by Steven Richards
With the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop having been verified again – this time in court – data extracted from it about the first son’s long-history of tax problems will likely be key to federal prosecutors in Biden’s upcoming tax evasion trial.
The contents of the hard drive, obtained and authenticated by the FBI as early as December 2019 will show the first son’s tax delinquency and unsuccessful efforts to settle his massive debts with the IRS while continuing to spend beyond his means, according to emails obtained from the laptop by Just the News.
Biden was charged in the Central District of California by Department of Justice Special Counsel David Weiss with three felony and six misdemeanor tax offenses late last year for failing to file and pay several tax returns from 2016 to 2019. The first son’s tax problems began in 2014, but the statute of limitations on potential charges for 2014 and 2015 was permitted to expire by incurious federal prosecutors.
The indictment filed in California uses information from those tax years to show a pattern in Biden’s tax avoidance by citing that very first tax return. Though Biden did successfully file a return for 2014, according to the indictment, he failed to report any of his income from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings at the time.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News.
An email discussion three years later, between Hunter Biden and his former partner showed an effort to amend Biden’s 2014 return to reflect the discrepancy between his reported and actual income.
“2013 and 2014 were normal years where your income was based pretty much solely on income from Rosemont Seneca and Boies. In 2014 you joined the Burisma board and we still need to amend your 2014 returns to reflect the unreported Burisma income,” Eric Schwerin wrote to Biden. “That is approximately $400,000 extra so your income in 2014 was closer to $1,247,328.”
The “Boies” referred to is the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, where the younger Biden worked, obtaining lucrative contracts for the firm.
According to the indictment, Hunter Biden also failed to pay his full tax liability in 2015. Though he accurately reported his income in 2015, Biden stopped making periodic payments to the agency in March 2018 for his outstanding tax liability from that year. According to the indictment, he still owed $106,020 to the IRS for 2015 when he halted payments.
Hunter Biden’s failure to pay taxes, the indictment suggests, stems from his profligate spending and “extravagant lifestyle.” Schwerin’s email suggests he was aware of Hunter Biden’s apparent spending problem.
According to Biden’s autobiography “Beautiful Things,” this was during what he characterized as a time where his descent into drugs and alcohol was deep. One book reviewer said it “make(s) one feel exposed to something like degradation porn.”
“Of the $1,300,000 in cash you received you had to pay $751,294 in taxes. Since you couldn’t have lived on approximately $550,000 a year you ‘borrowed’ some money from RSB in advance of payments,” Schwerin wrote, referring to Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca company. “FYI, in 2014 and 2015 you also had expenses beyond the norm because you renovated the house.”
In an earlier April 2016 email, Schwerin told Hunter Biden that he had overdrawn his advances from the RSB company to cover his lifestyle. “For the first 10 months of 2015, you drew down approximately $413,000 from RSB. Therefore you drew down $51,835 more than you should have,” Schwerin wrote. “If RSB counts the first 10 months of Burisma payments as income to you, they should send you the $245,498 – $51,835 or $193,663 which could be put towards your tax liabilities for 2015.”
April 2016 is also when Hunter Biden and his partners recognized that his business entanglements and related tax issues could present a problem, spurred by SEC and Justice Department scrutiny of his partner Devon Archer, who was accused of orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors and a Native American tribal entity.
Archer, and another of Biden’s partners, Jason Galanis, were ultimately charged for the tribal bond fraud scheme the following month. Galanis pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 189 months in prison, and Archer was convicted and sentenced to one year and a day in 2018 in connection with the scheme led by Galanis. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his appeal in January of this year.
“Hunter and I talked briefly this morning and feel good with where we are on the taxes and the narrative regarding that. We will work with our CPA and with Dennis, the RSB CPA, to make sure that Hunter extension filing on Monday reflects income from Burisma and Rosemont Realty in 2015. In addition, we will begin the process of amending the 2014 returns to reflect the Burisma payments from 2014,” Schwerin wrote Biden and Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, in one email.
“Given that I will be out of the country starting Monday we wanted to make sure any time we spend between now and the 20th focused mostly on the main issues that the SEC and DOJ are concerned with – the emails, proof of payments out of RSB and talking points for your proffer – and not let ourselves get overly bogged down in the minutiae of tax issues that might not even come up in the immediate,” he added. “We feel like we have a good story to tell there and have a good handle on that now.”
According to the indictment Hunter Biden either failed to file a return or pay his income tax owed for subsequent years, until 2019. During this period, Biden continued to rake in millions from Burisma and his joint ventures with Chinese businessman Ye Jianming, the founder of CEFC China Energy.
A March 15, 2019, email, one of the latest found on the laptop before the first son left the device at a computer repair shop, shows that Biden continued to spend large sums of money even as he owed thousands of dollars in taxes.
“The bills in orange are of concern. Red is urgent. It will be another week before Burisma money. Please let me know if there is a new plan for paying these bills or if there is more information that you need,” Katie Dodge, an assistant to Biden wrote to him.
Some of the bills listed in the email include a $24,262.99 chase credit card bill, a $10,000 American Express credit card bill, and a $395 insurance bill for a $142,000 Porsche sports car given to him by a Kazakh businessman.
Despite the significant evidence of Hunter Biden’s failure to pay the taxes he owed, what the indictment does leave out is any mention of President Joe Biden’s role in his son’s business dealings, which is also indicated by the very same email evidence the prosecutors possessed.
IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who brought concerns to the House Ways and Means Committee last year about irregularities in the Hunter Biden tax investigation, said that U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ office prevented any thorough investigation of the elder Biden’s role.
The two whistleblowers testified that pursuing evidence related to Joe Biden was “off the table” and that they were prevented from investigating any financial transactions between father and son that would normally be investigated. House Republicans reported that Joe Biden did indeed receive payments from his son and brother on separate occasions, likely funded by foreign money.
“Did your gut tell you that Joe Biden was benefiting in any way from any of Hunter’s criminal proceeds?” Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Penn., asked Shapley last year.
“We were interested in following leads that went to Joe Biden – President Biden – not because he was Vice President, but because in any normal investigation, if you see financial transactions between son and father, and email correspondence going back and forth, text messages, and WhatsApp messages, in every investigation we have ever worked, we would follow those leads to the father,” Shapley replied.
“We’ll never know because we weren’t allowed to investigate…For example, we wanted to go and say, ‘location data – we want to look into that.’ And you know, it just wasn’t supported, and things just fell off the priority list,” he continued.
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Steven Richards is a reporter for Just the News.
