Nine Tax Chages Filed against Hunter Biden in Los Angeles

/48 Comments/in /by

CNN first reported on the expected development.

The judge in the case is Mark Scarsi, a Trump appointee, but apparently one of the real judges the former President appointed.

Here’s the indictment.

Here’s the expenses they lay out.

The charges are:

  1. Failure to pay 2016
  2. Failure to pay 2017
  3. Failure to file 2017
  4. Failure to pay 2018
  5. Failure to file 2018
  6. Tax evasion 2018
  7. False return 2018
  8. False return 2018
  9. Failure to pay 2019

The three bolded charges for 2018 are the ones with big penalties.

Effectively what they did is build a bunch of lesser charges around the 2018 charges, during the worst of his addiction, for which the accounting was dicey.

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48 replies
  1. BRUCE F COLE says:

    Are they saying “We don’t need no fucking FARA?”

    IOW, has the laptop fiasco made them realize that they need to make this the marquee offering?

    And that spread sheet, is that common in this kind of indictment?

    • John Paul Jones says:

      One of the functions of the spreadsheet is to flag RHB as an entitled rich kid who thinks he can get away with it because of his daddy or his wealth or both. As to whether it’s SOP with such cases, I don’t know, but I kind of doubt it. The figures would be noted in the indictment in prose, rather than presented as an itemized bill.

      Plus, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t he pay back all the money owed, making charges 1-5 + 9 otiose?

      • BRUCE F COLE says:

        Actually the spreadsheet is in the indictment, copied and pasted above by Marcy.

        In reading the whole thing, this is a meat grinder of a narrative. It’s not just that they’re embellishing his 2018 falsifications with years he eventually paid in full, they’re tracking his interactions with his ex and his business associates as they plead with him to take care of his fucking taxes (they apparently have all the texts, emails, receipts, etc), and that’s presented along with his extremely extravagant and concupiscent expenses, noting copiously and fastidiously how flagrant his *complete* tax avoidance was for all those years, only being gradually corrected once two lawsuits (his ex and his paternity suit) had been filed that forced him (with the threat of incarceration for contempt) to fucking pony up for chrissake, with funds from “Personal Friend.”

        This, imo, is a game changer for Joe. Sure, Lowell can pursue the targeted prosecution angle and maybe find some daylight going forward in the coming months, but January 2024 is three weeks away and the Dems are now facing what Carville and Axlerod have been trying to tell us: a Trump victory next year isn’t in any way a long shot…and with this indictment narrative it’s a much shorter shot that it was day before yesterday.

        I’ve been watching dKos since the indictment dropped yesterday and nary a peep from anyone in the FP or the rec list (or the entire community list as well) about it. That’s abject denial of the worst kind, given the stakes and the facts on the ground right now. Dworkin’s got a news roundup piece at the top of the FP now called “A Close Race is a Winnable Race,” but not a mention of this bombshell.

        Denial: if you read that indictment, that is the overarching theme of Hunter’s life in all those years (not just ’18), and it’s also the pathological hallmark of the Dem Party at the moment. If Joe doesn’t step back and open up the field, we may be well and truly fucked. And even if he wins, his coattails will be so useless that we could have MAGA running both houses of congress.

        Time for an intervention, IMO.

        • Ginevra diBenci says:

          So…because his only surviving son effed up his taxes in the vortex of addiction, Joe Biden should drop out of the presidential race?

        • Harry Eagar says:

          What are the odds that none of the jurors hasn’t grappled with a family member (or own self) who screwed up his/her life so bad?

          And who will say, yeah, now that he’s (purportedly) clean, let’s send him to prison for 10 years?

          Just before he falls asleep each night, Weiss prays that Lowell will, indeed, 86 his case.

        • bmaz says:

          “And who will say, yeah, now that he’s (purportedly) clean, let’s send him to prison for 10 years?”

          Nobody with half a brain. This really does smack of vindictive prosecution.

