October 6, 2022
Federal agents have evidence to charge Hunter Biden: report
by Samuel Chamberlain, Miranda Devine and Emily Crane
NYPost.com
Federal agents investigating Hunter Biden believe they have for months had enough evidence to charge the first son with tax crimes — as well as for lying about his drug abuse so he could buy a gun, a new report revealed Thursday.
The final decision on whether to bring a case against the 52-year-old son of President Biden will be made by Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who was appointed to his current post by former President Donald Trump.
The Washington Post, citing people familiar with the investigation, reported that agents had determined months ago that they had assembled a viable criminal case against Hunter Biden.
The newspaper reported that the investigation, which started by focusing on Hunter’s overseas business dealings revealed in a series of reports by The Post in the fall of 2020, has shifted to whether he reported all his income from foreign transactions.
Hunter Biden himself announced in December of 2020 that his “tax affairs” were being investigated by federal authorities in Delaware, and said he was “confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.”
At some point after that announcement, the first son paid off a tax bill totaling around $2 million. Sources told The Post that Kevin Morris, a big-shot Hollywood lawyer, had loaned the money to defray the debt.
Hunter Biden with dad Joe Biden.
The probe kicked off in 2018, when investigators started looking at whether Hunter and his business associates violated various tax and money laundering laws during their dealings in China and other countries. Emails and other records related to the deals were found on a laptop Hunter dropped off at a Delaware repair shop in 2019 and never reclaimed.
Federal agents probing Hunter Biden believe they have gathered enough evidence to charge the first son with tax crimes as well as a false statement related to a gun purchase.
Meanwhile, questions surrounding Hunter’s gun purchase surfaced after Delaware State Police and the FBI launched an investigation in late 2018 following a bizarre incident involving him and his sister-in-law-turned-lover, Hallie Biden.
According to a Politico report last year, Hallie took her then-partner’s gun and tossed it into a trash can across from a high school because she feared he was going to kill himself.
Hallie reported the gun missing after she returned to retrieve it, but found it had already vanished.
As cops were probing whether the gun had been used in any crimes after it went missing, Secret Service agents reportedly tried to intervene and contacted the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork that recorded the sale.
The store owner, Ron Palmieri, eventually handed over the sale information to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.
A copy of the Oct. 12, 2018 gun transaction form subsequently revealed that Hunter had answered “no” to the question asking, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
Hunter had been discharged from the Navy Reserve five years earlier after testing positive for cocaine and admitted in his own memoir released last year that he was addicted to crack around the time he bought the gun.
Lying on a federal gun purchase form is a felony.
Rapper Kodak Black was sentenced to three years in federal prison in Florida in 2019 for falsifying information on federal forms to buy four guns at a Miami store.
Delaware US Attorney David Weis will make the final decision on whether to bring a case against Biden.
In a written statement to the Washington Post on Thursday, Hunter Biden attorney Chris Clark accused investigators of leaking information from ongoing grand jury proceedings.
“It is a federal felony for a federal agent to leak information about a Grand Jury investigation such as this one,” Clark said. “Any agent you cite as a source in your article apparently has committed such a felony. We expect the Department of Justice will diligently investigate and prosecute such bad actors. As is proper and legally required, we believe the prosecutors in this case are diligently and thoroughly weighing not just evidence provided by agents, but also all the other witnesses in this case, including witnesses for the defense. That is the job of the prosecutors. They should not be pressured, rushed, or criticized for doing their job.”
Earlier this year, the grand jury heard from a witness who was asked to identify the “big guy” referenced in one of the first son’s business deals.
A former Hunter business partner, Tony Bobulinski, has claimed that “the big guy” is Joe
A former Hunter business partner, Tony Bobulinski, has identified “the big guy” as Joe Biden.
“I have heard Joe Biden say he has never discussed his dealings with Hunter. That is false,” Bobulinski told reporters at a press confrence prior to the second presidential debate between Biden and Donald Trump in 2020.
James Gilliar, another former business partner of Hunter Biden, referred to Joe Biden as “the Big Guy” in a message on Oct. 14, 2020, the same day The Post broke news of the laptop’s existence
Separately, it emerged earlier this week that Bobulinski’s 2020 interview with the FBI was interrupted by a phone call from Joe Biden’s brother, Jim Biden.
Hunter Biden announced in 2020 that his “tax affairs” were being investigated by federal authorities in Delaware.
The missed call came as Bobulinski was telling the feds that Biden, then a presidential candidate, stood to earn a 10% cut of Hunter and Jim’s lucrative joint venture with Chinese energy firm CEFC.
While Joe Biden has repeatedly insisted that he has “never spoken” with his son Hunter about “his overseas business dealings,” a survey of Biden’s activities while vice president suggests that was not the case.
In 2015, for example, Joe and Hunter Biden attended a DC dinner whose guest list included Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, according to records from a laptop that formerly belonged to Hunter Biden and were obtained by The Post.
All this could spell trouble for the White House, with Republicans vowing to aggressively pursue investigations of Joe Biden’s link to his family’s consulting businesses if they retake control of one or both chambers in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
Meanwhile, text messages uncovered from the laptop also indicated that Hunter frequently covered his family’s expenses — and gave as much as 50% of his earnings to his father.
“I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years,” Hunter raged to his daughter Naomi in January 2019. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
The laptop doesn’t contain any direct evidence of such money transfers, but shows Hunter was routinely on the hook for household expenses, including repairs to the elder Biden’s home in Wilmington, Del.
http://nypost.com/2022/10/06/federal-agents-have-evidence-to-charge-hunter-biden-report/
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