Romanian oligarch hired Hunter Biden to influence US policy, special counsel says

Prosecutors in special counsel David Weiss' office are accusing Hunter Biden of accepting payments from a Romanian businessman who was attempting to "influence U.S. government agencies," while his father Joe Biden was vice president.

If true, the allegation would mark the closest prosecutors have come to tying President Joe Biden to his son's overseas business endeavors -- a matter congressional Republicans have spent years scrutinizing.

The special counsel's claim, in a court filing Wednesday in the younger Biden's federal tax case, stems from Hunter Biden's work on behalf of Gabriel Popoviciu, a wealthy Romanian who prosecutors say hired the president's son for legal work in late 2015.

Popoviciu was at the time facing corruption charges in his home country.

At Hunter Biden's upcoming tax trial, "the government will introduce the evidence ... that [Hunter Biden] and Business Associate 1 received compensation from a foreign principal who was attempting to influence U.S. policy and public opinion and cause the United States to investigate the Romanian investigation of [Popoviciu] in Romania," prosecutors wrote in Wednesday's filing.

According to prosecutors, Hunter Biden and his business associate "were concerned that lobbying work might cause political ramifications for the defendant's father," so the deal was structured in a way that "concealed the true nature of the work he was performing."

The special counsel's office made a passing reference to Hunter Biden's work with Popoviciu in their December indictment. However, Wednesday's filing was the first to suggest that Hunter Biden was compensated in a lobbying capacity.

Prosecutors said Hunter Biden and two business partners split more than $3 million in payments from Popoviciu between November 2015 and 2017.

Attorneys for Hunter Biden criticized Weiss' assertion as "irrelevant and politically charged," according to subsequent court filings filed on Sunday.

The claim was an "inflammatory and incomplete, and therefore misleading, characterization of that testimony in a public filing, surely knowing it would make news," Hunter Biden's attorneys wrote.

"The Special Counsel's unnecessary change of tactic merely echoes the baseless and false allegations of foreign wrongdoing which have been touted by House Republicans to use Mr. Biden's proper business activities in Romania and elsewhere to attack him and his father," attorneys for Hunter Biden continued.

Hunter Biden's legal team is seeking to exclude references to his alleged lobbying work at trial, framing the matter as irrelevant to the charges and that it risks "confusing" the jury. Prosecutors suggested the business arrangement with the Romanian tycoon was necessary to demonstrate Hunter Biden's "state of mind" during the time that he failed to pay his taxes.

"But whether Mr. Biden may have engaged in lobbying activities or how much work he did for what compensation he received are irrelevant to the tax offenses he is charged with, and the admission of such evidence risks suggesting to the jury that Mr. Biden did not perform enough work to substantiate the income he received -- something he is not charged with," Hunter Biden's attorneys wrote in the fillings Sunday.

Hunter Biden faces three felony tax charges and additional misdemeanors for allegedly failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes from 2016 to 2020. The back taxes and penalties were previously paid in full by a third party, identified by ABC News as Hunter Biden's attorney and confidant, Kevin Morris.

The trial, in California, is scheduled to begin in early September.