Special counsel David Weiss’s office on Wednesday cited in a filing evidence it plans to introduce in the trial that suggests Hunter Biden was paid by a Romanian businessman who sought to influence U.S. policy and end a local investigation into him in Romania.
The prosecution will present evidence at trial showing that the president’s son “received compensation from a foreign executive who attempted to influence U.S. policy and public opinion and induced the United States to investigate the Romanian businessman,” Senior Assistant Special Counsel Derek Hines wrote in the filing Wednesday.
The special counsel’s team also wants to take a closer look at Biden’s business dealings. The document says prosecutors plan to introduce evidence at trial regarding Biden’s business dealings with Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma and China-led CEFC China Energy Company.
The evidence will not “We must provide evidence that the defendant engaged in lobbying activities in exchange for this compensation,” Weiss’s team wrote.
“Rather, the evidence will show that the defendant performed virtually no work in exchange for the millions of dollars he received from these entities,” the filing states.
Prosecutors added the additional details about their plans for the trial in a document urging the court to deny Biden’s request to suppress certain evidence that his attorneys view as unfairly prejudicial to his federal tax case, alleging that he failed to pay taxes, failed to file a return, evaded an assessment and filed a fraudulent tax return.
A lawyer for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening.
Prosecutors previously alleged in their indictment that from November 2015 to May 2017, Biden received one-third of approximately $3.1 million in compensation in connection with an oral agreement to help the businessman, referred to in the documents as “GP,” fight bribery charges he faced in Romania.
Prosecutors said a business associate, who was not named in the filing, was scheduled to testify at trial about the Romanian businessman’s alleged efforts to hire the associate and another partner to pressure federal agencies into investigating in an effort to end the criminal investigation in Romania.
The prosecution does not intend to present evidence of “direct compensation from a foreign state or evidence that the defendant received compensation for actions by his father that influenced national or international politics,” Hines wrote.
However, he did argue that the salary structure and details about Biden’s work were relevant to the case.
“Moreover, the evidence of what defendant agreed to do and actually did do for GP reveals defendant’s state of mind and intent during the relevant tax years recited in the indictment,” Hines wrote.
The fact that Biden suffered from a drug addiction does not mean he was in a diminished capacity. Under legal theory, a person does not have the mental state necessary to have the intent to commit a crime.
“It is also evidence that the defendant’s actions do not reflect the actions of someone with diminished capacity, as he agreed to attempt to influence U.S. government policy and receive millions of dollars based on a verbal agreement” with his associate as part of a scheme “that concealed the true nature of the work,” he added.
Biden’s trial is expected to begin next month.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
