the plea deal. Lawmakers, including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, labeled it a charity deal.” Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two IRS agents involved in Biden’s long-running criminal investigation, had by then come forward and given rounds of press interviews alleging political interference in the Biden investigation.

This case follows a record of almost six years [the Justice Department] By changing his impeachment decisions and raising the stakes for Mr. Biden in direct response to political pressure and his own interests, Biden’s lawyers wrote in their motion to dismiss the case due to selective and vindictive prosecution.

The prosecutor could have filed these charges years ago and then agreed multiple times to rescind the deal, deny that it was made and pile on the misdemeanor charges, his attorneys added.

Prosecutors argue that Biden’s argument is a fiction that ignores a clear fact: Trump is no longer president and Biden’s father oversees the Justice Department.

The defendant is spinning a conspiracy theory that the prosecutor has upped the ante to appease politicians who have absolutely nothing to do with the prosecutor and are not even members of the current executive branch, prosecutors wrote.

Separately, Biden’s lawyers want the case dismissed on the grounds of egregious government conduct, arguing in a motion that Shapley and Ziegler, the two IRS agents who claimed to be whistleblowers, trampled on Biden’s constitutional right to due process have stepped.

In countless acts that lasted for months, these officers engaged in what can best be described as vigilante justice in the court of public opinion, publicly mocking the framework within which these types of investigations should be handled, the lawyers wrote Biden.

Biden’s lawyers They

also cited the maelstrom of political pressure in their quest to enforce an immunity deal.

Prosecutors and Biden’s lawyers had drawn up a so-called diversion agreement last summer, calling on Biden to adhere to certain conditions, such as not using firearms or drugs. In return, prosecutors would not bring charges for his past conduct, including tax crimes.

Prosecutors and Biden had signed the diversion agreement, which Biden’s lawyers say shows

It

binding and valid. To strengthen their argument, the defense points to comments made by Assistant US Atty. Leo Wise in July, who said so in court

the agreement

” is a contract between the parties, so it is in force until it is violated or resolved [of breach has been made]period of time.

Federal prosecutors dispute that there was a diversion agreement

in operation

and started calling it a draft, despite the signatures on the document. Prosecutors insist

That

the agreement is not in effect because a federal probation officer in Delaware had not formally approved it.

Moreover, Biden is trying to dismiss the case by arguing that Weiss was not lawfully appointed or legitimately funded by Congress, a claim his lawyers also made in the Delaware case and which prosecutors have opposed.

The remaining motions to dismiss allege technical errors in the case: that one count, based on 2016 taxes, is barred by the statute of limitations; that three counts each contain two offenses in the same indictment; and that four of the charges should not have been filed in California, as Biden did not officially live in the Golden State until the summer of 2019.

Biden’s latest motion

to dismiss

focuses on the 2019 tax year, arguing that charging him for not paying his taxes that year “is selective.”

and vengeful”

persecution. Defense lawyers note that Biden filed his tax returns on time that year and paid his taxes, including penalties and interest, two years later.

That’s what Biden’s lawyers say

That

not a single case has been found in which a suspect submitted his tax return on time in 2019, but was charged for non-payment

on time. , even if he paid less than the IRS thought he owed. file their taxes on time. I think we should cut on the last part

“Under those circumstances, if a taxpayer has paid all he or she owes, as Mr. Biden has done, criminal charges simply will not be filed,” Biden’s lawyers wrote.

Defense attorneys emphasize that at that point, the COVID-19 pandemic had led the IRS to offer relief and leniency programs to taxpayers facing financial hardship.

Prosecutors allege that Biden’s lawyers have mischaracterized the IRS leniency programs and say it is completely deceptive that the IRS has effectively immunized everyone during the pandemic who willfully failed to pay their income taxes.