Hunter Biden tax evasion trial to begin in LA

Joe Biden's son Hunter goes on trial Thursday in California on charges of tax evasion in a case that has been a huge embarrassment and distraction for the US president.

The 54-year-old is accused of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes over the past decade and instead spending money freely on luxury living, sex workers and a drug habit.

The younger Biden has already spent a chunk of 2024 in court, having been convicted in Delaware of lying about his drug use when he bought a gun -- a felony.

That case featured testimony on Biden's extravagant living, disintegrating marriage and heavy use of crack cocaine.

Now a jury in Los Angeles will sit through what are expected to be days of lurid details about a life that the defendant and his family -- including the president -- have long acknowledged had gone off the rails.

"They want to slime him because that is the whole purpose," Biden's attorney Mark Geragos reportedly said during an August hearing in which he accused prosecutors of attempted character assassination.

Biden's defense team argues that the non-payment of taxes was an oversight in a life wrought chaotic by a spiraling drug addiction and the trauma of losing his older brother, Beau, to a brain tumor in 2015.

Biden has paid the back taxes, as well as penalties levied by authorities, and had previously reached a plea deal that would have kept him out of jail.

That agreement fell apart at the last minute, and Biden the son is understood to have been trying to reach another ever since.

But that has been difficult for prosecutors whose every move in this election year is being scrutinized by Republicans eager to show the defendant is being treated leniently because he is the president's son.

Biden has for years been a foil for his father's political opponents, who have sought -- without producing evidence -- to smear the family as a group of criminals who have gained wealth and power because of Joe Biden's career.

The elder Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race in favor of Kamala Harris has taken much of the zeal out of the Republican fervor for making an example out of his son.

Nevertheless, the special counsel in charge of the case, David Weiss, is pressing ahead, seeking convictions on one count of tax evasion and two of filing a false return.

Guilty verdicts could result in up to 17 years in prison for Biden. The gun felony, which he is yet to be sentenced on, carries a maximum 25-year term.

The trial starts Thursday in downtown Los Angeles with the selection of a jury from a panel of around 100 candidates.

Opening arguments are expected on Monday.

Hunter Biden, a Yale-trained lawyer and lobbyist-turned-artist who lives in Malibu, has stated that he has been drug-free since 2019.