There might finally be enough pieces of the Hunter Biden puzzle for the authorities and Congress to put together the full picture of the legal case against the president’s son. And the next few weeks will play a crucial role in how this convoluted and salacious story ends.
The federal agents who have been investigating Hunter Biden believe that they have unearthed enough evidence to charge him with crimes related to tax fraud and lying during his purchase of a handgun, according to numerous reports. Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, seek to recapture the majority in early November and turn the investigative committees’ attention from the previous president to the current one. The midterm elections will determine whether Republicans get the chance to uncover wider Biden family corruption to go along with possible indictments against Hunter.
Although the Justice Department indicting the son of a sitting president would be a major development, the bigger questions remain whether the DOJ has been considering more significant charges tied to money laundering or foreign lobbying and whether investigators have been looking into the national security implications of Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, especially his association with businessmen linked to Chinese intelligence.
Hunter controversially held a lucrative position on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma while his father was vice president. He also pursued business deals in China and elsewhere during and after his father’s tenure, raking in millions thanks to these associations.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Chris Clark, declared in October that he wanted the Justice Department to conduct a leak investigation in response to stories about his client potentially being charged, arguing, “It is a federal felony for a federal agent to leak information about a grand jury investigation such as this one.”
President Joe Biden said in September that “there’s not a single thing that I’ve observed at all from — that would affect me or the United States relative to my son Hunter.”
It is up to U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the Delaware prosecutor overseeing the case, to decide whether to indict the president’s son. In February 2021, Joe Biden asked all Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys appointed by Trump for their resignations, with Weiss the exception. John Durham was asked to step down as the U.S. attorney for Connecticut but was kept on as special counsel.
Hunter Biden revealed he was under federal investigation in Delaware for his taxes shortly after the 2020 election, saying, “I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.” The Biden transition team said at the time that the president-elect was “deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.”
Representatives for Hunter said earlier this year that he had paid off a roughly $2 million past-due tax bill, reportedly with help from Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris. Paying off the tax bill does not eliminate possible criminality.
The president’s son was also reportedly being scrutinized for potential money laundering, as well as possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Records show Hunter believed some of his Chinese business partners were connected to Chinese intelligence services and that he was intent on avoiding having to register as a foreign lobbyist.
Hunter’s checkered past was put in the spotlight during the 2020 presidential campaign when the New York Post reported on the contents of his laptop. The stories were suppressed by social media companies and dismissed by Joe Biden’s campaign, 51 former intelligence officials, leading Democrats, and many in the media as a Russian disinformation operation without any evidence.
The suppression campaign merely delayed confirmation of the authenticity of the laptop’s contents. In May, Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a former Secret Service agent and a cyberforensics expert, concluded with “100% certainty” that Hunter Biden was responsible for the data on the laptop and that “the data contained on the hard drive is authentic.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) have demanded the Justice Department and FBI launch a full investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop, including the revelation unearthed by the Washington Examiner that Joe Biden apparently unwittingly financed his son’s participation in a Russia-linked escort ring.
Grassley and Johnson, who are both up for reelection in 2022, released a report on the Biden family’s finances in September 2020, and the duo has continued to press the Justice Department on shortcomings in the Hunter Biden investigation, including raising whistleblower concerns. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. James Comer (R-KY) are expected to be the chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, respectively, if Republicans win back the majority, and both have vowed to ramp up their investigations into Hunter Biden if they hold the gavel.
Hunter’s .38-caliber revolver was thrown in the trash outside of a Janssen’s Market location near a Wilmington, Delaware, high school in October 2018 by his sister-in-law Hallie Biden, with whom he was in a romantic relationship. He berated Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother Beau, after police responded, and he accused her of ruining his life.
The president’s son had bought the handgun from StarQuest Shooters in Delaware just a couple of days before it was tossed in the garbage. Copies of Hunter Biden’s Firearms Transaction Record dated Oct. 12, 2018, showed Hunter falsely responded “no” to a question on the transaction record that asked, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
Lying on the firearms form can be a felony. The Government Accountability Office reported in September 2018 that prosecutions for lying on a gun form are rare but do happen.
Hunter Biden and his family have publicly discussed his history of drug abuse, and his memoir, Beautiful Things, discussed his illegal drug use before, during, and after the gun purchase time frame. The president’s son wrote, “I had returned [to the East Coast] that fall of 2018, after my most recent relapse in California, with hope of getting clean through a new therapy and reconciling with Hallie. Neither happened.”
