Various media outlets, including Fox News, are reporting that the president’s son, Hunter Biden, will be indicted on Friday in federal district court in California.
We do not yet have reporting about the precise charges. Nevertheless, we have to assume they will be tax felonies.
Between the testimony of IRS whistleblower agents and the revelations attendant to the failed sweetheart plea deal several weeks ago, we have learned that (a) the prosecutor, Delaware U.S. attorney David Weiss, told investigators he could not indict Hunter in the two districts where there was venue for tax offenses — Washington, D.C., and the Central District of California (Los Angeles) — because he was not getting cooperation from Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in those districts.
As I have explained, that is a ridiculous story: The attorney general — not district U.S. attorneys — runs the Justice Department, and tax charges must be approved by Main Justice (which is run by Biden political appointees and answers to the AG). If Biden-appointed AG Merrick Garland had been willing to permit the indictment of the president’s son, he would have ordered reluctant, Biden-appointed district U.S. attorneys to cooperate with Weiss. Obviously, Weiss did not want to indict Hunter and used the pretext of opposition from Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys to try to persuade disappointed investigators — who had worked five years on the case and believed Hunter was getting preferential treatment — that his hands were tied. Unpersuaded, some of them threw up their hands and became whistleblowers, revealing the unsavory details to Congress.
All that said, we can glean from that episode that felony tax charges were on the table for Hunter for tax years between 2014 and 2019. Because of where Hunter was living and working in those time periods, venue lay in Washington in the earlier years and Los Angeles in the later years.
As we’ve repeatedly noted, before trying but failing to disappear the case through a sweetheart plea to misdemeanor tax charges, Weiss dragged his feet so long that the statute of limitations (six years for tax evasion) lapsed on the earlier years. What’s left, then, are the later years, when Hunter was living in California. Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that any indictment would involve tax-evasion charges for those years (probably 2018 and 2019).
Nevertheless, we simply won’t know until we see the indictment, assuming the reports of its imminence are true.
I’d add an observation about the curious timing of the indictment. Weiss could have charged Hunter Biden with tax-evasion charges anytime during the past several months or years. He has chosen to indict him on December 8, when Hunter is under subpoena to be deposed by the House impeachment inquiry on December 12. Hunter already had a live Fifth Amendment privilege to refuse to answer questions (as I explained in a recent post) because (a) he was under indictment in Delaware federal court on gun charges, and (b) the Justice Department had indicated that its investigation of potential tax and other charges was continuing. But obviously, a new indictment just a few days prior to the House deposition gives Hunter and his counsel added reason to tell the public that he couldn’t possibly be expected to testify because, as they’ll spin it, Republicans have pressured the Justice Department into indicting him again.
Hunter Biden to Be Indicted in California
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08.12.2023
Various media outlets, including Fox News, are reporting that the president’s son, Hunter Biden, will be indicted on Friday in federal district court in California.
We do not yet have reporting about the precise charges. Nevertheless, we have to assume they will be tax felonies.
Between the testimony of IRS whistleblower agents and the revelations attendant to the failed sweetheart plea deal several weeks ago, we have learned that (a) the prosecutor, Delaware U.S. attorney David Weiss, told investigators he could not indict Hunter in the two districts where there was venue for tax offenses — Washington, D.C., and the Central District of California (Los Angeles) — because he was not getting cooperation from Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in those districts.
As I have explained, that is a ridiculous story: The attorney general........
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