Hunter Biden’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle speaks to ABC in June 2022 (ABC News/YouTube screengrab) , Hunter Biden (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden was hit with a second indictment on Thursday, this time a federal tax case in California as part of special counsel David Weiss’ investigation. The indictment revealed that two civil lawsuits, one a paternity case and the other an alimony case, plus the threat of being held in contempt of court, prompted Hunter Biden to late file tax returns now at issue in the criminal case.
The indictment began by emphasizing that Hunter Biden is 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.
Instead, Hunter Biden spent money on “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, everything but his taxes,” court documents said.
But court documents also revealed how the non-filed 2017 and 2018 tax returns came back to haunt Biden. Prosecutors said he late filed the forms only after he was threatened with contempt of court in two separate civil lawsuits.
The first was a since-settled Arkansas paternity and child support lawsuit filed in 2019 by “Person 1,” Lunden Roberts, a club dancer Biden impregnated, as a DNA test in the case established.
The second lawsuit was brought in Washington, D.C., by Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, who sought alimony payments, tax return records, and the enforcement of their separation agreement.
“In June 2019, the Defendant’s ex-wife brought a motion to enforce a marital separation agreement between herself and the Defendant in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (‘D.C. Superior Court’)
because the Defendant had stopped making spousal support payments and refused to provide financial records, including his tax returns, that were necessary to calculate the amount of spousal support he owed,
per his agreement with his ex-wife,” the indictment said.
When the defendant allegedly “continually stonewalled the production of financial records through which Person 1 and the Defendant’s ex-wife and the courts sought to ascertain the Defendant’s financial situation and ability to pay,” the courts turned up the heat:
Subsequently, an Arkansas court issued an order that the Defendant had until January 16, 2020, to produce his individual income tax returns for 2017 and 2018. The D.C. Superior Court likewise ordered the Defendant to produce the same returns by January 17, 2020. The Defendant missed both deadlines, prompting counsel in the Arkansas case and in the D.C. Superior Court case to move for contempt. If the Defendant were found to be in contempt, either court could incarcerate the Defendant for his failure to comply with court orders.
The end result, the indictment continued, was “[t]hese lawsuits forced the Defendant to file his outstanding tax returns for 2017 and 2018,” which Biden filed in February 2020. Legal issues only increased from there because Biden allegedly willfully failed to pay “any of his outstanding tax liability” for 2017 and 2018 ($581,713 and $620,901 due, respectively).
“[I]n each year in which he failed to pay his taxes, the Defendant had sufficient funds available to him to pay some or all of his outstanding taxes when they were due. But he chose not to pay them. Notably, in 2020, well after he had regained his sobriety, and when he finally filed his outstanding 2016, 2017, and 2018 Forms 1040, the Defendant did not direct any payments toward his tax liabilities for each of those years,” documents alleged.
In total, the indictment charged nine counts, most of them for failing to file or willful failure to pay. In some parts of the indictment, Hunter Biden’s own alleged 2018 texts to ex-wife are cited as proof that he knew he had to pay his taxes.
“The wire came back due to insufficient funds–/you know tuitions alimony taxes rent. Jesus,” said one text (bold as it appeared in indictment).
“I have no money [ex-wife]. I’m waiting on a few things. When I can pay the taxes, I will pay the taxes. I’m (sic) the meantime I’m struggling to pay your alimony and all girls expenses,” said another text.
But there was also an evasion of assessment charge specifically connected to the late filed 2018 tax return.
In that return, Biden allegedly falsely categorized personal expenses as “business deductions,” having the effect of “underreport[ing] his income from [his company] Owasco, PC, on line 6 of his 2018 Form 1040 and self-assessed a lower amount of tax due and owing than was accurate.”
The purported “business deductions” were for Biden placing “three women with whom he had romantic or sexual relationships and a fourth woman who was related to one of those” on his company’s payroll and giving them health care benefits, documents said. One of those women was Lunden Roberts, and she “did not perform any work” after being put on the payroll:
Person 1, described above as bringing a paternity suit against the Defendant, who had been engaged in a romantic relationship with the Defendant from 2017 to 2018. The Defendant placed Person 1 on payroll shortly after she moved to Arkansas while she was pregnant with his child. Person 1 did not perform any work after being formally placed on payroll in spring 2018 and had no work-related communication with the Defendant after she was placed on payroll. Person 1 received $22,500 in wages which the Defendant falsely claimed as a business deduction reducing the income to him from Owasco, PC and his individual income taxes.
Hunter Biden was prepared to plead guilty to willful failure to pay his taxes in Delaware to make a felony gun possession while addicted to drugs charge go away, but that plea deal fell apart. After that, David Weiss in August was appointed as special counsel. Then in September, Biden was indicted in Delaware in the gun case.
Read the latest indictment here.
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