        • BRUCE F COLE says:

          Joe should recognize that this case will eat up a significant amount of oxygen in the political landscape of ’24, and not to his benefit. Marcy’s post after this one that gets into more detail about the case and the possible avenues of egress the Hunter might have is anything but encouraging of a quick resolution, so Joe, if he’s got any political instincts left, will have to weigh all that against his woeful poll numbers which have already given a leg up to whichever fascist gets the GOP nod.

          Short answer: “Yes.”

          I’m grateful that Joe beat Trump so decisively last go-round, and that he accomplished what he did in the meantime. But all that hangs in the balance now. This isn’t about how we need to separate Biden from his prodigal son, it’s about undeniably powerful optics and the dire juncture we find ourselves in.

        • matt fischer says:

          We live in a very strange country indeed.

          The leading Republican presidential candidate is facing 91 felony counts, including the mishandling of some of the nation’s most sensitive national security information, and conspiring to subvert the previous presidential election that he lost. No biggie.

          A private citizen who happens to be the son of the sitting president is facing 3 felony counts related to tax evasion. The Democrats are doomed!

        • BRUCE F COLE says:

          1) Trump may well not be the nominee; Haley would be formidable against Biden, and almost just as fascistic as Trump.
          2) It’s not just Hunter having fucked up so royally, it’s also the fact that his dad, whose current job (which he’d been gunning for for decades) happens to be the most important one in the world arguably, didn’t take him aside back in the day and say, “Burisma? Are you shitting me? Do you realize how this will possibly affect my job today, and how it will look when I run for POTUS? Do you realize this is a bullseye on my back?”
          3)This isn’t about who has more baggage, it’s about America being on the verge of an actual fascist takeover and the counter we’re throwing against that isn’t the most robust and unencumbered candidate we have to choose from.
          4) The dude is 82. Visions of Feinstein are still fresh.

        • matt fischer says:

          The notion that the Democratic Party can offer up a viable alternative to Joe Biden this late in the game is a counterproductive pipe dream.

        • JR_in_Mass says:

          The whole point of the Hunter Biden scandalization is, and always has been, to take down Joe Biden. Sometimes, yes, it is good to do something voluntarily that your enemy is trying to force you to do, but for Joe to step aside would be conceding too much. And, if he did, it’s not like it would de-fang the scandalizers, they’d just say “Told you so” and continue persecuting Hunter, plus come up with new ways to harass Biden’s likely replacements.

        • Rayne says:

          Joe Biden is everything Putin wants to eliminate. I can’t put my finger on what the Big Trigger™ is specifically, but there’s a body of work in Biden’s lengthy tenure as a US Senator serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which must contain the originating impetus for Putin to attack Biden and family on a sustained level.

          It’s exactly why Biden should not yield his seat and decline to run — doing so would be a win for Putin. At least running against Trump, Biden fights against Putin’s proxy head on.

          It’s ridiculous that US news media refuse to acknowledge or say this.

        • Violater says:

          Could not agree more, Rayne. And I am disgusted at the MSM for Yippie I yohing on another BS story when this fascist cur is doing everything possible to truly screw with our democracy, Thanks Marcy and Rayne…Thanks

        • theGeoguy says:

          i can’t find a single big reason but 8 smaller ones could include the NATO countries bordering Russia or Ukraine: (north to south) Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Not to say that Biden was involved in all of them joining but he has always been a big proponent of expanding NATO in Eastern Europe.

        • earlofhuntingdon says:

          I’m impressed that you know so much about what Joe Biden did or tried to tell his son, and about how effective that would be in persuading a practicing addict to change course.

          Joe Biden might be 82, but he’s nothing like DiFi. But, yes, America is teetering toward a Fascism that millions would support, despite its benefiting only a handful of the power hungry. Fighting that takes more than an election.

