Hunter Biden likely to face “serious charges,” Barr says.
The president’s son has been investigated for many years, including during William Barr’s tenure as attorney general of the United States. Now Barr says serious charges are likely against Hunter Biden
Hunter Biden: Serious Charges Coming?
Hunter Biden, the son of the president, has been under investigation by the federal government for several years.
The investigations focus mostly, according to reports, on the younger Biden’s taxes as well as the possibility that he lied on a gun permit application.
However, Hunter is also facing investigations by Republicans in Congress into his foreign business practices.
The investigation has been going on for so long that it began during the Trump Administration and has continued into the third year of Hunter’s father’s presidency. For part of that time, the Justice Department investigation took place while William Barr was running that department.
Barr spoke about the case this week, in an interview with CBS News, as cited by Newsweek. Barr predicted that a charging decision is near in the case.
“There’s probably been a lot of hand-wringing in many different places, but I assume that the defense went in there to try to see what they think would be a way to resolve this without serious charges against Hunter Biden,” Barr said in the CBS interview. “I suspect that they’re going to be unsuccessful.”
Barr also said that he suspects the case has taken so long because it’s “complicated,” and has required a great deal of cooperation between the DOJ and the IRS.
The former attorney general wasn’t clear, however, about whether he expects Hunter to be convicted.
“There’s a difference between abuses of power, shameful behavior when you’re in power and so forth—and something that can actually be proven as a crime,” he said in the interview. “I joined the conclusion that there was a lot of shameful self dealing and influence peddling and so forth. I think the American people should take note. That should be explained and shown to the American people. The question of whether you can prove a crime is a different matter.”
When he left office in late 2020, shortly before the end of the Trump presidency, Barr said in a press conference, as cited by Politico, that he did not favor a special counsel being appointed to investigate Hunter Biden.
“I think to the extent there’s an investigation, I think that it’s being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department,” Barr said at the time. “To this point I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no plan to do so before I leave.”
Barr, at the same time, had broken with then-President Trump, refuting the ex-president’s claims about a stolen election and refusing to seize voting machines or several other requests demanded of him by Trump.
The Economist reported last week that the Republicans in Congress investigating Hunter are “no closer to tying Hunter Biden’s activities to Joe.”
The House Oversight Committee has been going through financial records and “suspicious activity reports,” uncovering numerous financial dealings that Hunter Biden and other relatives of the president have engaged in in various countries over a period of several years.
However, the committee does not appear to have discovered any transactions that benefited President Biden personally, nor have they shown that he has taken any actions as vice president or president to benefit any of the entities with which his family members did business.
“But despite their access to Mr Comer’s subpoena powers, his team have uncovered nothing so far that shows the president benefiting. The extensive private correspondence taken from Hunter Biden’s leaked laptop hard drive, which included dozens of voicemails left on his phone by his father, shows nothing either,” The Economist said of the Oversight Committee’s revelations so far.
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Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