His laptop hard drive also contained extensive evidence of illegal drug use. The president’s son’s gun purchase came five years after he was discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine.
“I’m proud of my son. This is a kid who got — not a kid, he’s a grown man — who got hooked on, like many families have had happen, who got hooked on drugs. He’s overcome that. He’s established a new life. I’m confident that what he says and does are consistent with what happens,” Joe Biden told CNN in October. “For example, he wrote a book about his problems, and he was straightforward about it. I’m proud of him. He came along and said, by the way, this thing about a gun, I didn’t know anything about it, but it turns out when he made an application to purchase a gun, what happened was, I guess you get asked — I don’t guess, you get asked the question are you on drugs or use drugs and he said no, and he wrote about saying no in his book. So I have great confidence in my son. I love him.”
Hunter Biden did not mention the gun purchase in his book.
Investigators have likely also scrutinized Hunter Biden’s business partnership with former CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming and his top lieutenant Patrick Ho during a time frame the Chinese Communist Party-linked company pursued business opportunities in the United States and around the world.
Ye has since disappeared in China after Chinese state media linked him to a corruption case in 2018, which led CEFC to go bankrupt. Ho was sentenced to three years in prison in March 2019 for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The case against Ho revealed that some evidence had been obtained through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Grassley and Johnson have accused the Justice Department of giving them the run-around in response to their requests for all intelligence records tied to Chinese government-connected foreign nationals who had business dealings with Hunter Biden.
The first call Ho made after his arrest in 2017 was to James Biden, who is Hunter Biden’s uncle and Joe Biden’s brother. James Biden has said he thought Ho’s call was intended for Hunter Biden, who struck a $1 million legal retainer agreement with Ho following his arrest.
Hunter Biden referred to Ho as the “f***ing spy chief of China” in a 47-minute recording dated May 11, 2018.
Joe Biden claimed during the October 2020 debate that “my son has not made money” in China, but Hunter and James Biden received millions of dollars from Chinese businessmen.
Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden, went to the FBI in October 2020 to detail the Biden family’s efforts to do business in China. Bobulinski released a trove of messages in October 2020 that showed the pair discussing business meetings involving CEFC in 2017. Hunter Biden said in one of the messages to Bobulinski that they needed to be careful not to engage in any activities that would require them to register as foreign agents.
Bobulinski said he met with Joe Biden in May 2017 and that the future president was aware of the efforts by his son and brother to set up Chinese ventures, but Joe Biden has denied any such knowledge, implausibly claiming that “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” Bobulinski has said that the “Big Guy” in a May 2017 message is a reference to Joe Biden.
Whistleblower allegations emerged this summer that FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment in August 2020 that was used by FBI headquarters to mislabel accurate information about Hunter Biden as disinformation, according to disclosures made public by Grassley. Whistleblowers also said Timothy Thibault, the now-former FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, shut down a line of inquiry into Hunter Biden in October 2020 despite the fact that some of the details were known to be true at the time.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said he found these whistleblower allegations “deeply troubling” when asked about them in early August.
Grassley has said the Justice Department and FBI investigation into Hunter Biden may now be hobbled because of the actions taken inside the bureau to limit the inquiry.
Grassley and Johnson sent a May letter to Weiss asking about possible conflicts of interest and the existence of recusals within the Justice Department, pressing the federal prosecutor on whether he was being properly supported by Main Justice, and inquiring about what steps he had taken during his investigation, including whether he had issued grand jury subpoenas related to Hunter Biden’s Chinese business dealings.
DOJ headquarters was clearly alerted to the letter because it was Main Justice, not Weiss, that responded to Grassley and Johnson, denying most of their requests for information.
Then-Attorney General William Barr rejected the idea of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden in December 2020, but he now says Attorney General Merrick Garland should grant those powers to Weiss.
Senate Republicans have said Weiss must be given special counsel protections and authorities, and House Republicans called upon Garland to appoint a special counsel.
“He is supervising the investigation,” Garland said of Weiss in April during a Senate hearing. “There will not be interference of any political or improper kind.”
Garland added, “I’m quite comfortable with the United States attorney for that district continuing in the role that he is playing,” when asked if a special counsel is needed.
Jerry Dunleavy is a Justice Department reporter for the Washington Examiner.