        • BRUCE F COLE says:

          I was portraying what I thought Joe should have said to his son when he took a job working for a Ukrainian energy outfit that was convolutedly tangled up with the critical Ukrainian portion of Joe’s VP remit.

          I have a son who is currently dealing with dysfunctional behaviors (not on Hunter’s scale, thank god) and it’s hard, especially when other family members are badly affected. I am spending time trying to guide him right now, and it’s not fun or easy. But if I was in a position where his dysfunction would harm my own ability to do my life’s work, I would certainly lay down some markers, and if those lines were crossed I’d make sure my colleagues know that I disapprove of his actions. IOW, this isn’t Billy Carter or Roger Clinton territory.

          Meanwhile, here’s this latest dismal poll:
          https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-leads-biden-in-new-2024-poll-gets-higher-marks-on-economy-border-security-and-crime/ar-AA1lfq3W

          Pulling America back from the brink of fascism certainly will take a lot of difficult fighting, but if we lose this election, that brink will have been crossed over.

          No candidate is without flaws, and Hunter isn’t Joe, certainly, and thank god the guy is sober now. But the train wreck he engineered on himself wasn’t isolated to strip clubs and pushers on his company payroll. It was thoroughly entwined in his dad’s public-service realm. *That’s* why the GOP has been able to play it against Joe, even though their insinuations go further than the facts (as we understand them) allow.

          This indictment is also a political document, most certainly — it reads like one. It’s not going to age well, either, from a democracy-sustaining perspective. We are in a hyper-critical situation with a conflicted leader at the helm who is reacting to the problem petulantly:
          https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/06/politics/biden-blasts-house-gop/index.html

          ** Asked by a reporter in the Roosevelt Room to respond to an Associated Press poll from last month that shows nearly 70% of Americans – including 40% of Democrats – believe Biden has acted unethically or illegally in business dealings, Biden responded, “I’m not going to comment on that. I did not, and it’s just a bunch of lies.”

          Pressed again on claims he interacted with business associates of his son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden, the president said, “I did not – they’re lies.” **

          He’s unable to address this shit with any objectivity or equanimity, and FOX is playing it to the hilt:
          https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-called-claiming-not-interact-hunters-business-partners-blatant-lie

          I totally get why Axelrod and Carville have their hair on fire.

        • Ginevra diBenci says:

          Bruce, how do you know that Joe Biden did *not* “take [Hunter] aside” exactly as you prescribe? Sure, the whole family was consumed by Beau Biden’s terminal cancer, but we don’t know that such a conversation never happened.

          And Joe Biden is 81. Your “Feinstein” vision is a ridiculous transposition of two very different human beings at almost a decade’s remove from each other.

          I don’t know what you’re trying to talk yourself into, but please, at least start with the facts.

        • BRUCE F COLE says:

          I embarrassingly got his current age wrong; I meant to say he’ll be 82 when we vote next year (shy a couple weeks, but close enough). My only excuse is that I’m just about to turn 74 and have lost a bit of an edge, lol.

          Is he an exceptional 81 year-old man? Of course, but if you ask me if he’s lost mental acuity and composure and, hell, stage presence over the last several years, my answer is an obvious “yes.”

          If he were the head of a large company, ala Munger or Buffet (whose shareholders are confident of their leadership), that would be one thing. But he’s the CEO of the most powerful government on the planet and his “shareholder confidence ratio” is somewhere in the low 40s — and a lot of that has to do with his aging and associated optics, and with his ongoing and concomitant inability to muster the country’s confidence and resolve.

          As to whether that conversation occurred or not, you’re right, we are not privy to that. But if it *had* occurred, certainly Joe could have let us know that he didn’t approve of his son raking in a large fee from a firm that was a key player in the most prominent aspect of his FP portfolio as VP, right? “Hunter knows my feelings about his relationship with Burisma, but he’s his own man and I just concentrate on my own job and do not consider his position there in any respect” would have been an obvious fire-retardant to be able to deploy, and we know that *didn’t* happen.

