US District Judge Marc Scarsi in Los Angeles rejected Hunter Biden's request to dismiss tax charges accusing him of a four-year scheme to avoid paying $1.4 million in taxes while living an extravagant lifestyle. Hunter Biden, 54, has pleaded not guilty to the charges and faces a trial tentatively scheduled to begin on June 20. He also faces a separate criminal case in federal court in Delaware over his alleged purchase of a handgun while using illegal drugs.
Hunter Biden is set to argue in federal court to dismiss tax charges, claiming they are politically driven as prosecutors allegedly succumbed to pressure from Republican lawmakers. Special counsel David Weiss brought nine tax-related charges against him, accusing him of evading over $1.4 million in taxes to fund a lavish lifestyle. Biden pleaded not guilty, and his legal team, led by Abbe Lowell, asserts that the charges are unfairly motivated by politics.
A federal judge expressed skepticism towards Hunter Biden's arguments for dismissing tax charges, citing a failed plea deal that didn't fully kick in due to missing signatures. Hunter's lawyers are accused of resorting to attacking prosecutors due to lack of evidence. Special Counsel David Weiss is involved in ongoing legal battles over tax evasion charges against President Joe Biden's son.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, is set to go on trial on 3 June for illegally owning a handgun and allegedly lying about drug use during its purchase in 2018. He could be imprisoned for 25 years if found guilty of the federal charges. Biden's lawyer anticipates the case could be dismissed before the trial begins. The trial will take place in Delaware, where his father was a senator for over 35 years. He also faces separate tax charges and another trial in California for tax crimes. Republicans in Congress are also investigating Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president's brother.
Hunter Biden was seen at the White House Easter Egg Roll amidst House Republicans considering criminal referrals against him and President Biden. Hunter faces federal trials for tax fraud and gun crimes, with alleged involvement in corruption inquiries. Recent events include attending his father's fundraisers amid transparency criticism over visitor log omissions. Republicans focus on alleged influence-peddling involving foreign partners. Hunter's lifestyle allegedly funded by a Hollywood lawyer raises concerns of illicit campaign contributions. President Biden denies involvement in relatives' dealings amidst ongoing impeachment inquiries.
Republican James Comer, leading the investigation, announced a public hearing following Hunter Biden's six-hour deposition that revealed discrepancies about Joe Biden's role in his son's controversial business dealings. The deposition, which proved some evidence, aims to clear up conflicting statements made by associates. Hunter's attorney denied any evidence of financial transactions involving Joe Biden and Hunter.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee invited President Biden to testify publicly on April 16 as part of the impeachment inquiry. Rep. James Comer cited testimony from Hunter Biden's former business associates and highlighted discrepancies in Biden's statements. The inquiry focuses on allegations of the president's involvement in his family's foreign business deals, but lacks evidence of impeachable offenses. The White House dismissed the invitation as a "sad stunt." Hunter Biden previously declined to testify, asserting his father's non-involvement in his business deals.
