Hunter Biden Indicted In LA Over Federal Tax Charges

Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, was indicted on several federal tax charges in Los Angeles on Thursday, resulting in the second major criminal indictment since September, when he was brought to court in Delaware over federal gun charges.

According to the indictment, nine counts have been pressed upon Hunter Biden, including failing to pay federal taxes from 2016 to 2019, tax evasion, and filing false tax returns in 2018. Three of the counts against Biden are felonies, with the rest being misdemeanors. In total, Biden stands accused of not paying a grand total of $1.4 million in taxes during this time despite evidence that he had spent millions on maintaining a luxurious lifestyle. If convicted, Biden faces up to 17 years in prison.

“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,” said the indictment, which was filed at the U.S. District Court, Central District of California in Los Angeles. “Instead, the defendant spent huge sums on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, including over $70,000 on drug rehabilitation.”

The indictment further stressed how much Biden made while not filing during this period of time. Between 2016 and 2020, federal prosecutors found that Biden made more than $7 million through his jobs, which including sitting on the board of a Chinese equity firm, CEFC China Energy, and Burisma, a Ukrainian industrial company. At Burisma alone during this time, Biden made $2.3 million.

“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,” added the indictment. “In 2018 alone, Hunter Biden spent more than $1.8 million, including approximately $772,000 in cash withdrawals, approximately $383,000 in payments to women, approximately $151,000 in clothing and accessories. The Defendant did not use any of these funds to pay his taxes in 2018.”

Biden’s legal team quickly mounted a defense in the media on Thursday and Friday. Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, stressed that Biden had already paid back these taxes in full two years ago and that these added charges were unfair.

“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,” said Lowell. “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.

“I wrote to the special counsel’s office this week, seeking a customary meeting to discuss the tax inquiry. The response was media leaks today that these charges were being filed.”

While Hunter Biden did not release any statements regarding the new indictment, he has been very open about the years between 2015 and 2020 being a major struggle for him. In addition to trauma afflicted to him by the death of his mother and sister in a car accident in 1972, Hunter Biden has stated that the death of his brother Beau from cancer in 2015 caused him to spiral back into addiction for the next several years. During those years, he lived out of many luxury hotels in LA such as the Chateau Marmont and the Hollywood Roosevelt on a constant sex and drug binge. At the peak of his addiction in 2018, Biden claims to have been smoking crack every 15 minutes for a period of time, while also never sleeping and not knowing if it was ever day or night.

9 counts against Hunter Biden in LA

Legal experts note that while Biden’s situation will likely be a factor in the case, it does not absolve Biden from his multiple federal tax counts.

“You know, you lose so many people like that so tragically, on one level, you feel for the guy going down the path he did,” said Monte Schmidt, a tax law specialist, to the Globe. “I’ve had many clients who got into alcohol or drugs, or something else to help them cope with that. One client I had just drove off one day and lived out of his car in the Mojave for four months. Trauma does this to people, and you feel for them.”

“But at the same time, he still failed to pay taxes for many years in a row. The IRS actually works with people on this and you can get extensions or even talk with people to get through a rough tax time. Biden had so many options. He also had the money to just hire an accountant and just have him deal with it. But he didn’t.”

“Even worse, the Department of Justice actually patterned this into an alleged scheme by Biden to not pay. And these aren’t peanuts. Felony tax evasion. Two felony filing a false return. And many failures to pay, which are misdemeanors. Now, his team did say they paid back, but years after the fact. Plus, new information on these. It doesn’t look good.”

While the Delaware case has yet to get a court date, Biden is also currently being scrutinized over other possible tax misdeeds. However, his child-support payment issue was resolved earlier this year in court, and any state non-payments in California through the Franchise Tax Board are either non-existent or have not been looked into by the state.

“If there was something on the state-side of things tax-wise, California would have done something,” added Schmidt. “California likes getting their fair share too, especially with a major debt crisis right now. It sounds like there is nothing on that level, but the state giving him a clear bill of health on that front would likely be appreciated by all parties.”

“But you are right on that. If this was one of Trump’s sons, the California Attorney General [Rob Bonta] would have dug into state matters straight away on the hopes of finding anything, and if he did, prosecuting him to the extent of the law. Keep an eye out from both [Bonta] and the Franchise Tax Board, because they will probably quietly report on if they found anything with Biden. Usually with a big name Democrat having money troubles like that, they’ll wait on releasing the press release for a big news day.”

Hunter Biden, who resides in Malibu, will likely make a statement of sort in the coming days. His father, the President, is expected to be in LA for several Democratic Party fundraisers this weekend.