Wealthy Hollywood lawyer helping out Hunter Biden
Counsel comes while the president’s son is target of fed probe
WASHINGTON — Faced with financial pressure and a federal investigation into his taxes and foreign consulting work, Hunter Biden has turned for money and strategic advice to an unlikely source: a wealthy Hollywood lawyer and novelist best known for brokering a lucrative licensing deal for the animated series “South Park.”
Lawyer Kevin Morris has quietly taken on an expansive role as a financier, confidant and would-be avenger for Biden, handling sensitive subjects for President Joe Biden’s son that could have political ramifications for the White House.
Morris lent over $2 million to Hunter Biden, which went to supporting his family and paying back taxes that are a subject of the ongoing federal investigation, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Morris advised Biden as he navigated a paternity and child support lawsuit, and helped him with his art career and a memoir published last year that was partly a response to attacks from former President Donald Trump.
He is funding a documentary project that is expected to build on the memoir’s redemption story, while depicting the president’s son as the victim of allies of Trump who distributed to the media a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Biden in a Delaware repair shop.
Some of the tactics Morris is said to have advocated — like publicly questioning the story behind the laptop cache and attacking those involved in spreading files from it — have not been implemented. They have seemed at odds with the approach of Biden’s defense lawyers, who have proceeded cautiously while he is still under federal investigation.
Morris declined to be interviewed. Attempts to reach Hunter Biden through his lawyer were unsuccessful. The White House declined to comment.
Hunter Biden has a history of seeking employment or profit in areas that overlapped with his father’s public duties and doing business with questionable partners around the world, including in Ukraine. His extensive and well-publicized personal travails — including addiction to crack cocaine, divorce, a relationship with his brother’s widow and money problems — have spilled into politics, helping to fuel relentless if largely baseless efforts by Republicans to link his father to his business ventures.
The criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and international work appears to be coming to a head. Justice Department prosecutors have met in recent weeks to discuss whether to move forward with the case. In the coming months, the department is expected to make a final decision about whether to bring criminal or civil charges, or to reach some sort of settlement that could include a significant fine.
The decision will have to be approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland and will be among the most scrutinized of his tenure. Hovering over it is the possibility that Republicans will win control of Congress in November and immediately begin investigations into Hunter Biden and how the Justice Department handled the case.
The White House has said it has no role in advising Hunter Biden on his legal problems or on his public messaging. Morris’ emergence as an influential adviser underscores the delicate situation that the president has to confront with the issues swirling around his son.
On one hand, Biden’s paying his back taxes using Morris’ loan could make it more difficult to prosecute a criminal tax case against the president’s son. And the president’s confidants see Morris as a key member of Hunter Biden’s emotional inner circle.
At the same time, some of the president’s allies see Morris as a potential liability. They are uneasy with his many ideas about how to go on the offense publicly, a person familiar with their thinking said. And they are concerned that it could reflect badly on the administration for the president’s son to be receiving financial assistance from a wealthy benefactor — a dynamic that could evoke the payments, which are now under scrutiny from federal prosecutors, that Hunter Biden accepted from a Ukrainian oligarch’s company and other foreign interests.
The allies prefer that the president’s son continue to keep a low profile and follow exactly what his primary defense lawyer, Chris Clark, tells him to do. They want Hunter Biden to do whatever he can to settle the matter with the Justice Department if prosecutors decide they want to charge him, according to the person familiar with their thinking.
Morris, 58, made a big splash in Hollywood, and a lot of money, when he negotiated a landmark deal that gave the creators of “South Park,” Matt Stone and Trey Parker, a precedent-setting 50% stake in the cartoon’s success in digital media.
Morris met Hunter Biden, now 52, in December 2019 at a fundraiser for the Biden presidential campaign and soon developed an almost paternal affection for him, according to an associate of Morris. Morris’ relationship with Biden was first reported by CBS News.
At the time of their initial meeting, Hunter Biden was working to get his life back together. Biden was under attack from Trump and his allies, who were seizing on his personal struggles and foreign business dealings to try to undermine his father’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Biden and Morris both lived in Los Angeles and became close, with Morris assisting as Biden worked to finish a memoir. It detailed his struggles with addiction and loss and credited his new wife, Melissa Cohen, with pulling him back from the brink of despair and self-destruction. It also pushed back against Trump’s attacks on him and his family.
Morris, who had donated $2,800 to the Biden campaign before meeting the candidate’s son, donated $55,000 to super PACS supporting the campaign and opposing Trump in the months after the meeting — exponentially more than he had given to federal committees previously, according to campaign finance records.
While the documentary about Biden is still in the formative stages, according to people familiar with it, they said it could seek to undermine attacks on its subject while also advancing the story of his redemption, including focusing on the launch of Biden’s career as an artist.
Morris, who collects art, has encouraged Biden’s art and owns some of it, according to two people familiar with his collection, although one suggested the art might have been gifted to him.
While Hunter Biden previously said painting “is literally keeping me sane,” it has caused headaches for the administration. The White House helped develop a set of ethics guidelines intended to keep the identity of buyers of Biden’s art, and other details of the sales, from the artist and the administration.