Hunter Biden asks Los Angeles judge to toss out $1.4m tax evasion case

Attorneys representing Hunter Biden asked a US judge in Los Angeles to dismiss the criminal case accusing him of evading $1.4m in taxes, arguing that prosecutors bowed to political pressure from Republican lawmakers investigating his father, Joe Biden.

Hunter’s lawyers appeared before the US district judge Mark Scarsi in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday to press several legal challenges to the charges, including an argument that he was selectively targeted by prosecutors in response to Republican criticism. The 54-year-old was not present in the courtroom.

Hunter has pleaded not guilty to failing to pay $1.4m in taxes between 2016 and 2019, while spending millions of dollars on drugs, escorts, exotic cars and other big-ticket items. His lawyer has said he paid back the money in full.

US district judge Mark Scarsi appeared to give a skeptical reception to dismissal request. At the hearing, Scarsi asked whether Hunter’s lawyers had any evidence that prosecutors had caved to pressure from Republicans, other than the fact that they filed charges after months of accusations by Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump that he had been treated leniently.

“Do you have any evidence other than the timeline?” Scarsi asked Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell.

Lowell acknowledged that “it’s a timeline, but it’s a juicy timeline.”

Scarsi also voiced skepticism about Hunter’s defense team’s argument that prosecutors had been pressured by two Internal Revenue Service agents who went public last year with information about his tax returns.

“How are they responsible for what’s in the indictment?” Scarsi asked.

“I can’t make the connection that that’s why that happened,” Lowell said, later adding that: “It was those two agents that started the