By FRED SHUSTER
LOS ANGELES — One day after Hunter Biden’s surprise appearance on Capitol Hill at a committee meeting over whether to hold him in contempt of Congress, President Joe Biden’s son is expected to be arraigned Thursday in Los Angeles federal court on unrelated tax charges.
Hunter Biden was charged in an indictment released Dec. 7 on nine federal tax charges for allegedly refusing to pay his taxes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Biden, 53, of Malibu, “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills,” the indictment alleges.
His attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement when the tax charges were announced that “based on the facts and the law, if Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the (previously announced firearms) charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought.”
Biden’s scheduled appearance Thursday in federal court in downtown L.A. will come a day after the House Oversight Committee in Washington was set to vote on the contempt matter — only to be sidetracked when Biden made his appearance.
The committee had recommended that Hunter Biden be held in contempt for not complying with a subpoena to sit for a closed-door deposition as part of the panel’s impeachment inquiry into the president. Hunter Biden has said he’s willing to testify publicly — but not behind closed doors.
Ultimately, he departed Wednesday’s House hearing after about 10 minutes as Republican and Democratic committee members squabbled over whether to let him address the panel. He left without doing so.
The impeachment investigation stems from claims the president was involved in or benefited from his son’s foreign business dealings.
Meanwhile, regarding the federal tax charges that will be heard Thursday in LA, the 56-page indictment says that, between 2016 and Oct. 15, 2020, “the defendant spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels…
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