Hunter Biden cheated on his taxes on a truly vast scale — “he failed to pay more than $2.2 million in taxes on $8.3 million of income from foreign entities in Ukraine, China, and Romania.” Yet he will likely escape any jail time, and is being allowed to plead guilty to mere misdemeanors for his tax evasion, even though “the IRS recommended felony charges for Hunter Biden.”
If any normal American refused to pay millions of dollars in taxes they clearly owed, they’d be in prison for a long time, as is discussed in this article. But Hunter Biden is getting off almost scot-free. If penalties for tax evasion were usually this light, most taxpayers would stop paying taxes, and America would go bankrupt.
Hunter Biden also received more lenient treatment than anyone else would have gotten for his violation of federal gun laws. As former Justice Department lawyer and U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman notes about the “Hunter Biden deal: I’ve reviewed data on 189,000 firearm possession cases by DOJ. Not a single diversion. In fact, among all cases prosecuted by DOJ less than 1% were resolved by a diversion.”
The government appears to have deliberately slow-walked these tax charges, taking five years to bring them, so that the statute of limitations would run out on Hunter Biden’s most blatant acts of tax evasion. That delay apparently means that the IRS can no longer collect what Hunter Biden owes on $400,000 he received from a Ukrainian entity, Burisma.
As the Free Beacon reports:
An IRS whistleblower told Congress on Thursday that the tax agency recommended felony charges against Hunter Biden and that the federal prosecutor handling the probe of the first son was rebuffed from filing charges on multiple occasions…
Rep. Jason Smith (R., Mo.) said at a press conference that two IRS employees claimed the agency sought felony charges against the younger Biden for attempting to evade taxes and fraudulent or false statements, all felony charges. The whistleblowers, who worked on the Biden probe since its start in November 2018, further claimed that the investigation was marred by “recurring unjustified delays” and “unusual actions outside the normal course of any investigation,” Smith said.
The bombshell disclosure comes days after federal prosecutors in Delaware struck a plea deal with Biden on two misdemeanor tax charges and a felony gun charge that will be dropped after he completes a diversionary program.
Smith asserted that Biden received “a slap on the wrist for charges that have put other Americans behind bars.”
According to Smith, the whistleblowers testified that Hunter Biden failed to pay more than $2.2 million in taxes and received $8.3 million from foreign entities in Ukraine, China, and Romania. Biden received at least $6 million from CEFC China Energy, an energy conglomerate linked to Chinese military intelligence. A Romanian businessman investigated for bribery paid Biden another $1 million for help on his legal case. And Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, paid Hunter Biden more than $80,000 a month to serve on its board of directors.
In one stunning revelation, Smith cited an encrypted text message in which Hunter Biden threatened a Chinese business partner for payment by invoking his father.
“I am sitting here with my father and would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Biden wrote in a July 30, 2017, message to Henry Zhao.
“I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
The whistleblowers claimed that the Justice Department dragged its feet in authenticating the text message, according to Smith.
The Republican said the whistleblowers further testified that U.S. attorney David Weiss attempted to bring charges against Hunter Biden on at least two occasions but was blocked from doing so. Smith said Weiss sought to file charges in Washington, D.C., in March 2022 and in California in fall 2022. He also sought special counsel status in Spring 2022 but was also rejected.
The whistleblowers say the DOJ chose to let the statute of limitations expire on crimes committed in 2014 and 2015, when Biden failed to report approximately $400,000 in income from Burisma. His business partner Eric Schwerin, according to the testimony, asked him multiple times to amend his tax returns to include the money from Ukraine while his father was vice president, but Hunter Biden never did and now “there is no mechanism available to collect the tax owed by Hunter Biden for 2014 other than in a voluntary fashion.”
“The purposeful exclusion of the 2014 and 2015 years sanitized the most substantive criminal conduct and concealed material facts,” the whistleblower testified.
As Fox News notes, “Other Americans facing similar federal gun charges are facing months behind bars.” A rapper received 46 months for essentially the same thing Hunter Biden did. Usually, a defendant would get about two years in prison for Hunter’s gun violation. The diversion program offered to Biden is very rare in federal court for any kind of offense: “less than 1% of people that plea that actually get a diversion program,” notes a lawyer.
As the New York Post notes:
Hunter Biden’s slap-on-the-wrist plea deal after failing to pay taxes on millions of dollars in income, and a felony gun charge he won’t be prosecuted for, follows a long history of Biden family members running afoul of the law — and skating.
Hunter Biden, 53, could have faced felonies for both his tax charges — and a multitude of other crimes evidenced on his abandoned laptop.
Instead, he pled guilty to just two misdemeanor tax offenses, virtually guaranteeing he will not see the inside of a jail cell.