          As to Feinstein, I am referring to the public perception of our de-facto gerontocracy. The list of 80 year olds leading our government is long and disturbing to me. Her senility and death in office, and stubborn refusal to step down, has a bearing on how Joe is perceived by a large swath of the electorate, even ofDemocrats. that’s why I wrote “visions of Feinstein.” It’s not an inapt reference.

        • Rayne says:

          Mona Charen’s response in the Chicago Sun-Times addresses the issue well, I will not cover ground she handled adeptly.
          https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2023/8/18/23836331/joe-biden-2024-election-aging-health-statistics-fitness-mona-charen

          Biden is in better shape mentally and physically than many men his age and even 20 years younger. Unlike many Democrats younger than him, he has decades of experience in governance and a proven commitment to protecting democracy (which is the very thing driving Putin’s manifold operations). Could he die in office? Sure. Any president could, especially in the age of pandemic.

          Biden’s real problem is piss-poor messaging by the Democratic Party and the collection of left-wing organizations — you’re proof it’s poor — which is up against a no-holds-barred collection of influence operations.

        • BRUCE F COLE says:

          Doesn’t have to be “most” voters. Just enough, and on top of that, just enough who throw up their hands and don’t vote.

        • IainUlysses says:

          Yeah, Biden won by close to the same margins as Trump. At least according to the analyses I’ve read of how the EC vote worked out.

  2. earlofhuntingdon says:

    CNN, like the Guardian, fails to note the DoJ’s role – changing its position on the reach of the settlement agreed with HB – in causing the judge to question the agreement and HB to plead not guilty.

  3. Brad Cole says:

    At first glance, this feels like typical prosecutorial bullying, overcharging, making mass felonies out of smaller stuff. Normally this should pressure the defendant into settling, but, as he’s the President’s only son, it also seems highly political and aimed at his father. Which I suspect will stiffen their will, good thing they can afford great lawyers. Given the shoddiness of how this case was put together, I think they have a real shot at beating the rap but not the ride (h/t Ken White).

  4. Matt Foley says:

    Leaving this here for Fox News.

    List of Trump’s pals who were pardoned by Trump for tax-related crimes, e.g., tax fraud or tax evasion:

    Albert Pirro *(Fox’s Jeanine Pirro’s husband…surprise!)*
    Charles Kushner *(Jared’s dad…surprise!)*
    Michael Milken
    Paul Pogue
    Bernard Kerik
    Paul Manafort
    James Kassouf
    Rebekah Kay Charleston
    James Batmasian
    William Plemons
    Randall Harold Cunningham
    George Gilmore
    Glen Moss
    Patrick Swisher
    Robert Zangrillo
    Kwame Kilpatrick

    • Savage Librarian says:

      I wonder if there are/were any tax issues related to Ted Suhl’s criming. I also wonder if he is somehow connected to the “compilation” and clemency documents found in the desk drawer at MAL. Mike Huckabee encouraged Trump to grant the clemency for Suhl.

      “Trump commutes sentence of Arkansas businessman convicted of bribery” – 7/29/19, Josh Snyder

      “During the trial, jurors convicted [Ted] Suhl on four of six charges he faced: two counts of honest services wire fraud and single counts of interstate travel in aid of bribery and bribery involving federal program funds.

      https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/jul/29/trump-commutes-sentence-arkansas-businessman-convi/

  5. Rugger_9 says:

    I wonder how much of this Abbe Lowell can undermine, between the agreement and the evidence. So, while this is a GJ indictment it is also worth remembering that the defense is usually not invited to the GJ.

    I agree with the above comment that this is the last arrow in Weiss’ legal quiver.

  6. P’villain says:

    Will this pound of flesh satiate Comer, et al., or will it merely whet their appetites? My money’s on the latter – these guys always seem to overplay their hand.

