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WASHINGTON — Confronted with monetary strain and a federal investigation into his taxes and international consulting work, Hunter Biden has turned for cash and strategic recommendation to an unlikely supply: a rich Hollywood lawyer and novelist finest identified for brokering a profitable licensing deal for the animated collection “South Park.”
The lawyer, Kevin Morris, has quietly taken on an expansive function as a financier, confidant and would-be avenger for Mr. Biden, dealing with delicate topics for President Biden’s son that would have acute political ramifications for the White Home.
Mr. Morris lent greater than $2 million to Hunter Biden, which went to supporting his household and paying again taxes which are a topic of the continued federal investigation, based on 4 individuals aware of the matter.
Mr. Morris suggested Mr. Biden as he navigated a paternity and youngster help lawsuit, and helped him together with his artwork profession and a memoir printed final 12 months that was partly a response to assaults from former President Donald J. Trump.
He’s funding a documentary venture that’s anticipated to construct on the memoir’s redemption story, whereas depicting the president’s son because the sufferer of allies of Mr. Trump who distributed to the media a cache of information that seems to have come from a laptop computer deserted by Mr. Biden in a Delaware restore store.
A few of the ways Mr. Morris is alleged to have advocated — like publicly questioning the story behind the laptop computer cache and attacking these concerned in spreading information from it — haven’t been applied. They’ve appeared at odds with the strategy of Mr. Biden’s protection attorneys, who’ve proceeded cautiously whereas he’s nonetheless underneath federal investigation.
Mr. Morris declined to be interviewed. Makes an attempt to achieve Hunter Biden via his lawyer have been unsuccessful. The White Home declined to remark.
Hunter Biden has an extended historical past of searching for employment or revenue in areas that overlapped together with his father’s public duties and doing enterprise with questionable companions all over the world, together with in Ukraine. His intensive and well-publicized private travails — together with habit to crack cocaine, divorce, a relationship together with his brother’s widow and cash issues — have spilled into politics, serving to to gas relentless if largely baseless efforts by Republicans to hyperlink his father to his enterprise ventures.
The legal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and worldwide work seems to be coming to a head. Justice Division prosecutors have met in latest weeks to debate whether or not to maneuver ahead with the case. Within the coming months, the division is anticipated to make a closing resolution about whether or not to convey legal or civil expenses, or to achieve some form of settlement that would embody a major effective.
The choice should be accepted by Lawyer Common Merrick B. Garland and will likely be among the many most scrutinized of his tenure. Hovering over it’s the risk that Republicans will win management of Congress in November and instantly start investigations into Hunter Biden and the way the Justice Division dealt with the case.
The White Home has mentioned it has no function in advising Hunter Biden on his authorized issues or on his public messaging. Mr. Morris’s emergence as an influential adviser underscores the fragile state of affairs that President Biden has to confront with the problems swirling round his son.
On one hand, Mr. Biden’s use of Mr. Morris’s mortgage to pay again taxes might make it tougher to prosecute a legal tax case towards the president’s son. And the president’s confidants see Mr. Morris as a key member of Hunter Biden’s emotional internal circle, a pleasant shoulder to lean on as he navigates the federal investigation whereas attempting to rebuild his life after the loss of life of his brother, Beau, and struggles with drug habit.
On the similar time, a number of the president’s allies see Mr. Morris as a possible legal responsibility. They’re uneasy together with his many concepts about the right way to go on the offense publicly, an individual aware of their considering mentioned. And they’re involved that it might replicate badly on the administration for the president’s son to be receiving monetary help from a rich benefactor — a dynamic that would evoke the funds, which are actually underneath scrutiny from federal prosecutors, that Hunter Biden accepted from a Ukrainian oligarch’s firm and different international pursuits.
The allies favor that the president’s son proceed to maintain a low profile and observe precisely what his main protection lawyer, Chris Clark, tells him to do. They need Hunter Biden to do no matter he can to settle the matter with the Justice Division if prosecutors resolve they need to cost him, based on the individual aware of their considering.
Mr. Morris’s help is motivated much less by any political calculus than by “an incredible empathy for individuals who have been struggling,” mentioned Glenn C. Altschuler, an creator and historical past professor at Cornell College who mentored Mr. Morris as an undergraduate and has stayed in shut contact with him since.
“He’s acquired a coronary heart as a giant as a home, and as his pockets has expanded, he’s been capable of make his sympathies, his empathy, manifest in quite a lot of methods,” Mr. Altschuler mentioned.