“The Biden family are beginning to make the Medicis look like small-time operators,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.
“That fact that it took over five years to even secure a plea on a couple of small misdemeanors is a testament to a family that has leveraged Joe Biden public positions into a fortune of foreign influence peddling.”…In 1988, Hunter Biden was granted a similar off-ramp after being busted for drug possession.
On March 17, Joe Biden falsely denied that members of his family received over $1 million from Hunter Biden‘s business associate — even as his son Hunter Biden confirmed it.
Republican Congressman James Comer of Kentucky disclosed the more than $1 million in payments last week. Comer got them through a subpoena of Hunter Biden’s business associate Rob Walker’s bank records. Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, revealed that “from 2015 through 2017, Biden family members and their companies received over $1.3 million in payments” from accounts tied to Walker.
Comer found that more than $1 million was sent in a series of payments to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s brother James, and Hallie Biden, the widow of Joe Biden’s deceased son Beau. (Hunter had a sexual relationship with Hallie in 2017 following his brother’s death, not long after Walker received a $3 million wire from a Chinese company).
On Friday, a reporter asked President Biden at the White House if he had “any reaction to House GOP’s new memo about your family dealings.” The President replied, “My family dealings?” The reporter responded, “Yes, revealing that Hunter Biden’s business associate sent over a million dollars to three of your family members?”
“That’s not true,” replied Joe Biden.
But it was true, as the Washington Examiner reports:
Hunter Biden’s legal team had seemingly confirmed, and defended, the payments in a Thursday statement.
“Hunter Biden, a private citizen with every right to pursue his own business endeavors, joined several business partners in seeking a joint venture with a privately owned, legitimate energy company in China,” a Hunter spokesman said. “As part of that joint venture, Hunter received his portion of good faith seed funds, which he shared with his uncle James Biden and Hallie Biden, with whom he was involved with at the time and sharing expenses.”
Hunter’s legal team contended Thursday that the accounts “belonged to Hunter, his uncle, and Hallie — nobody else.” The statement did not dispute the amounts that Comer had detailed.
Comer released a memo stating that two months after Joe Biden left the vice presidency, the Chinese company State Energy HK wired $3 million to Robinson Walker, an account belonging to Walker. The Republican added that “Biden family members and their companies began receiving incremental payments over a period of approximately three months” after Robinson Walker received the Chinese wire and that recipients of the money included Hallie Biden, companies associated with Hunter Biden and James Biden, and an unknown bank account identified only as “Biden.”
Comer said Hallie Biden received $10,000 from Robinson Walker on Feb. 13, 2017, before the Chinese wire payment, and $25,000 on March 20, 2017.
White House investigations spokesman Ian Sams accused Comer of “going after Beau’s widow” on Thursday but did not dispute the existence of the payments as the president had.
“The Oversight Committee is concerned about the national security implications resulting from President Biden’s family receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals,” Comer said Thursday. “We will continue to follow the money trail and facts to determine if President Biden is compromised by his family’s business schemes and if there is a national security threat.”
Joe Biden claimed during a 2020 debate with then-President Donald Trump that Hunter Biden had not made any money from Chinese business deals, saying, “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about — what are you talking about — China.” The Biden White House stood by that claim.
Influence peddling by the Bidens was revealed in photos and emails found on Hunter’s abandoned laptop. Hunter Biden’s laptop contained copious evidence that Joe Biden was complicit in his son’s influence peddling, noted the New York Post.
Biden also appears to have sold classified information to his foreign paymasters. In a New York Post column, Miranda Devine notes that “there are several clues on” on Hunter Biden’s abandoned “laptop that Hunter may have been selling classified information to his foreign paymasters.” She points to “uncharacteristically cogent email about Ukraine written by Hunter Biden in 2014,” that likely reflects his cribbing classified information.
Hunter Biden lived in Joe Biden’s Wilmington residence where classified documents were found. Hunter once claimed he paid $49,910 a month to live in that residence. On Twitter, some speculated that the huge alleged payment could have been a way for Hunter Biden to funnel money to his father.
At the Powerline blog, lawyer John Hinderaker noted that Hunter Biden “violated laws relating to the surreptitious filming and later dissemination of sexual acts. He did this with prostitutes, but also with others, like the nude photos of his sister in law, Hallie, his brother’s widow.”
As Hinderaker observed,
Hunter Biden’s daily preoccupations are (or were, until recently) crack cocaine and prostitutes. His most frequent communications were with crack dealers and pimps, lining up and paying for prostitutes. It goes on and on, day after day. Is there a drug dealer or a pimp on the East Coast, or in California, who is not on close personal terms with Hunter Biden?
