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Washington: Prosecutors are nearing a decision on whether to charge US President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, with tax and gun-related violations, according to people familiar with the matter, in the culmination of a four-year investigation that Republicans have sought to portray as evidence the Biden family is corrupt.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers met at Justice Department headquarters in downtown Washington last week to discuss the case with US Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, boards Air Force One with the president in February.Credit: AP
Typically, that sort of meeting – in which defence lawyers urge prosecutors not to seek an indictment of their client, or to seek reduced charges – comes towards the end of an investigation.
The people familiar with the matter said Weiss was nearing the end of his decision-making process, although they offered no specific timetable. They cautioned that the probe has taken longer than some officials thought it would, frustrating some law enforcement officials, and conceivably could slow down again before a decision has been reached.
Any decision could have a significant impact on the president, who just launched his re-election campaign, and bring national attention to a sensitive topic that aides often struggle to broach with him. Republicans seeking to win back the White House have sought to tie Hunter’s legal woes directly to his father.
Attorney-General Merrick Garland has told the US Congress that the department’s decisions in the case would not be politicised and has said he has granted Weiss – a holdover from the Trump administration – complete authority to run the investigation.
Hunter Biden with his father and Joe Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, at a plaque dedicated to the president’s late son Beau Biden, in Ireland in April.Credit: AP
Garland reiterated that stance on Tuesday at a news conference on an unrelated matter, telling reporters who asked about the status of the investigation: “I stand by my testimony, and I refer you to the US attorney for the District of Delaware, who is in charge of this case and capable of making any decisions that he feels are appropriate.”
The attorney-general was not present at the meeting with Hunter’s lawyers last week, the people familiar with the matter said. A spokeswoman for Weiss declined to comment, as did a lawyer for Hunter. The younger Biden said of himself in December 2020 that he had “handled my affairs legally and appropriately”.
Although Hunter kept a low profile during the 2020 presidential campaign – when he had spiralled into a battle with addiction and became a focal point of Republican attacks – he has taken on a more public and assertive role recently. He has appeared with his father at events including the state dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron and the Kennedy Centre Honours, and was by the president’s side at nearly every stop last month during a trip to Ireland, their ancestral homeland.
“Stand up, guys,” the president said at one stop, asking his son and his sister to rise and be recognised. “I’m proud of you.”
Joe Biden is sworn in as president on January 20, 2021, as wife Jill, daughter Ashley and Hunter watch.Credit: AP
The Washington Post reported last year that federal agents had concluded they had enough evidence to charge Hunter with tax crimes and making a false statement related to a gun purchase. But it is ultimately up to prosecutors at the Justice Department, not agents, to decide whether to file charges; prosecutors generally do so if they think the evidence is likely to lead to a conviction at trial.
The investigation into Hunter began in 2018 and centred on his finances related to overseas business ties and consulting work. Over time, investigators shifted their focus to whether he failed to report all his income and whether he lied on a form for a gun purchase by denying that he was a drug abuser.
Hunter’s own memoir, Beautiful Things, recounts in detail his long battle with drug addiction, saying that for stretches of 2018, he smoked crack “every 15 minutes”. Of key interest to prosecutors is his purchase of a handgun in October of that year – at a time when, by his own account, he was using drugs. He filled out a federal form related to the purchase in which he allegedly answered “no” to whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance”.
Prosecutions for false statements on gun-purchase forms are relatively rare, but they do happen. Federal agents refer to such cases as “lying and buying”. Historically, prosecutors have significant discretion to decide which ones are worth federal resources.
When then-president Donald Trump ran for re-election in 2020, facing off against Democrat Joe Biden, he made allegations of wrongdoing against Hunter a centrepiece of his campaign. At the height of the campaign, Trump allies revealed that the owner of a Delaware computer shop had turned over to the FBI a laptop that had apparently belonged to Hunter Biden. Trump and others argued that data on the laptop showed evidence of unethical and possible illegal business deals. Joe Biden and his supporters denounced the efforts as a smear.
Last year, The Post reported that two computer security experts had reviewed nearly 129,000 emails purportedly from Hunter Biden’s computer and determined, based on cryptography signatures from Google and other technology companies, that at least 22,000 could be authenticated. The Post has not been able to learn whether the laptop and its contents have been useful in the Justice Department investigation.
Republicans have long called for Garland to appoint a special counsel to handle the Hunter investigation, saying that such an appointment would help keep the probe insulated from political pressure.
But Garland did not do so, saying such a step was not necessary since Weiss was a career federal prosecutor tapped by Trump to serve as a US attorney. In the early days of the Biden administration, a Justice Department official said removing Weiss as US attorney would probably spark significant political backlash as he was overseeing the Hunter Biden case.
Republican calls for a special counsel only intensified after Garland appointed a special counsel in November to take over the department’s investigations into whether Trump mishandled classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after his presidency, and whether he or his advisers broke the law in trying to overturn the 2020 election results.
The attorney-general has said he named a special counsel for the Trump probes because Trump had launched his 2024 presidential campaign and Joe Biden – who has since declared his candidacy – was expected to seek re-election as well. Garland also appointed a different special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s Delaware home and at an office he used after his vice presidency.
Questions about the younger Biden’s foreign business ventures have long dogged his father’s political life. Trump and his Republican Party allies specifically cite as ethical conflicts Hunter’s past work for a Ukrainian gas company while his father was vice president, as well as his China-related business affairs. In a July 2019 phone call, Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate both Joe and Hunter Biden – part of a pressure campaign that led to the first of Trump’s two impeachment trials in Congress.
In December 2020, federal agents sought to interview the younger Biden, leading him to publicly acknowledge that he was under investigation. “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisers,” Hunter said in a statement at that time.
His allies point out that he has paid any owed taxes, in part by using some $US2 million (nearly $3 million) provided by Kevin Morris, a Hollywood lawyer and novelist who befriended him in 2019.
The legal and political focus on Hunter Biden has been intensifying recently, with the new Republican majority in Congress launching its own investigations into his business dealings. He also was ordered to appear earlier this week in an Arkansas courtroom in an ongoing case between him and the mother of a four-year-old child they had together. His lawyers, citing a “substantial material change” in his income, have been trying to lower child support payments that they say for years have been $US20,000 per month.
Last month, an IRS (tax office) agent who has been working on the tax case asked for whistleblower protection to testify to Congress about what he asserts is political interference and improper handling of the case by the Biden administration.
Mark Lytle, a lawyer for the unnamed IRS criminal supervisory special agent, sent a letter to Congress saying the agent would like to give information to lawmakers that substantiates his allegations of undue influence. “Despite serious risks of retaliation, my client is offering to provide you with information necessary to exercise your constitutional oversight function and wishes to make the disclosures in a non-partisan manner to the leadership of the relevant committees on both sides of the political aisle,” Lytle wrote to top lawmakers on several House and Senate committees.
After years of trying to avoid the spotlight, Hunter Biden has started to take a more combative posture towards Republican lawmakers and other accusers. Earlier this year, a newly refashioned legal team sent cease-and-desist letters, filed countersuits and issued criminal referral letters against some of his most aggressive critics.
The Washington Post
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