The special counsel investigating Hunter Biden, the president’s son, charged him on nine counts related to his failure to pay federal taxes on millions of dollars of income.
A federal grand jury in the Central District of California returned the indictment charging Hunter Biden with three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses.
The charges stem from special counsel David Weiss’ long-running investigation into the president’s son.
The indictment alleges that from tax years 2016 through 2019, Hunter Biden didn’t pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes, and that he filed false returns for tax year 2018 in order to evade the assessment of taxes. The indictment alleges that the president’s son “subverted the payroll and tax withholding process of his own company by withdrawing millions outside of the payroll and tax withholding process; spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills; in 2018, stopped paying his outstanding and overdue taxes for tax year 2015; willfully failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 taxes on time, despite having access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes; willfully failed to file his 2017 and 2018 tax returns, on time; and when he did finally file his 2018 returns, included false business deductions in order to reduce the very substantial tax liability he faced as of February 2020.”
If convicted, Hunter Biden faces a maximum penalty of 17 years in prison, though actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties.
Thursday’s development comes months after a plea deal with prosecutors – in which the president’s son agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor offenses related to his filing of federal income taxes and enter a pretrial diversion agreement related to a felony firearm offense in order to avoid prosecution – fell apart. At the time, the judge in the case demanded that the lawyers from both sides make clear that the deal does not convey broad immunity offered to Biden from prosecution on his business dealings. Hunter Biden subsequently pleaded not guilty to the two misdemeanor offenses related to his filing of federal income taxes. That previous indictment alleges that Hunter Biden did not pay federal income taxes for either 2017 or 2018, despite owing more than $100,000 in taxes each year.
Granting the awkwardness of the usual convention of referring to Hunter Biden as “Biden” on second and subsequent mention, the substitution “the president’s son” over and over is rather jarring.
The previous plea deal was absurdly generous, given the grossness of the violations. This is tax fraud, pure and simple, and on a rather large scale. Not only was the amount of undeclared income quite large but he went through significant machinations to cover his tracks.
At the same time, one wonders how much effort federal authorities would have expended on uncovering these crimes were he Hunter Smith. We’ve seen time and again that the appointment of a special prosecutor/counsel, while obviously useful to insulate the investigation from politics and as a demonstration that no one is above the law, amounts to an incredibly well-funded fishing expedition.
That this will doubtless be used as a cudgel against Joe Biden in the 2024 campaign is unfortunate. And rather rich given the wanton disregard his likely opponent had for the rule of law during his presidency.