The amount of money Hunter ran through was extraordinary. Where did he get it? Not through any legal and gainful employment, certainly. It is reasonable to assume that Hunter’s share of the Biden crime family’s loot went for crack and prostitutes. Follow the link for details: it went on day after day….In the course of his excesses, Hunter apparently violated laws relating to the surreptitious filming and later dissemination of sexual acts. He did this with prostitutes, but also with others, like the nude photos of his sister in law, Hallie, his brother’s widow. I can’t begin to convey the extent of Hunter’s depravity, as documented by him in photos, videos, texts and emails. If you are interested, follow the link. The sheer volume is overwhelming. Pretty much everything Hunter did was both appalling and illegal. He had a presence on porn sites, like Pornhub [where he uploaded videos of his acts such as one titled “Big Cock, Hand Job” that got 53,000 views by porn viewers]
Biden also made an employee of his “law firm” have sex with him to keep her job, which is illegal quid pro quo sexual harassment under Delaware civil rights law. He threatened to withhold her paycheck until she had sex with him. As Hinderaker observes, this “is reflected in his exchanges with a female employee to whom he paid many thousands of dollars. Her services were not primarily of a legal nature.” The New York Post confirms this in a story titled, “Hunter Biden paid assistant thousands off the books for filthy sex chats, texts show.”
As Hinderaker observes, this employee “had no apparent duties” other than servicing Hunter Biden. Her exchanges with Hunter and Hunter’s secretary illustrate this. As The Post reports, after she asked whether she had been terminated due to the fact that “she had not received her most recent paycheck and her dentist hadn’t accepted her Owasco insurance,” Hunter responded to her plea by explicitly demanding sexual favors, saying that he would pay her if she performed sexual acts, and that “the rule has to be no talk of anything but sex and we must be naked and we have to do whatever the other person asks within reason.”
As the Washington Examiner observed, there are “texts that show Biden explicitly extorting the woman for sexual services by withholding her pay.” As New York Mag noted, “the allegation of withholding pay for sex could be a big new problem for the president’s son, who is already in trouble. Last fall, federal investigators reportedly believed there was enough evidence to charge him with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun he had bought.”
Since Biden required that she engage in sex acts, even when they were likely to cause her offense or annoyance (like withholding her paycheck until she had sex) , and in some cases surreptitiously filmed and disseminated sexual acts with her without her consent, and in a way likely to cause her offense, alarm or annoyance if she found out, he violated Delaware’s criminal sexual harassment statute (2 DE Code § 763)
As Hinderaker notes, “Hunter had a torrid affair with his brother’s widow, Hallie. Hallie, perhaps knowing Hunter too well, refused to allow him to be alone with her 13-year-old daughter because Hunter’s behavior was ‘sexually inappropriate.’ Imagine that! Hunter bitterly resented this, and complained to, among others, Joe Biden, hoping to get access to the 13-year-old.”
UPDATE, August 7, 2023:
“Just how preferential is the Hunter Biden plea deal? The two prosecutors on Hunter’s case – Leo Wise and Derek Hines – demanded 12 months in a less egregious tax case back in 2018″ that involved a man whose unpaid taxes were tiny compared to Hunter Biden’s. Yet “they now recommend Hunter get probation,” notes a lawyer on Twitter:
Wise and Hines are have been called prosecutorial “terminators” They are described as hardliners who “pursue stern sentences and prosecute even small-time crooks.” Their reputation comes from bringing some of the biggest public corruption cases in Maryland history.
Wise helped bring the biggest racketeering case in Maryland history in 2016…..In 2018, these prosecutors charged a defendant with failing to file/pay taxes (26 USC 7203) – the same charges brought against Hunter Biden. The 2018 defendant only owed $60K. But Wise and Hines demanded 1 year in jail. (He got 10 months)
In the 2018 case – These prosecutors made sure the Court was informed of the particular details by which that defendant (1) failed to pay taxes and (2) used false deductions. Their filings were thorough and complete.
How things have changed. For Hunter Biden, where the tax loss is between $1.2 million and $1.6 million… Prosecutors Wise and Hines (with the OK from Main DOJ) demand Hunter receive probation.
These prosecutors, via an Exhibit to the plea, also agree that that Hunter “miscategorized” prostitutes and sex clubs as “legitimate business expenses. In doing so, they downplay an easily provable felony (26 USC 7206, also not charged) as a mere mistake.
And by (apparently) allowing Hunter Biden’s lawyers to draft plea documents, they omitted key facts underlying much of the uncharged conduct (deductions, etc.). Such deference was not seen in these prosecutors’ similar 2018 tax case.
