Federal agents investigating President Biden’s son Hunter have gathered what they believe is enough evidence to charge him with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase, according to people familiar with the case. The next step it is up to the U.S. attorney in Delaware, a holdover from the Trump administration, to decide whether to file those charges, these people said.
The investigation into Hunter Biden began in 2018 and became a central focus of then-President Donald Trump during his unsuccessful re-election effort in 2020. The investigation initially focused on Hunter Biden’s finances related to business ties to abroad and consulting work. Over time, multi-agency investigators focused closely on whether he failed to report all of his income and whether he lied on gun purchase paperwork in 2018, according to people familiar with the situation, who speak anonymously to discuss a problem. ongoing case
Agents determined months ago that they had assembled a viable criminal case against the younger Biden. But it is ultimately up to Justice Department prosecutors, not agents, to decide whether to file charges in cases where prosecutors believe the evidence is strong enough to lead to a likely conviction at trial.
Given the intense political interest in a criminal investigation involving the son of a sitting president, Attorney General Merrick Garland has made it clear that Delaware United States Attorney David C. Weiss, who was appointed by Trump in late 2017, oversees the case.
Garland has promised there will be no political or improper interference in the Hunter Biden case and has not moved to push Weiss to make a decision, people familiar with the matter said. It’s not uncommon for Justice Department investigations to take years to complete. Justice Department policy would require any criminal prosecution to be approved by the department’s fiscal division.
A spokeswoman for Weiss declined to comment, as did spokespeople for the Justice Department, the FBI and the IRS, the two main investigative agencies.
Asked about the case, Chris Clark, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, accused investigators of leaking information. “It is a federal crime for a federal agent to leak information about a Grand Jury investigation like this,” Clark said in a written statement. “Any agent you cite as a source in your article has apparently committed such a crime. We expect the Department of Justice to diligently investigate and prosecute these bad actors. As is appropriate and legally required, we believe that prosecutors in this case they do so diligently and thoroughly Weighing not only the evidence provided by the officers, but also all the other witnesses in this case, including the defense witnesses. That is the job of prosecutors. They should not be pressured, rushed or criticized to do his job.”
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Any charging decision involving the Biden case is especially difficult because Trump and his allies have made allegations of corruption in Hunter Biden’s business dealings a key line of attack against Democrats both before and after the presidential race of 2020. At the height of the election campaign, Trump allies revealed that the owner of a Delaware computer store had turned over to the FBI a laptop that had apparently belonged to Hunter Biden. Trump and others argued that the laptop data showed evidence of possible illegal and unethical business; Joe Biden and his supporters denounced the efforts as a sham.
In March, The Washington Post reported that two computer security experts had reviewed thousands of emails purportedly from Hunter Biden’s computer and found them to be genuine communications, based on cryptographic signatures from Google and other tech companies. It could not be determined for this article whether the laptop and its contents were helpful in the Justice Department’s investigation.
The Biden investigation has proceeded with relatively little fanfare in recent months amid the much larger and more public Justice Department and FBI probe into whether Trump mishandled classified material at Mar-a-Lago, and a federal investigation independent on efforts to nullify the results of the 2020 election. . Trump and his allies have sharply criticized federal law enforcement in both cases.
Questions about the young Biden’s foreign dealings have long dogged his father’s political life. Trump and his GOP allies specifically cite Hunter Biden’s past work for a Ukrainian gas company while his father was vice president, as well as his business dealings with China, as ethical conflicts. In a July 2019 phone call, Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate both Joe and Hunter Biden, part of a lobbying campaign that led to the first of Trump’s two impeachment trials in Congress.
In December 2020, federal agents attempted to interview the younger Biden, leading him to publicly acknowledge that he was under investigation. “I take this matter very seriously, but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will show that I managed my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors,” Hunter Biden said in a statement at the time. .
Clark, Hunter Biden’s attorney, said in a statement Thursday that he “has had no contact with any federal investigative agent. Therefore, an interpretation of the case by this ‘agent’ is inherently biased, one-sided and Inaccurate. It is unfortunate that law enforcement officers appear to be breaking the law to harm a case against a person who is targeted simply because of their family name.“
Republicans have pressed the Biden administration to appoint a special counsel to take over the investigation into the president’s son, arguing that the step was necessary to ensure public confidence in the outcome of the investigation. Under Justice Department regulations, any special counsel would still answer to the attorney general. Garland chose not to make that appointment, instead keeping the case with Weiss, whose career as a federal prosecutor spans decades and includes violent crimes and white-collar cases.
In the early days of the Biden administration, a Justice Department official said that removing Weiss as U.S. attorney while overseeing the Hunter Biden case would likely cause a major political backlash.
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In April, after White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Biden was “confident that his son did not break the law,” Garland was asked in a Senate hearing about how he is handling the case the Department of Justice.
Weiss “is in charge of this investigation. There will be no political or inappropriate interference of any kind,” Garland responded. “We’re putting the investigation in the hands of a Trump appointee from the previous administration.”
The primary focus of the tax investigation has been whether Hunter Biden failed to declare income related to his various businesses, including overseas. The weapons documentation portion of the investigation comes from 2018, a time period when Hunter Biden, by his own account, was smoking crack cocaine.
In October of that year, Biden bought a gun, filling out a federal form in which he allegedly answered “no” to the question of whether he was “an illegal user or addict of marijuana or any depressant, stimulant drug or narcotic. or any other controlled substance?”
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According to a book Hunter Biden later wrote about his struggles with substance abuse, he was using drugs that year.
Prosecutions for false statements about Gun buybacks are relatively rare, but they do happen. In the fiscal year Hunter Biden bought that gun, Justice Department records show prosecutors received 478 citations for lying on forms. Of those, charges were filed in 298 cases, or about 60 percent of the time.
Federal agents refer to these cases as “lie and buy.” Historically, prosecutors have great discretion in deciding what federal resources are worth.
“A prosecutor may say he has bigger fish to catch, or he may decide to seek a plea deal,” said Joseph G. Green, a retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent. “As agents, we would always include as many charges as we can, but ultimately it’s up to the prosecutor to decide which ones to file.”
Ann E. Marimow contributed to this report.