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Hunter Biden. | Photo courtesy of the Center for Strategic & International Studies/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
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President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was charged Thursday in Los Angeles with felony and misdemeanor tax offenses for allegedly refusing to pay his taxes and instead spending the money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, exotic cars and clothing.
Hunter Biden, 53, of Los Angeles, “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The indictment alleges that Hunter Biden engaged in a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for the 2016 through 2019 tax years and to evade the assessment of taxes for the 2018 tax year when he filed false returns.
It was not immediately known when Biden would make his initial appearance in Los Angeles federal court.
Prosecutors allege Biden withdrew millions of dollars from his company’s coffers outside of the payroll and tax withholding process; stopped paying his outstanding and overdue taxes for the 2015 tax year; failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 taxes on time, despite having access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes; failed to file his 2017 and 2018 tax returns, on time; and when filing his 2018 returns, included false business deductions in order to reduce the very substantial tax liability he faced as of February 2020.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement that “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.”
Lowell alleged that the special counsel in the case, U.S. Attorney David Weiss, “bowed to Republican pressure to file unprecedented and unconstitutional gun charges to renege on a non-prosecution resolution. 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.”
Described in the 56-page indictment as a Georgetown- and Yale-educated lawyer, lobbyist, consultant and businessperson, Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian industrial conglomerate and a Chinese private equity fund during the time of the tax allegations, prosecutors said.
“He negotiated and executed contracts and agreements for business and legal services that paid millions of dollars of compensation to him and/or his domestic corporations, Owasco PC and Owasco LLC,” according to the indictment.
In addition to his business interests, the defendant was an employee of a multinational law firm, the document states.
Between 2016 and October 15, 2020, Biden spent millions of dollars 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,” the indictment alleges.
The indictment charges Biden with three felony tax offenses: one count of tax evasion and two counts of filing a false return; and six misdemeanor tax offenses: four counts of failure to pay his taxes and two counts of failure to file his taxes.
If convicted, Biden faces up to 17 years in prison, prosecutors noted, adding that the investigation is ongoing.
Biden pleaded not guilty in October to federal firearms charges in Delaware that allege he lied about his drug use while buying a handgun. The charges were brought after an earlier proposed plea deal unraveled under questioning from the judge overseeing the case.
