Hunter Biden is asking a California judge to exclude “salacious details” about his personal life from his upcoming tax fraud trial, arguing that his relationship with prostitutes and his alleged influence peddling are irrelevant to the trial.

Mr. Biden’s attorneys made their arguments in a series of court filings late Tuesday night. He is preparing for a June 3 trial in Delaware, where he’s charged with lying about his drug use in order to purchase a handgun in 2018. On June 20, he is scheduled to go to trial in California for failing to file or pay more than $1 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019, much of it reaped from lucrative overseas consulting work which associates have said he got by trading on his father’s name. 

On Mr. Biden’s infamous laptop, there are photographs of him doing drugs, taking luxurious vacations, and spending time in upscale hotels with women who appear to be sex workers. According to the tax indictment, Mr. Biden spent nearly $700,000 on “payments” to “various women.”

“Mr. Biden moves to exclude any evidence, testimony, or reference to his alleged ‘extravagant’ lifestyle during the time period in question and any salacious details about money purportedly spent on certain personal expenses, including, but not limited to, reference to sex workers, adult entertainment, a sex club membership, pornography, and strip clubs,” Mr. Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, says in one court filing in California. 

According to the indictment, Mr. Biden spent a total of $4.9 million on personal items and expenses between 2016 and 2019, including $1.6 million on “cash withdrawals.” He is also accused of spending large amounts of money on “adult entertainment,” and of claiming tax deductions unlawfully on expenditures such as a vacation to a chateau in the south of France where, according to his addiction memoir, Mr. Biden “learned to cook crack.” 

Despite the allegation that Mr. Biden took illegal tax deductions on these “extravagant” expenditures, Mr. Lowell argues that the $4.9 million expenditures during those three years should be listed as nothing more than “personal expenses.”

“The Special Counsel’s focus on Mr. Biden’s payment for items sexual in nature, referenced repeatedly in the Indictment, would be unfairly prejudicial beyond any possible probative value and would pose a danger of confusing the issues and misleading the jury,” Mr. Lowell writes. 

In a separate court filing in the Delaware gun case, Mr. Biden’s lawyers had argued that Special Counsel David Weiss only filed his indictments because of partisan politics and pressure from congressional Republicans, who have accused the first son and his family of engaging in an “influence-peddling scheme.”

The defense asks that the tax trial’s presiding jurist, Judge Mark Scarsi, to “exclude reference to alleged improper political influence and/or corruption.”

“For years, Mr. Biden has been the target of politically motivated attacks and conspiracy theories,” Mr. Lowell writes in a motion. “These baseless claims are the subject of widespread dissemination and discussion among a certain portion of the electorate, frequent media attention, and congressional inquiries. Mr. Biden is not, and never has been, charged with any crime relating to these unfounded allegations.”

Mr. Biden has recently also deployed this strategy of seeking to narrow the prosecution’s focus specifically in the Delaware gun case. He has already asked Judge Maryellen Noreika of the Delaware district court to exclude reference to his discharge from the Navy Reserves, his relationship with sex workers, and his yearslong paternity dispute with a former stripper who is the mother of his fourth child. In a filing Tuesday, Mr. Biden asks that all of those issues similarly be excluded from the tax trial. 

Mr. Weiss himself has set up what could be a damning first day of trial. Mr. Biden’s ex-sister-in-law — and former girlfriend who disposed of his firearm in a dumpster in 2018 — Hallie Biden, has been called to testify at the California tax trial on June 20, which is the day the trial is due to start.