“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.
