President Joe Biden talks with his son Hunter Biden as he arrives Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Del., Tuesday, June 11, 2024 (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta).
The special counsel prosecuting Hunter Biden in California has already convinced Delaware jurors that President Joe Biden’s son knew he unlawfully purchased and possessed a firearm while addicted to drugs, and now he wants to introduce evidence that the manner in which the defendant structured foreign business dealings tends to show the alleged failure to pay his taxes was willful.
Special counsel David Weiss and prosecutors Leo Wise and Derek Hines filed documents in the tax case, not to allege that Hunter Biden violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and not to allege that he “improperly coordinated with the Obama Administration” while Joe Biden was vice president, but that he nonetheless agreed, along with Business Associates 1 and 2, to be paid handsomely by Gabriel Popoviciu, a Romanian real estate “tycoon” who faced a corruption probe and hoped that Obama administration could bring about an end to that investigation.
According to Weiss, Popoviciu paid Business Associate 1’s “legal entity” $3,101,258, a third of which would go to Biden, even after the business associate and Biden “were concerned lobbying work might cause political ramifications for the defendant’s father.”
“Business Associate 1 and G.P. signed a ‘Management Services Agreement’ where Business Associate 1’s legal entity would purportedly provide management services to real estate properties in Romania, but that was not actually what G.P. was paying for,” the filing said. “In reality, Business Associate 1 and G.P. agreed that Business Associate 1 would receive compensation for work by Business Associate 1, the defendant, and Business Associate 2, to attempt to influence U.S. government agencies to investigate the Romanian investigation of G.P., and Business Associate 1 would pass approximately 1/3 to the defendant as his compensation and approximately 1/3 to Business Associate 2 as his compensation.”
For the special counsel, the defense’s objection to the evidence coming out at trial should fail because what Biden “agreed to do and did do for G.P. demonstrates the defendant’s state of mind and intent during the relevant tax years charged in the indictment.” What’s more, Weiss said, the evidence shows Biden’s arrangement “concealed the true nature of the work.”
“It is also evidence that the defendant’s actions do not reflect someone with a diminished capacity, given that he agreed to attempt to influence U.S. public policy and receive millions of dollars pursuant to an oral agreement with Business Associate 1 in an arrangement that concealed the true nature of the work he was performing for G.P.,” prosecutors continued.
The special counsel, again emphasizing that prosecutors don’t plan on accusing Biden of acting as an unregistered foreign agent or that he improperly communicated with the government, still says that Biden did reach out to the U.S. State Department and this is relevant to his “state of mind.”
“[T]he government will introduce evidence that Business Associate 1 structured a business relationship in an effort to avoid having to register as a foreign agent, and that the defendant and his business partners did reach out to government officials, specifically the United States Department of State. That evidence is relevant because it establishes that the defendant received income, when he earned the income, and his state of mind was not consistent with someone with a diminished capacity,” the special counsel said. “The introduction of that evidence, however, does not mean that the government will also reference allegations that the defendant violated FARA and that contacts with government officials were improper; such allegations are not relevant to the charges in this tax case.”
Weiss added that prosecutors don’t “intend” to introduce evidence that Biden “received compensation for actions taken by his father that impacted national or international politics.”
At the start of the case, prosecutors said that Hunter Biden, a “Georgetown- and Yale-educated lawyer” who was on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma and a Chinese equity fund, made millions of dollars, and allegedly “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle at the same time he chose not to pay his taxes” over a four-year period.
“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, from in or about January 2017 through in or about October 15, 2020, and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns in or about February 2020,” documents said.
Though Biden had “access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes” from 2016-2019, he “willfully failed to pay,” he “willfully failed to file his 2017 and 2018 tax returns on time,” and even when he did file the 2017 and 2018 returns in February 2020 (years late), he “included false business deductions in order to evade assessment of taxes to reduce the substantial tax liabilities he faced,” the indictment alleged.
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