The failure of a last-ditch effort by lawyers for Hunter Biden to request a “continuance,” or a delay, from the Arkansas judge hearing his child support case means that, at least for now, the first son has a 9 a.m. court date at a Batesville courtroom.

The question is: Will he show up? 

That question has brought into focus the stakes for Mr. Biden fils, who has not contested a DNA test result that confirms him as the father of Lunden Roberts’s daughter, Navy. Mr. Biden’s former paramour has asked that if Mr. Biden does attend the hearing the court sends him to jail. 

Mr. Biden’s attorneys had argued that the appearance of the president’s son in the town with a population of just more than 11,000 people would create a logistical nightmare and would be inundated by the press. The judge was having none of it, ordering that “all parties are to physically appear for all future court hearings in this matter. The parties will no longer have their appearances excused.”

That summons comes on the heels of a ​​”motion for contempt” filed by Ms. Roberts. That filing told the court that Mr. Biden has failed to comply with court orders and has withheld evidence. In January 2020, Judge Meyer ordered Hunter Biden to pay child support every month. She also “determined that the issue of paternity is no longer contested.”

In September, Mr. Biden fils petitioned Judge Meyer to rework the support agreement, claiming a “substantial material change” in his circumstances. In response, Ms. Roberts has requested that her daughter’s surname be legally changed to “Biden.” 

Ms. Roberts’s lawyer, Clinton Lancaster, responds to Mr. Biden fils’s protestations of poverty by warning, “The court must consider whether the defendant has unclean hands or is otherwise perpetrating a fraud upon the court regarding his income.” He adds, “Voluntarily reducing income, or hiding assets, is not a basis for a reduction in support.”

To show that Mr. Biden fils has the assets to support Ms. Roberts and her daughter on the terms of the original accord, Mr. Lancaster points to the first son’s legal team, which he sees as encompassing  “some of the most expensive attorneys on planet Earth.” Mr. Lancaster also calls the younger Biden a “Yale educated attorney/artist” who claims to be “somewhat financially destitute.” 

Now, that “attorney/artist” could be facing the prospect of jail, if Judge Meyer heeds Ms. Roberts’s urging to “incarcerate the defendant in the Cleburne County Detention Center until he complies with this court’s orders and answers discovery.” 

Hunter Biden, who’s believed to now live in the Los Angeles area, was reportedly last spotted arriving at the $50 million vineyard estate, in Santa Barbara wine country, owned by Joe Kiani, a medical device entrepreneur who is a major financial backer of Mr. Biden père. Mr. Lancaster also notes that when it comes to transportation, Hunter Biden is a regular aboard  the “safest and most comfortable airplane in existence — Air Force One.” 

If Judge Meyer opts to reward Hunter Biden’s recalcitrance with jail time, she will likely cite the Natural State’s code, which ordains, “Every court of record shall have power to punish, as for criminal contempt, persons guilty” of “Willful disobedience of any process or order lawfully issued or made by a sitting judge.”

A court, the law explains, “shall always have power to imprison” in such circumstances. Arkansas’s Office of Child Support Enforcement notes that it “has strong administrative methods to establish and enforce support orders.” 

In a twist tinged with irony, the federal “Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act,” which makes it a crime for a person to willfully fail to pay child support for a child who lives in another state, was signed into law by a one-time governor of Arkansas, President Clinton. 

At the law’s signing ceremony, in 1998, Mr. Clinton noted, “When fathers neglect support of their children it aggravates all the other problems a family faces.”