Hunter Biden Indictment Considered Likely By Many Experts – Washington has been on edge awaiting the outcome of a years-long investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax and firearms violations.
Biden first admitted to being under federal investigation in December 2020 following his father’s election. The investigation into Biden’s taxes reportedly began years back.
Pressure has come to bear on the Justice Department, especially since an IRS supervisory agent sought whistleblower protections from Congress. The whistleblower alleged through his lawyer, Mark Lytle, that Attorney General Merrick Garland had lied to Congress claiming that he was not interfering with Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ investigation.
“The protected disclosures: (1) contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee, (2) involve failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case, and (3) detail examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected,” the letter said.
Garland denied the allegation and reiterated that Weiss had full control over the Hunter Biden investigation and that the Justice Department headquarters in Washington would not get involved.
Bureaucratic Hurdles Must Be Cleared to Charge Hunter
According to Justice Department rules, prosecutors must be able to obtain certainty that “the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.”
Charging Hunter Biden would require approval from the head of the Justice Department Tax Division, an office that currently is vacant. Also, bureaucratic hurdles would require clearing. These include reconciling conflicting jurisdictions. Hunter Biden resides in California. His taxes were filed in the District of Columbia. And Weiss represents the Department of Justice in Delaware. Garland testified that Weiss would receive the needed waivers to prosecute Biden if he found the warrant to do so.
The FBI and IRS reportedly completed their investigations into Biden’s alleged criminal activities last year and recommended that charges be brought. The potential charges include a misdemeanor account of failing to file an income tax return, a felony count of tax evasion for overreporting business expenses on his taxes, and felony firearms charge for a misstatement on the ATF form he used to purchase his pistol.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys met with the Justice Department last month for an update on the investigation.
While Republicans have tried to pull President Joe Biden into the fray, this investigation has avoided it.
Biden’s Millions From Foreign Sources
Republicans have alleged that Hunter Biden was the focal point for foreign oligarchs to buy access to his father, the then-sitting vice president, and to influence U.S. foreign policy.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee detailed the Bidens’ intricate network of LLCs that the committee report released this week claimed were linked to individuals who had been convicted of money laundering.
It noted that the Biden family, including Hunter, had established at least 20 LLCs that had been used in various transactions.
Bank records have shown that millions of dollars have found their way through this network of LLCs, which potentially could have been used to hide monies from taxation.
The infamous Hunter Biden laptop was seized by the FBI under the guise of a money laundering investigation into the president’s son’s business activities, according to the Marco Polo research group’s report.
Hunter Biden’s business dealings included deals with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, Miguel Alemán Velasco, and his son Miguel Alemán Magnani in which he involved his father. Hunter Biden had hoped to get Slim, the then world’s richest man, to support a deal he and his partners had hoped to obtain with PEMEX, the Mexican state oil company amid privatization reports. He had hoped to connect the Ukrainian gas giant Burisma, where he earned $50,000 per month as a member of its board of directors, with PEMEX.
Biden family entities received millions in payments from corrupt individuals of Romanian, Kazakh, Chinese, Ukrainian, and other nationalities.
Of particular interest besides Burisma has been Hunter Biden’s work with CEFC Energy, a large Chinese energy firm with ties to Chinese military intelligence.
Hunter Biden Gun Crime?
Pressure also has been building on the Justice Department to take action on Hunter Biden’s alleged false statement on his ATF form.
The accusation is that Hunter Biden illegally purchased a pistol in 2018 from a Delaware gun store. He admitted in his 2018 book to having smoked crack cocaine. Federal regulations prohibit anyone who has used such substances in the prior year from purchasing a gun. He checked no on the form used to buy the weapon.
Pressure has mainly come from Congress and the right-leaning watchdog group Judicial Watch, which has sought documents inquiring about the alleged coverup of information.
“The FBI and Secret Service have both been implicated in a corrupt clean-up operation to protect Hunter Biden from the criminal consequences of his gun scandal,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a press release, noting that his group’s FOIA request concerning the investigation into Biden’s firearm infraction had not been granted.
Wisconsin Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany questioned a witness in March as to why he thought Hunter Biden had not been charged with a crime.
“If a person lies on ATF Form 4473 and is a user of unlawful drugs, you can get between five and 10 years for that. Is that correct? Is that your understanding?,” Tiffany asked. “Why hasn’t Hunter Biden been prosecuted for the crime that he committed?”
Hunter Biden and the 2024 Election
Should Hunter Biden be indicted, it will increase pressure and scrutiny on his father’s potential involvement in these deals now that the laptop’s authenticity has been established. Cryptic references from Hunter Biden’s business partner suggesting that the president was the “The Big Guy” mentioned in a May 2017 email about a deal with CEFC Energy will be of particular interest.
President Donald Trump or whoever is the Republican nominee likely will do everything they can to highlight the president’s participation in his son’s alleged corruption.
John Rossomando was a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.