Hunter Biden was indicted on nine tax charges in California on Thursday as a special counsel investigation into the business dealings of President Joe Biden\u2019s son intensifies against the backdrop of the looming 2024 election. The new charges \u2013 three felonies and six misdemeanours \u2013 are in addition to federal firearms charges in Delaware alleging Hunter Biden broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018. They come after the implosion of a plea deal over the summer that would have spared him jail time.<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden \u201cspent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills,\u201d special counsel David Weiss said in a statement. The charges are centred on at least USD 1.4 million in taxes Hunter Biden owed between 2016 and 2019, a period where he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. The back taxes have since been paid. If convicted, Hunter Biden could face up to 17 years in prison. The special counsel probe remains open, Weiss said. In a fiery response, defence attorney Abbe Lowell accused Weiss of \u201cbowing to Republican pressure\u201d in the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the facts and the law, if Hunter\u2019s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought,\u201d Lowell said in a statement. The White House declined to comment on Thursday\u2019s indictment, referring questions to the Justice Department or Hunter Biden\u2019s personal representatives. The charging documents filed in California, where he lives, details spending on everything from drugs and girlfriends to luxury hotels and exotic cars, \u201cin short, everything but his taxes,\u201d prosecutor Leo Wise wrote.<\/p>\n
The indictment comes as congressional Republicans pursue an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, claiming he was engaged in an influence-peddling scheme with his son. The House is expected to vote next week on formally authorizing the inquiry. No evidence has emerged so far to prove that Joe Biden, in his current or previous office, abused his role or accepted bribes, though questions have arisen about the ethics surrounding the Biden family\u2019s international business.<\/p>\n
The criminal investigation led by Weiss has been open since 2018, and was expected to wind down with the plea deal that Hunter Biden had planned to strike with prosecutors over the summer. He would have pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax evasion charges and would have entered a separate agreement on the gun charge, getting two years of probation rather than jail time. It was pilloried as a \u201csweetheart deal\u201d by Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, who is facing criminal charges in multiple cases.<\/p>\n
The agreement also contained immunity provisions, and defence attorneys have argued that they remain in force since that part of the agreement was signed by a prosecutor before the deal was scrapped. Prosecutors disagree, pointing out the documents weren\u2019t signed by a judge and are invalid. After the deal fell apart, prosecutors filed three federal gun charges alleging that Hunter Biden had lied about his drug use to buy a gun that he kept for 11 days in 2018. Federal law bans gun possession by \u201chabitual drug users,\u201d though the measure is seldom seen as a stand-alone charge and has been called into question by a federal appeals court.<\/p>\n
The defence is planning to push next week for dismissal of the \u201cunprecedented and unconstitutional\u201d gun charges, Lowell said. Hunter Biden\u2019s longstanding struggle with substance abuse had worsened during that period after the death of his brother Beau Biden in 2015, prosecutors wrote in a draft plea agreement filed in court in Delaware. He still made \u201csubstantial income\u201d in 2017 and 2018, including $2.6 million in business and consulting fees from a company he formed with the CEOs of a Chinese business conglomerate and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, but did not pay his taxes on a total of about $4 million in personal income during that period, prosecutors said in the scuttled Delaware plea agreement.<\/p>\n
He did eventually file his taxes in 2020 and the back taxes were paid by a \u201cthird party\u201d the following year, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hunter Biden was indicted on nine tax charges in California on Thursday as a special counsel investigation into the business\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":16468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[4620,757,1336,177,4619,483,469,95],"class_list":["post-16467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-drug-abuse","tag-guns","tag-hunter-biden","tag-taxes","tag-testify","tag-ukraine","tag-us-president-joe-biden","tag-usa"],"reading_time":"4 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}