Robert Hunter Biden (born February 4, 1970) is an American attorney and businessman. Biden has also worked as a hedge fund principal and a venture capital and private equity fund investor. He formerly worked as a banker, a lobbyist, and a legal representative for lobbying firms.Biden is the second son of U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. In 1972, when Biden was two years old, a car crash killed his mother, who was driving, and his one-year-old sister, Naomi, and seriously injured both him and his older brother, Beau. In his memoir, Beautiful Things, Biden wrote of his struggles with drug and alcohol abuse, which escalated after Beau's 2015 death from brain cancer. He was discharged from the U.S. Navy Reserve shortly after his commissioning, due to a failed drug test.Biden was a founding board member of BHR Partners, a Chinese investment company, in 2013. He served on the board of Burisma Holdings, one of the largest private natural gas producers in Ukraine, from 2014 until his term expired in April 2019. Since early 2019, Hunter and his father have been the subjects of allegations of corrupt activities concerning Ukraine. The accusations concern Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine and Joe Biden's anti-corruption efforts there.The New York Post published an article in October 2020 about a laptop computer that had belonged to Hunter Biden. The laptop supposedly contained about 129,000 emails and other materials, but the Post provided no evidence of the chain of custody or authenticity of the device. Other media outlets declined to publish the story, because of that lack of provenance. In March 2022, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that some of the emails found on the computer were authentic. Some of the Bidens' detractors have said that the laptop contents exposed corruption by Hunter's father but no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Joe Biden has been found. Subsequently, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hunter Biden had abandoned his Apple laptop computer in a repair shop in Delaware in 2019, but that files circulating online were "purportedly" from the laptop rather than confirmed to be.Biden's tax affairs have been under federal criminal investigation since late 2018. On July 26, 2023, Biden pled not guilty to tax charges for filing two years of his tax returns late. This is a reversal of his prior, guilty plea on June 20, 2023. At that time, he had also admitted to "illegally owning a gun while a drug user" because he knowingly denied drug use when applying for a gun purchase permit. On September 14, 2023, Biden was indicted by a special counsel in Delaware on three federal firearms-related charges, in particular possessing an unloaded pistol for 11 days. On December 7, 2023, the special counsel indicted Biden on nine additional counts, all tax-related charges including tax evasion. On January 11, 2024, Biden pleaded not guilty to all tax evasion charges in a Los Angeles federal courthouse. He is scheduled to face trial on June 20, 2024.
The House Judiciary Committee is taking legal action against DOJ officials Mark Daly and Jack Morgan to enforce subpoenas related to the Hunter Biden tax investigation, as part of the broader House impeachment inquiry into President Biden. The lawsuit aims to question Daly and Morgan about their initial decisions not to prosecute Hunter Biden for the 2014 and 2015 tax years, and if they were influenced by external pressures. IRS whistleblowers believe Hunter Biden's indictment is a validation of the investigation.
During the impeachment hearing, Hunter Biden's former business partners, Jason Galanis and Tony Bobulinski, will testify - with Galanis giving video testimony from prison. Former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas will also testify. Parnas previously worked with Giuliani to influence Ukrainian officials regarding the Biden family. The GOP Chairman James Comer dismissed Parnas as a 'distraction witness' and stated that the Biden family did not provide any work product. Republicans are seeking evidence of Joe Biden's involvement. Galanis will testify remotely from prison for defrauding a Native American tribe.
Progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grilled Hunter Biden's ex-associate Tony Bobulinski at an impeachment hearing, questioning him about President Joe Biden's alleged crimes, including RICO violations and financial corruption related to his son Hunter. Bobulinski claimed to have witnessed these crimes, but AOC insisted that RICO is a category of crimes and not a specific crime. The exchange became heated as Bobulinski tried to explain the nuances of corruption statutes to AOC.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer invited Hunter Biden, Tony Bobulinski, Devon Archer, and Jason Galanis to testify at a public hearing regarding alleged influence peddling and the Biden family's business dealings. Biden's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, sent a letter rejecting the invitation, calling the hearing a 'carnival side show'. Lowell cited scheduling conflicts and criticized the investigation, stating it was an attempt to 'throw a Hail Mary pass after the game has ended'.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, previously leading efforts to impeach President Biden, now plans to issue criminal referrals instead. Comer cites lack of support among centrist Democrats and challenges in the House, aiming for Department of Justice action once President Trump potentially returns to power. Recent House hearings showcased testimonies from individuals linked to Hunter Biden's business dealings, sparking contentious exchanges with Democrats like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez questioning the impeachment inquiry's integrity.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky, leads the House Oversight Committee's public hearing on the Biden impeachment inquiry, highlighting the lack of credible evidence of the Bidens providing work product. Former business associates of Hunter Biden are set to testify, with Comer emphasizing the Biden family's focus on personal enrichment through political connections. Testimonies from individuals like Tony Bobulinski shed light on the Bidens' business dealings, including promises to resolve foreign partners' issues through political influence.
