Hunter Biden’s attorneys are asking a federal district court judge to exclude vast swaths of unsavory information about his drug use, extravagant lifestyle, and personal choices from his upcoming gun trial, claiming the matters are “not relevant” and “prejudicial.” Topics the defense is hoping to exclude from the trial include his paternity dispute with a former stripper, his discharge from the Navy in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine, and various examples of his “extravagant lifestyle,” as a California indictment put it.In a series of filings in the Delaware court on Monday, Mr. Biden’s attorneys argued against including some of the more embarrassing parts of the first son’s life — specifically those instances that occurred while he was addicted to drugs for most of the 2010s. Some of Mr. Biden fils’ conduct was documented in obscene photographs found in his notorious laptop, the contents of which have been made available online via a searchable database, thanks to some of President Trump’s allies.Mr. Biden is on trial on four counts related to his purchase and possession of a Colt handgun in 2018 while he was addicted to crack cocaine and alcohol. The facts of the case, much of which Mr. Biden acknowledged in his recent memoir, are not in dispute, and defense lawyers are focusing instead on what they consider selective prosecution. Special Counsel David Weiss has brought the Delaware case against Mr. Biden, as well as a separate felony prosecution in California for evading taxes between 2016 and 2019. Mr. Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, has asked the court to keep all references to the tax prosecution out of the gun trial, which is set to begin on June 3. If convicted on the gun charges alone, Mr. Biden could face a prison sentence of as much as 10 years, though it would likely be less than that.One new defense filing states that details about Mr. Biden’s paternity dispute with a former stripper, Lunden Roberts of Arkansas, should not be included, and neither should his discharge from the Navy Reserve, which happened after he tested positive for cocaine. “Because neither of these issues would be relevant to the instant firearm charges in this prosecution, pose a danger of unfair prejudice beyond any probative value, and risk misleading the jury or confusing the issues, the Special Counsel should be excluded from raising them at trial,” Mr. Lowell argues. Ms. Roberts, with whom Mr. Biden fathered a child out of wedlock in 2018, sued to have his paternity confirmed in 2019 and won a $20,000-a-month child support payment from him. In 2023, they came to a renegotiated settlement after Mr. Biden moved to reduce the payments and Ms. Roberts asked that her daughter’s surname be changed to Biden. The suit was eventually settled, with Mr. Biden agreeing to compensate his daughter in part by giving her his art. Ms. Roberts agreed not to change the girl’s name to Biden.Mr. Lowell says the child support dispute has “no relevance” to the gun case and could be “prejudicial” if jurors hear about the yearslong court fight between the first son and his former lover. In the same filing, Mr. Lowell asks that all references to Mr. Biden’s Navy Reserve discharge be excluded from any evidence or questioning. The first son joined the Navy when he was in his 40s, but was discharged just weeks later when a urinalysis found that he had tested positive for cocaine. Mr. Biden has maintained to the press that he was given a crack cocaine-laced cigarette that resulted in the positive test. Mr. Lowell says none of those details are “relevant” to the current prosecution. Mr. Biden’s attorneys also say references to his “extravagant lifestyle” are also irrelevant to the gun prosecution. Mr. Biden’s laptop contains a trove of photos and videos depicting drug and sex binges in luxury hotels, as well as Mr. Biden recklessly driving luxury cars — one of which he crashed and totaled. The prosecution’s evidence list includes records from Mr. Biden’s messy divorce, during which his wife accused him in legal filings of spending extravagantly on prostitutes, drugs, and on a large diamond for his girlfriend, Hallie Biden, who was also the widow of his then recently deceased brother, Beau. The prosecution’s evidence list also includes tax records for Ms. Biden. “Mr. Biden moves to exclude any argument, reference, or questioning at trial regarding his alleged spending on an ‘extravagant lifestyle’ during periods that Mr. Biden was suffering from addiction,” Mr. Lowell writes in another legal filing. He says the special counsel’s prosecutors do not “need to delve into the subject of how much money was spent or whether an event was extravagant.”
