Arkansans subpoenaed to testify in Hunter Biden trial

An Arkansas woman and her attorney have been subpoenaed to testify in Hunter Biden’s tax evasion trial in California.

Lunden Roberts of Batesville and Clint Lancaster of Saline County received the subpoenas by email on Monday directing them to appear at the Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 20.

Roberts, 33, is the mother of Hunter Biden’s daughter, Navy, who was born in August 2018.

Lancaster is an attorney who represented Roberts in her Arkansas paternity and child-support case against Biden, who is the son of President Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden settled the Arkansas lawsuit in June.

Independence County Circuit Judge Holly Meyer issued a protective order in the Arkansas case to keep Hunter Biden’s financial records under seal.

In the March 27, 2023, order, she wrote, “all information about or related to child support including affidavits of financial means is confidential information or confidential financial information and shall be sealed.”

But Lancaster said on Tuesday that, because of the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, if asked about those financial records while under oath in the federal court trial, he would have to reveal the information.

“The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, what it says is the laws of the United States will be paramount basically, and all other state laws must yield,” said Lancaster. “A subpoena is literally a court order to appear and testify.”

Lancaster said he emailed Meyer and Biden’s attorneys about the subpoenas on Monday, telling them: “It’s our position that these do not prohibit us from testifying about financial matters because of the supremacy clause, however if you feel differently, let me know.”

Lancaster said he hadn’t had a response from Meyer as of late Tuesday afternoon.

“I’m just a guy who’s going to say this is what I saw in the financial records and here’s what would have been impacted had he done X or Y for child support,” he said.

According to the indictment filed Dec. 7 in federal court for the Central District of California, Biden “engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019 … and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns.”

He was charged with three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanors.

The indictment includes references to Hunter Biden living in expensive hotels, renting a Lamborghini and otherwise living a luxurious lifestyle.

“Between 2016 and Oct. 15, 2020, the Defendant spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes,” according to the indictment.

The indictment quotes Biden’s memoir describing 2018 being dominated by crack cocaine “twenty-four hours a day, smoking every 15 minutes, seven days a week.”

The indictment also mentions Roberts, referring to her as “Person 1,” adding that she and Biden were engaged in a “romantic relationship” from 2017 to 2018. Lancaster said Roberts and Biden met while she was taking classes at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

“The Defendant placed Person 1 on payroll shortly after she moved to Arkansas while she was pregnant with his child,” according to the indictment. “Person 1 did not perform any work after being formally placed on payroll in spring 2018 and had no work-related communication with the Defendant after she was placed on payroll.”

Roberts received $22,500 in wages, which Biden “falsely claimed as a business deduction,” according to the indictment.

Jury trial is scheduled for June 20 before U.S. District Court Judge Mark C. Scarsi.

Lancaster said he wasn’t surprised that Roberts was subpoenaed in the California case, but he was rather surprised that he was.

“I thought Lunden might because the nature of their relationship is different than what Hunter has publicly portrayed,” he said. “And so she has a knowledge as to what Hunter was doing, where he was at and how things were happening for him financially.”

When asked how their relationship was different from Biden’s portrayal, Lancaster said he couldn’t elaborate.

The subpoenas that Roberts and Lancaster received in the California case were from special counsel David C. Weiss with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and two assistant special counsels — Leo J. Wise and Derek E. Hines.

Lancaster said Meyer had cautioned him before about violating an earlier protective order in the Roberts case.

In 2022, Lancaster told a media outlet that he expected Biden to be indicted because he had admitted not paying his taxes for a couple of years, and “if you don’t pay your taxes, that’s usually what happens,” he said Tuesday.

“But Judge Meyer thought that was a violation of her order to seal financial information,” said Lancaster. “And so she said that I shouldn’t do that.”

Lancaster said Meyer also spoke with him after he provided Biden’s financial information to prosecutors in a federal court case in Delaware.

“I provided them my entire file,” said Lancaster. “She wanted to know why I thought that wasn’t a violation of her order. And I said, ‘Well, the supremacy clause.’ She goes, ‘Yeah, I can see that,’ or something like that.”

Lancaster said he e-mailed Meyer on Monday “to make sure we’re not going to run afoul of the order as well on this one, though I don’t think we will.”

Lancaster said Roberts was subpoenaed twice in the federal court case against Hunter Biden in Delaware. The first subpoena required her to meet with Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, an IRS agent and an FBI agent. That meeting was conducted at Lancaster’s office in Little Rock. The second subpoena required Roberts to testify before the grand jury in federal court in Delaware.

“That resulted in the indictment,” said Lancaster.

On June 20, Hunter Biden was charged with two misdemeanor tax offenses and a felony firearm offense in the Delaware case.

Biden “agreed to enter a plea of guilty to the tax offenses and enter into a pretrial diversion agreement with regard to the firearm charge,” according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the state of Delaware.

“Biden received taxable income in excess of $1,500,000 annually in calendar years 2017 and 2018,” according to the news release. “Despite owing in excess of $100,000 in federal income taxes each year, he did not pay the income tax due for either year.”

In October 2018, Biden “possessed a firearm despite knowing he was an unlawful user of and addicted to a controlled substance,” according to the release.

However, Judge Maryellen Noreika didn’t go along with the deal.

“The federal judge said, ‘I don’t approve of this,’ and everything went to hell in a hand basket,” Lancaster said. “And the whole thing got ramped up from there.”

The Arkansas paternity and child support battle began in 2019.

In a January 2020 order, Judge Meyer declared that a DNA test showed, “with near scientific certainty,” that Hunter Biden is the father of Roberts’ daughter.

Both sides reached an agreement on monthly child support. Then, the child support case was reopened in September 2022 after Biden requested the amount be lowered due to “substantial material change” in his finances, according to court filings.

Previously, Biden had been paying $20,000 per month to Roberts for child support. The new agreed-upon amount was redacted from court documents.