Hunter Biden Indicted on Felony Charges Alleging Years of Tax Evasion
LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles grand jury indicted Hunter Biden on tax charges Thursday. The nine-count indictment alleges Biden failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes over four years.
The Los Angeles indictment follows similar tax evasion charges this year in Delaware. Biden also is charged with a felony for allegedly lying on an application for gun ownership about his history of drug addiction.
The announcement of the charges came a day after Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee repeatedly claimed the Justice Department avoided vigorous prosecution of the president’s son.
Two Internal Revenue Service employees told the committee on Wednesday that anyone else accused of what Biden is accused of doing would have faced felony charges.
Biden was charged only with misdemeanors.
The employees, identified as whistleblowers, claim the IRS was pressured to go easy on the president’s son.
Republicans are using the accusations of special treatment as one of the bases for a vote planned in the House of Representatives for next week on whether to begin an impeachment inquiry into the president.
The president also is accused of using his influence to enrich his family, such as by helping his son gain a well-paid board membership with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
The president said during a press conference this week that Republican accusations against him are “a bunch of lies.”
The indictment Thursday showed no evidence of special treatment.
Biden is charged with three felonies and six misdemeanors, largely for allegedly hiding money he earned from his Ukrainian and Chinese business interests. The charges in California could bring him as much as 17 years in prison.
Evidence presented by prosecutors indicates he used much of the income on a lavish lifestyle, such as on prostitutes, illegal drugs, clothes and luxury hotels. “In short, everything but his taxes,” the indictment says.
From 2016 through 2019, prosecutors say Biden received an income of more than $7 million. In addition to the foreign business, the income came from a publishing contract for his memoir “Beautiful Things.”
He paid about $383,000 to women for personal services in 2018, according to prosecutors. He spent about $151,00 on clothes and accessories the same year.
Prosecutors say there was no doubt Biden had the money to pay the taxes but instead, he used a dummy corporation to make it easier to hide his income sources.
The corporation, called Owasco PC, hired a payroll service to pay the president’s son a salary while withholding money due for taxes, according to the indictment.
Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement, “Based on the facts and the law, if Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought.
“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.”
For the Delaware tax and gun case, Biden was prepared to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges that would result in no jail time. The plea deal fell apart when a judge refused to accept it over what appeared to be a misinterpretation of the arrangement with prosecutors.
The gun charge continues but the status of the misdemeanor tax charges remains uncertain. Biden pleaded not guilty Oct. 3 in the gun case.
The case is U.S. v. Robert Hunter Biden in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
You can reach us at [email protected] and follow us on Facebook and Twitter
