A Los Angeles grand jury indicted Hunter Biden in nine new tax charges, including three felony counts and six misdemeanors, for allegedly not paying $1.4 million in federal taxes.
“The Defendant engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019, from in or about January 2017 through in or about October 15, 2020, and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns in or about February 2020,” according to the indictment from Special Counsel David Weiss.
The charges include failure to file and pay taxes, evasion of assessment, and filing a fraudulent form.
“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,” wrote Weiss.
The prosecution brought receipts that show Hunter had enough money from 2016 to 2019 to pay his taxes.
“The Defendant had a legal obligation to pay taxes on all his income, including income earned in Ukraine from his service on Burisma’s Board, fees generated by deal-making with the Chinese private equity fund, as well as income derived from his work as a lawyer and other sources,” continued Weiss.
Weiss also shot down Hunter using his drug and alcohol problems as excuses for not paying his taxes:
Notably, in 2020, well after he had regained his sobriety, and when he finally filed his outstanding 2016, 2017, and 2018 Forms 1040, the Defendant did not direct any payments toward his tax liabilities for each of those years. At the same time, the Defendant spent large sums to maintain his lifestyle from January through October 15, 2020. In that period, he received financial support from Personal Friend totaling approximately $1.2 million. The financial support included hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments for, among other things, housing, media relations, accountants, lawyers, and his Porsche. For example, the Defendant spent $17,500 each month, totaling approximately $200,000 from January through October 15, 2020, on a lavish house on a canal in Venice Beach, California. Thus, the Defendant’s practice of tax non-compliance in the 2017 and 2018 tax years — where the IRS stood as the last creditor to be paid — persisted into later tax years.
Over the summer, Hunter planned to take a sweetheart plea deal by pleading guilty “to two misdemeanor tax charges and avoid prosecution on a separate gun charge related to his 2018 purchase of a firearm.”
It’s no wonder because the deal included blanket immunity from any future charges.
The judge would not sign off on the deal:
US District Judge Maryellen Noreika called the deal federal prosecutors reached with Hunter Biden for his gun possession offense “unusual.”She said the deal — in which Biden would enter the diversion program to resolve the charge — contains some “non-standard terms,” such as “broad immunity” from other potential charges.“We don’t usually make diversion agreements public,” the judge said, referring to the move by the parties to make that aspect of their agreement public and discuss it in open court.
Biden decided to plead not guilty to the three felony charges “when indicted in Delaware on charges he lied about his drug use when he purchased the gun.”
After the plea deal collapsed, the prosecutors made it known that they would pursue the tax charges in California, where Hunter lived during the time of the alleged crimes.
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