Mr. Morris, 58, made a giant splash in Hollywood, and some huge cash, in 2007. That’s when he negotiated a landmark deal that gave the creators of “South Park,” Matt Stone and Trey Parker, a precedent-setting 50 p.c stake within the cartoon’s success in digital media.
Mr. Morris had met the pair years earlier once they have been comparatively little-known filmmakers, and he represented them for the following few years without cost. He later produced a musical, “The E book of Mormon,” that the pair had written with a 3rd companion for which he received a Tony Award.
Mr. Morris has additionally written a show-business satire referred to as “Gettysburg,” a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story titled “All Joe Knight,” and a set of brief tales.
Mr. Morris met Hunter Biden, now 52, in December 2019 at a fund-raiser for the Biden presidential marketing campaign, and shortly developed an virtually paternal affection for Mr. Biden, based on an affiliate of Mr. Morris. Mr. Morris’s relationship with Mr. Biden was first reported by CBS Information.
On the time of their preliminary assembly, Hunter Biden was working to get his life again collectively. Mr. Biden was underneath assault from Mr. Trump and his allies, who have been seizing on his private struggles and international enterprise dealings to attempt to undermine his father’s marketing campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Morris each lived in Los Angeles and have become shut, with Mr. Morris helping as Mr. Biden labored to complete a memoir. It detailed his struggles with habit and loss and credited his new spouse, Melissa Cohen, with pulling him again from the brink of despair and self-destruction. It additionally pushed again towards Mr. Trump’s assaults on him and his household.
Mr. Morris, who had donated $2,800 to the Biden marketing campaign earlier than assembly the candidate’s son, donated $55,000 to tremendous PACs supporting the marketing campaign and opposing Mr. Trump within the months after the assembly — exponentially greater than he had given to federal committees beforehand, based on marketing campaign finance data.
As a younger man, Mr. Morris labored as an workplace assistant for a member of the British Parliament, however he has little discernible expertise in American politics.
Mr. Morris — who produced a 1997 movie referred to as “Palms on a Hardbody: The Documentary,” about an annual competitors in Texas to see who can maintain their hand on a pickup truck longest — has begun growing the concept and amassing footage for a movie that includes Mr. Biden. It’s being produced by an organization Mr. Morris began final 12 months referred to as Media Courthouse Documentary Collective. The corporate can be producing movies on topics together with cryptology, Congress and the unfolding defamation case introduced by Johnny Depp towards his ex-wife, the actress Amber Heard.
Whereas the documentary about Mr. Biden continues to be within the formative phases, based on individuals aware of it, they mentioned it might search to undermine assaults on its topic whereas additionally advancing the story of his redemption, together with specializing in the launch of Mr. Biden’s profession as an artist.
Mr. Morris, who collects artwork, has inspired Mr. Biden’s artwork and owns a few of it, based on two individuals aware of his assortment, although one steered the artwork may need been given to him as a present.
Whereas Hunter Biden beforehand advised The New York Occasions that his portray “is actually protecting me sane,” it has precipitated complications for the administration. The White Home helped develop a set of ethics tips supposed to maintain the identification of patrons of Mr. Biden’s artwork, and different particulars of the gross sales, from each the artist and the administration. That got here after criticism over a gallery present in SoHo at which asking costs have been between $75,000 and $500,000 per piece — excessive for a novice artist
Mr. Morris and a person with a video digital camera have been photographed following Mr. Biden and Ms. Cohen exterior the SoHo gallery on the opening of Mr. Biden’s present, which was attended by President Biden’s sister and different relations.
Plans for the documentary additionally embody elevating questions in regards to the veracity of the story behind the cache of emails, textual content messages and different information from Hunter Biden’s accounts that have been obtained and disseminated to the media initially by Rudolph W. Giuliani.
The New York Occasions and different media retailers have authenticated a number of the information, which detailed Mr. Biden’s funds and his work for international people and firms at a time when his father was vice chairman and was overseeing components of American international coverage that overlapped with the pursuits of Hunter Biden’s purchasers.
A few of these information have come underneath scrutiny from prosecutors investigating Hunter Biden for doable violations of tax, cash laundering and foreign-lobbying legal guidelines.
Mr. Morris has privately questioned whether or not the information all got here from the laptop computer deserted in Delaware or have been spliced collectively from an array of sources. He has additionally indicated that the Justice Division ought to examine the chain of custody.
He has circulated diagrams exhibiting a set of Trump allies who’ve been concerned in disseminating the information, together with the previous White Home adviser Stephen Ok. Bannon, the previous private lawyer Mr. Giuliani and the Chinese language billionaire and Mar-a-Lago member Guo Wengui.
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