Hunter Biden’s felony tax evasion trial is set to be a salacious, days-long event that will force the sordid personal life of the president’s only surviving son back into national headlines less than two months before the presidential election. Unlike June’s criminal firearms trial, in which Biden was convicted of three felonies, this month’s trial will also shed light on the first son’s foreign business dealings.

Jury selection starts on Thursday. For months, Judge Mark Scarsi has been considering what personal details may or may not be included in order to paint a picture of Biden’s lifestyle at the time he was not paying taxes. 

The judge has already set most of the guardrails for what prosecution and defense will be able to argue during the trial. No mention may be made of Biden’s traumatic upbringing, including the 1972 car crash that left him grievously wounded and his mother and sister dead. The defense had hoped to introduce these events in order to humanize Biden’s spiral into addiction. 

Prosecutors, however, will not be able to offer some of the more colorful stories from Biden’s drug-addled years. Some aspects of his luxurious lifestyle — including his stays at famous hotels and his expensive cars — cannot be used by the government, Judge Scarsi ruled. 

Prosecutors will be able to bring up some of Biden’s drug problems, though. According to the original tax indictment filed in 2023, Biden spent millions of dollars between 2016 and 2019 on drugs, “various women,” tuition payments, and lavish vacations. Prosecutors will argue that Biden had the cash to pay his taxes, but declined to do so. They have entered more than 200 Venmo transactions taken from Biden’s phone and included them in a list of evidence to be used at trial. 

The list of people Special Counsel David Weiss plans to call to the stand says much about the damning portrait he wants to paint of the first son. After jury selection, beginning in a Los Angeles courtroom on Thursday, opening arguments and the first witness testimonies are expected to begin on Monday at the latest. Witnesses will include Biden’s sister-in-law and ex-girlfriend, Hallie Biden, and Ms. Biden’s sister, Elizabeth Secundy, who received money from Biden at one time. Mr. Weiss and his prosecutors have granted both women immunity to discuss Biden’s life at the time he was allegedly dodging his taxes between 2016 and 2019. 

Ms. Biden, the mother of two of the president’s grandchildren, testified at Biden’s Delaware gun trial earlier this summer, where she offered a damning assessment of the first son’s drug addiction and his purchase of a firearm. She admitted that she herself had gotten addicted to crack while she was dating Biden, saying it was “terrible,” and that she was “embarrassed” and “ashamed” about that addiction. 

Also appearing on the stand will be one of Biden’s former business associates, who worked with the first son while President Biden was vice president. Biden and the associate — whose name was not disclosed by Mr. Weiss in court filings, being identified only as “G.P.” — allegedly tried to influence both the American and Romanian governments to drop an investigation into a businessman in Romania, whose name is also not disclosed in court papers. 

“The government does not intend to reference allegations at trial. Rather, the government will introduce the evidence described above, including that the defendant 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 G.P in Romania,” Mr. Weiss’s prosecution team writes in its court filing. 

Despite his lucrative work abroad — including for business interests in Ukraine and Communist China — prosecutors will not be allowed to explicitly argue that Biden was acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Judge Scarsi ruled that such a line of argument would not be permissible, given that Biden has not been charged with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, though he was once and may still be under investigation for such an offense. 

The California trial, much like the Delaware one, threatens to put salt in a painful wound for the Biden family, which has yet to heal since Biden’s crisis of addiction following his brother’s death. For more than a week, details about his sex life, his drug habits, and his foreign business operations will be splashed across headlines. During the Delaware trial, several ex-romantic partners from Biden’s past, including girlfriends and his first wife, took the stand to detail his many problems at the time he was addicted to drugs and buying his firearm. 

All of those details were disclosed just as the first lady, Jill Biden, and Biden’s half-sister, first daughter Ashley Biden, along with the president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, and other family members were sitting in the front row behind the defense table. It is unclear if the family will show the same level of support in the California courthouse next week, far from their Delaware stomping ground. A lawyer for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

There is one significant difference with this trial when compared to June’s: The defendant’s father is no longer a candidate for president, perhaps relieving some of the public relations issues surrounding the first son.

If he is convicted, Biden faces up to 17 years in prison and a hefty fine. He is already facing up to 10 years and a $250,000 penalty at sentencing in October in the Delaware case, though given he is a first-time offender, it’s unlikely he would receive a punishment even close to that maximum. The president has promised that he would neither commute his son’s sentence nor pardon him, though that was before he withdrew from the presidential race. Vice President Harris has yet to state if she would pardon the president’s son.