House Republicans are struggling with a divided majority as they lack the votes to impeach President Joe Biden. Instead of impeachment, they are considering sending criminal referrals to the Department of Justice. The investigation, centered around Hunter Biden, has not yielded the evidence Republicans hoped for, leading to uncertainties on how to conclude the probe. Some Republicans see the criminal referrals as a potential strategy for a future President Trump to revisit the case. However, the decision on criminal referrals is still pending as discussions continue among key Republican figures.
In October 2020, a controversy arose involving data from a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden. The owner of a Delaware computer shop, John Paul Mac Isaac, said that the laptop had been left by a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden. Mac Isaac also stated that he is legally blind and could not be sure whether the man was actually Hunter Biden. Three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election, the New York Post published a front-page story that presented emails from the laptop, alleging they showed corruption by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. According to the New York Post, the story was based on information provided to Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of incumbent president and candidate Donald Trump, by Mac Isaac. Forensic analysis later authenticated some of the emails from the laptop, including one of the two emails used by the Post in their initial reporting.Trump attempted to turn the story into an October surprise to hurt Joe Biden's campaign by falsely alleging that while in office Biden had acted corruptly regarding Ukraine to protect his son. The hard drive data had been shared with the FBI and Republican operatives such as Trump advisor Steve Bannon before it became publicly known. In December 2019, under the authority of a subpoena issued by a Wilmington grand jury, the FBI seized the laptop from Mac Isaac.PolitiFact wrote in June 2021 that, while "over time, there has been less doubt that the laptop did in fact belong to Hunter Biden", the laptop "was real in the sense that it exists, but it didn't prove much", as "[n]othing from the laptop has revealed illegal or unethical behavior by Joe Biden as vice president with regard to his son's tenure as a director for Burisma".In November 2022, CBS News published a forensic analysis it commissioned, which examined a "clean" copy of the data obtained directly from the repair shop operator. That analysis concluded that the "clean" data, including over 120,000 emails, originated with Hunter Biden and had not been altered, contrasting that to other copies circulated by Republican operatives, which "could have been tampered with". The Washington Post reported that experts at their request had authenticated a number of emails, including one that was the subject of the New York Post reporting. The drive analyzed for The Washington Post lacked a clear chain of custody, and was considered "a mess" and "a disaster" from a forensic standpoint by the two analysts. It contains emails marked to and from Hunter Biden and other digital files relating to him.Two forensic analysts who independently examined the data for The Washington Post authenticated 1,828 and 22,000 emails, respectively, of the almost 129,000 emails on the hard drive in 2022. Neither analyst could verify the vast majority of the data, nor could they find clear evidence of tampering but they note "key pieces of evidence useful in discovering tampering were not available." In some cases, The Post matched content to other sources "that the experts were not able to assess". The unverifiable emails included some prominently reported previously by other news outlets. The analysis found that people other than Hunter Biden had created six new folders on the drive over a week after the original report by the New York Post and months after the laptop had been taken into FBI custody. It also found that data had been accessed and copied off the drive by people other than Hunter Biden over the course of nearly three years.Despite persistent allegations that the laptop contents indicated corruption by Joe Biden, a joint investigation by two Republican Senate committees released in September 2020 did not find wrongdoing by him, nor did a Republican House Oversight committee investigation by November 2023.
President Biden failed to acknowledge his fifth granddaughter, Navy Joan Roberts, daughter of his son Hunter Biden, during a Women's History Month reception at the White House. Biden has repeatedly claimed to have only six grandchildren, omitting Navy, who was born out of wedlock in 2018. Hunter Biden and Navy's mother, Lunden Roberts, have worked to foster a relationship in the best interests of their daughter. Biden's recent lapse in memory has been evident in other instances as well, raising concerns about his cognitive health.
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