The indictment describes how, in 2019, he began writing the memoir, "Beautiful Things," and received approximately $140,625 from January to October 2020, which was deposited into his wife’s bank account. The indictment also said that, in 2018, he claimed approximately $388,810 in business-related travel. While he was making those claims to accountants, he was working on the memoir but did not share it with them, the document says.
That memoir outlines the extensive drug use that he was involved in at that time, undercutting claims about his business expenses.
"Unbeknownst to the CA Accountants, in his memoir, the Defendant described 2018 as being dominated by crack cocaine use 'twenty-four hours a day, smoking every fifteen minutes, seven days a week,’" the indictment says.
"In fact, the Defendant never told the CA Accountants about his extensive drug and alcohol abuse in 2018 which might have prompted greater scrutiny of his claims of hundreds of thousands of dollars in business expenses."
Separately, the indictment cites the memoir’s recollection of how, in 2018, Hunter says he paid for an entourage of "thieves, junkies, petty dealers, over-the-hill strippers, con artists, and assorted hangers-on, who then invited their friends and associates and most recent hookups."
"They latched on to me and didn’t let go, all with my approval. I never slept. There was no clock. Day bled into night and night into day," the president’s son says in the book.
The indictment also highlights how Hunter described stays in luxury hotels and private rentals and the related expenses. It quotes the memoir at length in reference to his stays in Malibu, Beverly Hills and Hollywood.
"An ant trail of dealers and their sidekicks rolled in and out, day and night. They pulled up in late-series Mercedes-Benzes, decked out in oversized Raiders or Lakers jerseys and flashing fake Rolexes. Their stripper girlfriends invited their girlfriends, who invited their boyfriends," Hunter is quoted as saying. "They’d drink up the entire minibar, call room service for filet mignon and a bottle of Dom Pérignon. One of the women even ordered an additional filet for her purse-sized dog."
The indictment then notes there was no indication of any business taking place at the luxury hotels at which Hunter stayed. Later in the indictment, it mentions expenses "specifically identified in the Defendant’s memoir" but that he never disclosed that his time spent there was not for business purposes.
The indictment says Lamborghini rentals, luxury hotel stays and the flying of an exotic dancer from LA to New York were not for business.
"Instead, they were personal expenses generated during what he described in his memoir as a ‘bacchanal’ in 2018," the document says, later saying that some of the hotels were used to meet up with his girlfriend for "constant partying."
Hunter's defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, attacked special counsel David Weiss over the charges, accusing the special counsel of "bowing to Republican pressure."
"Based on the facts and the law, if Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought," Lowell said in a statement.
Biden's son also lashed out at his critics, saying they were trying to get to his father.
"They are trying to destroy a presidency. And so, it's not about me. In their most base way, what they're trying to do is they're trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle. And so, therefore, destroying a presidency in that way," he said.
Fox News' Houston Keene contributed to this report.