Wise and Hines even agreed to the claim that Hunter received $1 million from Patrick Ho (a Chinese national convicted for bribery) “as a payment for legal fees” – without even thinking to question whether that payment was a bribe masked as legal fees.
In sum, the Hunter Biden deal just isn’t a departure for the DOJ – It is out of character for these public corruption prosecutors who earned their reputation as being tough on even minor offenders. And the comparison of the 2018 case to Hunter’s case proves the point.
As Eileen O’Connor explained in the Wall Street Journal, “You’d Go To Prison For What Hunter Biden Did: In reaching his plea deal, the Justice Department violated every norm in the tax-enforcement book” (O’Connor is the former head of the Justice Department’s Tax Division). She writes:
While the U.S. attorney for Delaware was negotiating for Hunter Biden to plead to two misdemeanor tax charges, other things were happening in neighboring New Jersey. Last week U.S. District Judge Stanley R. Chesler sentenced Gabriel M. Ferrari, owner of a Linden auto-repair shop, to one year and one day in prison after Mr. Ferrari pleaded guilty to filing a false company tax return. His return failed to include all his income and claimed deductions for personal expenses, including gambling on horse races. In addition to the prison term, he will be required to pay restitution.
Prison for tax crimes is real. In the 1990s, New York hotelier Leona Helmsley served nearly two years in prison for defrauding the government by having her business pay her personal expenses and claim tax deductions for them.
According to sworn and transcribed testimony that Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers provided to the House Ways and Means Committee and confirmed at last week’s House Oversight Committee hearing, the IRS investigation of Hunter Biden began “as an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform.” Agents established that, for the six years 2014 through 2019, Mr. Biden failed to report or pay tax on perhaps $17.3 million he received from questionable sources. He filed returns several years late, and when he did file them, he claimed as business deductions the cost of his drug dealer’s hotel room, call girls, sex-club dues and his daughter’s tuition at Columbia University.
What has been called Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal, however, wasn’t the subject of the House Oversight Committee’s July 19 hearing, where the two whistleblowers testified. Instead, lawmakers intended to explore ways in which the IRS special agents said the Justice Department had thwarted their probe and violated law-enforcement norms—among them:• Denying permission to execute search warrants for which prosecutors agreed probable cause had been established, including the guest house Hunter Biden had occupied at President Biden’s Delaware home and the storage facility in Virginia where he reportedly had moved records of the numerous entities he had likely used to receive income from various sources.• Stalling investigative steps on account of an upcoming election six months away, whereas the Justice Department tradition is to refrain from indicting or taking overt investigative steps for only 60 days preceding an election.• Alerting the attorneys for the subject of the investigation that a search warrant would be executed to obtain documents and other evidence.• Denying authority to interview essential witnesses, including family members and business associates, including those who could shed light on the meaning of “10% held by H for the big guy.”Looked at with the full picture in mind, it is difficult not to wonder if those lines of investigation would have found evidence that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s apparent shakedowns of foreign governments and entities….Democrats on the Oversight Committee accused the witnesses of being overly enthusiastic about bringing criminal charges, and cited testimony that IRS criminal tax attorneys often disagreed with their prosecution recommendations. That’s irrelevant. IRS criminal tax lawyers’ timidity about recommending prosecution is common knowledge in the tax-enforcement community. Further, their views are advisory only. Officials in the Justice Department’s Tax Division decide whether to authorize bringing criminal charges. They did.The Special Agent Report was sent to the Tax Division in February 2021. It was more than 1,000 pages long, describing each element of each alleged crime for each year, each piece of the evidence supporting each element, and the venue in which those charges could be brought. More than a year after the Tax Division received the report, it produced a 99-page memorandum supporting the recommended charges, six felonies and five misdemeanors. Each of these charges can carry prison time, some of them as long as five years.Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley testified that Mr. Weiss told the prosecution team he then approached the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia about filing the 2014 and 2015 charges there and was rebuffed. Notwithstanding that Hunter Biden’s attorneys had extended the statute of limitations several times and would have again, Mr. Weiss let it expire.
For the government to permit the statute of limitations to expire is unheard of. When a taxpayer refuses a government request to extend the statute of limitations, the government goes ahead and brings the charges. According to the whistleblowers, that couldn’t happen here because, contrary to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s sworn statements to Congress, Mr. Weiss lacked the authority to bring charges in the District of Columbia.
For many years, it has been Justice Department policy to charge the most serious offense that can be proven. Mr. Garland changed that policy in December 2022. The Tax Division Manual, however, still provides that prosecutors are specifically prohibited from permitting a defendant to plead to a misdemeanor when the elements of a felony can be proven. Yet according to the whistleblowers’ accounts, that is what is happening here.
