The government’s case against Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, just ratcheted up a notch, with Special Counsel David Weiss bringing a second case against Hunter that spans nine charges related to taxes, specifically Hunter Biden’s failure to pay them as he was supposed to in 2016 through 2019.
According to the case filed by Special Counsel Weiss’s team, which charged Hunter with charges including failure to file and pay taxes, evasion of assessment, and false or fraudulent tax return, he “engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million” in taxes owed from 2016 through 2019. Further, prosecutors allege that, when he did pay his taxes in 2018, he included “false business deductions in order to evade assessment of taxes to reduce the substantial tax liabilities he faced.”
Continuing, the prosecutors charging him allege that he withdrew millions of dollars from his company outside of its payroll and tax withholding procedures so that he could dodge paying taxes on or reporting that income. Three of the charges Hunter is facing are felony charges, and the remaining six are misdemeanors.
Describing on what items Hunter is alleged to have spent his money instead of paying his taxes, the prosecutors also allege, “Between 2016 and October 15, 2020, the Defendant spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes.”
Hunter’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, released a statement on the matter, saying, “First, U.S. Attorney Weiss bowed to Republican pressure to file unprecedented and unconstitutional gun charges to renege on a non-prosecution resolution. Now, after five years of investigating with no new evidence – and two years after Hunter paid his taxes in full – the U.S. Attorney has piled on nine new charges when he had agreed just months ago to resolve this matter with a pair of misdemeanors.”
On the other side of things, Rep. James Comer said, when commenting on the charges, “The Department of Justice got caught in its attempt to give Hunter Biden an unprecedented sweetheart plea deal. Every American should applaud these men for their courage to expose the truth.” He continued, “Unless U.S. Attorney Weiss investigates everyone involved in the Bidens’ fraud schemes and influence peddling, it will be clear President Biden’s DOJ is protecting Hunter Biden and the big guy.”
These latest charges follow a federal gun law case brought against Hunter in September. Then, Hunter was charged with three crimes in connection with a firearm he purchased in October of 2018, when he is alleged to have lied on the application to purchase a handgun and say he was clean of drugs, though in his memoir he says he was addicted to crack cocaine at the time.
Originally, both the tax charges and gun charges were going to be handled by a plea deal. However, it fell apart in August when the US District Judge, Judge Maryellen Noreika, expressed concern about and questioned the limits of Hunter’s immunity under the plea deal.
Featured image credit: By Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States – 210120-D-WD757-2097, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99135585
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