New felony charges against President Biden’s son, Hunter, are unlikely to affect his current standoff with House Republicans over their demand that he be deposed in a closed-door session next week. Legal analysts say he can always take the fifth to avoid self-incrimination, even if compelled to testify.

On Thursday, federal prosecutors filed new criminal charges against Mr. Biden, alleging that he did not pay some $1.4 million in taxes on earnings from his foreign business ventures where he traded on his father’s name to do deals with entities in Communist China, Ukraine, and other countries. The charges against Mr. Biden could carry as much as 17 years in jail.

At the same time as he was shirking his tax obligations, authorities say Mr. Biden fils spent lavishly “on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature.” 

Mr. Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, says that the new charges were only brought because Mr. Biden is the president’s son.

“If Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought,” Ms. Lowell said in a statement.

It’s a point that Hunter Biden himself emphasized in a podcast interview released Friday with the musician Moby. The first son said that the investigation by Republicans is an attempt to “destroy the presidency” in an “illegitimate way.”

“So it’s not about me, and [in] their most base way, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle,” Mr. Biden said.

He added, “I realized that these people are just sad, very very sick people that have most likely just faced traumas in their lives that they’ve decided that they are going to turn into an evil that decides that they’re going to inflict on the rest of the world.”

The new charges come as a battle between Mr. Biden and Congressional Republicans over whether Mr. Biden will testify before Congress approaches high noon. The Oversight Committee chairman, Congressman James Comer, subpoenaed Hunter Biden, as well as his uncle, the president’s brother, James Biden. Other business associates, along with Mr. Biden’s gallerist and a wealthy Biden political daughter who bought paintings created by Hunter Biden for large sums, were also subpoenaed. 

Mr. Lowell has said his client refuses to submit to a closed door deposition and will only appear before a public hearing. 

“He is making this choice because the Committee has demonstrated time and again it uses closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort, the facts and misinform the American public — a hearing would ensure transparency and truth in these proceedings,” Mr. Lowell wrote in a letter.

The lead congressional investigator for Republicans, Mr. Comer, rejected Mr. Lowell’s offer, saying they will hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress if he doesn’t show up on Wednesday for the deposition. 

In a letter to Mr. Lowell, Mr. Comer and the Judiciary Committee chairman, Congressman Jim Jordan, reiterated their demand that Mr. Biden testify behind closed doors.

“The subpoenas Mr. Biden has received compel him to appear before the Committees for a deposition; they are not mere suggestions open to Mr. Biden’s interpretation or preference,” the two Republicans wrote in a letter. “Mr. Biden seems to believe that he should be treated differently than other witnesses before the Committees.”

The president-elect of the New York County Lawyers Association, Richard Swanson, tells the Sun that the escalating legal troubles for the younger Mr. Biden are unlikely to impact any potential Congressional testimony because it’s “unquestionably true” that Mr. Biden can still plead the Fifth Amendment if brought to testify before Congress.

“Lots of witnesses have taken the Fifth Amendment overtime in response to Congressional subpoenas,” Mr. Swanson says.

A contempt of Congress charge, should the Justice Department pursue it on Congress’ referral, could pose even more trouble for Hunter Biden. Two allies of Mr. Trump have been convicted of contempt of Congress, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, for failing to cooperate with the Democrat-controlled January 6 committee. 

The January 6 committee had subpoenaed Mr. Bannon to appear before it and to produce documents. Mr. Bannon, however, refused to appear for testimony in any form or produce documents. Though he later changed his mind and agreed to appear, he was still convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to serve four months in prison and pay a $6,500 fine.

Mrs. Lowell’s reluctance to have Mr. Biden testify behind closed doors likely stems from the testimony of one of Mr. Biden’s business partners, Devon Archer.

After Archer’s testimony, Republicans, like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, claimed, in the words of Ms. Greene, that Archer “told us in his transcribed interview that he heard Hunter Biden speak to Joe Biden more than 20 times about their business deals.”  

Archer said, however, that Mr. Biden’s conversations with his son’s business partners during his vice presidency was trifling. “I think you have to understand that there was no business conversation,” “It was, you know, just general niceties and, you know, conversation in general, you know, about the geography, about the weather, whatever it may be.”

Archer added that “there was not a specific time that I witnessed a, you know, specific business deal or business dealings or, you know, specifics about any kind of financial stuff.”

Republicans have, however, been wary of holding public hearings since the first and likely only public impeachment investigation hearing in September.

At the hearing, a conservative lawyer and a witness for the GOP told Congress that “I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment.”

Another Republican witness and forensic accountant, Bruce Dubinsky, said in testimony, “I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud, or any wrongdoing.”

“In my opinion, more information needs to be gathered and assessed before I would make such an assessment,” Mr. Dubinsky said in his opening statement.