    • Just Some Guy says:

      One thing is for sure: Comer ain’t getting to depose Hunter. That was already pretty much a given, but now it’s definitely not happening.

    • P’villain says:

      Well, that didn’t take long. According to Comer, the indictment is actually Weiss “protecting” Hunter Biden and the Biden Crime Family. With protectors like that, who needs enemies?

  7. Hoping4better_times says:

    Not a surprise that David Weiss finally indicted Hunter Biden in California on tax charges. Hunter is truly bicoastal now. He must defend in Delaware and in California. He should follow the same strategy as trump-delay, delay, delay the trial until the November election. I will place my bet on Abbe Lowell, Hunter’s very able lawyer.

  8. Zinsky123 says:

    IANAL – However, this looks like “piling on” to me. Weiss appears to be trying to overcompensate for the undercharging that the right-wing feels occurred in connection with the original plea agreement charges. It is very instructive that not a single charge against Hunter Biden is the result of the inappropriate manipulation of the three laptops that Biden apparently dropped off at Mac Isaac’s Pretty Good Computer Repair Shoppe!

    • Frank Probst says:

      Seems like a reasonable question to me.

      I would never make it past voir dire on a tax evasion case if you at least filed some of the paperwork. Unless you can clearly show me criminal intent, I’m pretty much always going to accept a defense of, “Look, I filed the paperwork. I did my best to fill it out correctly. If I screwed it up, it was because the damn thing didn’t make any sense to me, and I’ll pay what I owe.”

    • SteveBev says:

      Paras 4 e and f indictment
      Allege failed to file tax return on time, and the subsequent late filing contained false information

  10. harpie says:

    Of course…they have to get 2016 in there to tie it to Joe Biden’s stint as VP…but that year also ties it to what Marcy’s been writing about ZLOCHEVSKY. That makes it the first entry, so far, in the TL I’ve been working on.

    1/XX/16 FBI Foreign Corrupt Practices Act squad based out of WFO opens a Kleptocracy investigation into Mykola ZLOCHEVSKY [This investigation is closed on 12/XX/19 [Per GRASSLEY 10/24/23 letter]]

    *******
    3/1/17 FD-1023 relating to the “205B” Kleptocracy investigation of ZLOCHEVSKY

    That FD-1023 included a reference to Hunter Biden being on the board of Burisma, which the handling agent deemed at the time non-relevant information to the ongoing criminal financial case. [per GRASSLEY 10/24/23 letter]

    Marcy: https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/11/06/scott-bradys-d-i-s-c-r-e-e-t-vetting-a-marginally-more-credible-witness-than-gal-luft/

    The central focus of the HJC interview, unsurprisingly, was how an informant came to be reinterviewed in June 2020 about interactions he had with Burisma’s Mykola Zlochevsky months and years earlier, the genesis of the FD-1023 on which Republicans are pinning much of their impeachment hopes, and how and on what terms that FD-1023 got forwarded to David Weiss, who was already investigating Hunter Biden. […]

    Searching on “Zlochevsky” and “Burisma” wouldn’t have gotten you to the specific line in a 2017 FD-1023 about Hunter Biden — at least not without a lot of work. Chuck Grassley revealed the underlying informant report came from a 3-year long Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation into Zlochevsky that had been closed in December 2019. // December 2019. // Remember that date. […]

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Without the snark tag, one would think you completely missed the politics of embarrassing Joe Biden, during his bid for election/re-election.

  12. wa_rickf says:

    Moby, the music artist has a podcast and interviewed Hunter. Hunter stated that “they” (read: Republicans) are trying to kill his father.

    Moby Pod: https://youtu.be/izaxZgKSS6Y?si=uo11kRWykUnMg3bg
    (Part 1 interview with Hunter Biden)

    That’s how dirty Republicans are – they go after ol’ Joe via his son the recently former person with substance abuse disorder.

    Such smarmy, filthy disgusting behavior from the party of supposed family values.

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