Missing laptops, gun charges and skipped taxes: Hunter Biden’s history of legal wranglings

Congressional Republicans have used Hunter Biden’s legal problems, past drug use, and foreign business dealings to open an impeachment inquiry into the president, despite no evidence supporting any links to the elder Biden, Gustaf Kilander writes

Hunter Biden, walks outside on the day of his appearance in a federal court on gun charges in Wilmington, Delaware, US on 3 October 2023 (REUTERS)

Hunter Biden’s legal woes are expanding. The second son of President Joe Biden was indicted for a second time in connection to his taxes.

The most recent indictment includes allegations that Mr Biden, 53, didn’t pay at least $1.4m in federal taxes that he owed between 2016 and 2019.

The fresh legal filing comes after a plea deal fell apart in July which was supposed to see Mr Biden admitting to some tax and firearm offences in exchange for avoiding prison time.

The initial indictment came in September when prosecutors revealed three counts of lying on an application form to buy a handgun in 2018.

Congressional Republicans have used Mr Biden’s legal problems, past drug use, and foreign business dealings to open an impeachment inquiry into the president, despite no evidence supporting any links to the elder Biden.

This is an outline of Hunter Biden’s legal problems.

The plea deal that fell apart

The plea deal agreed by Mr Biden’s legal team and the Department of Justice in June included Mr Biden being charged with two misdemeanour counts after not paying his taxes on time in 2017 and 2018 and admitting that he had unlawfully had a gun while also using drugs, agreeing to a being treated and monitored for his drug use instead of being charged with a felony and possibly going to jail.

After Republicans argued that Mr Biden had received a "sweetheart deal”, two IRS officials testified before Congress claiming that politics had damaged the investigation to the benefit of Mr Biden.

In August, the deal fell apart after it was studied by District Judge Maryellen Noreika, who called the deal “atypical” and declined to give it the green light.

Indictment number one

The Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, appointed by then-President Donald Trump, began his probe in 2019, looking into claims of criminal actions by Mr Biden.

Trump-appointed Delaware US Attorney David Weiss (USA TODAY NETWORK)

After requesting it, he was appointed as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland on 11 August, handing him more power and the ability to file charges outside his jurisdiction as the US Attorney for Delaware.

While Republicans had already argued that a special counsel should be appointed, they still found reasons to complain about the appointment of Mr Weiss, even though he’s a Trump appointee.

Members of the GOP complained about Mr Weiss taking part in the failed plea deal and that the Department of Justice hadn’t been quick enough in appointing a special counsel, claiming that Mr Weiss would shield Mr Biden from legal action and hamper their own probes.

But on 14 September, prosecutors announced that they had indicted Mr Biden on three counts connected to him buying a Colt Cobra handgun in October 2018, just two months after spending time in rehab, the BBC noted. Two of those counts claimed that Mr Biden lied, stating on a federal gun application form that he wasn’t a drug user, with both counts carrying possible jail time of a decade each.

The third count regarded having a gun while using drugs – a charge carrying a maximum sentence of five years behind bars. Mr Biden pleaded not guilty to all three charges in October.

High-profile lawyer brings aggressive strategy

Mr Biden’s top lawyer for the previous half-decade, Christopher Clark, left the case on 15 August but stated in a court notice that he could be called to testify about the plea agreement in a possible future trial.

Mr Biden then found legal representation in Abbe Lowell, who has previously worked for former President Bill Clinton, as well as Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.

Abbe Lowell has a history of representing high-profile political figures (AP)

Mr Lowell brought a more adversarial tack to Mr Biden’s legal strategy. Mr Biden sued the IRS on 18 September in connection to the testimony to Congress given by two of its investigators.

The lawsuit claims that the investigators “targeted and sought to embarrass” Mr Biden by revealing his confidential tax details. Many private details of Mr Biden’s life came to light after he left a laptop at a repair shop in Delaware in 2019 and didn’t return to collect it. Information on the laptop later reached the public eye.

Mr Biden sued repairman John Paul Mac Isaac for invasion of privacy and the release of private information.

Mr Biden has also sued former Trump attorney and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his former lawyer Robert Costello for illegal hacking and the destruction of his digital privacy.

‘Drugs, escorts, and girlfriends’

Nine fresh tax charges were filed against Mr Biden on 7 December. The legal filing states that he “engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4m in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019”.

The second indictment against Mr Biden includes allegations that he didn’t file or pay his taxes and that he also evaded assessment, with prosecutors claiming that he instead used the money to pay for “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature”.

Mr Biden “individually received more than $7 million in total gross income” between 2016 and October 2020, the indictment states. But Mr Biden “willfully failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 taxes on time, despite having access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes”, the prosecutors add in the legal filing.

After getting a loan from his personal lawyer, Mr Biden paid all his due taxes and fines in 2020.

An inquiry the White House says is ‘based on lies’

Mr Biden has faced claims that he used his name and connection to his father’s career as a senator, vice president, and president to make money and build links to wealthy clients.

Most of the scrutiny has focused on his actions in Ukraine and China during his father’s time as vice president.

Mr Biden became a founding board member at the private equity firm BHR in 2013. The firm is supported by Chinese local governments and large state banks, according to the BBC.

While Mr Biden held a 10 per cent equity stake, lawyer George Mesires has stated that he acquired it after his father’s time as vice president ended in early 2017. Mr Biden left his spot on the board in 2020.

He joined the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2014, making more than $1m annually. He joined the board the same year that Russia annexed Crimea and Russian-supported separatists began fighting the Ukrainian army in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine. The low-grade conflict exploded into an all-out war on 24 February 2022 when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country.

At the time, then-Vice President Biden was working on rooting out corruption in Ukraine, arguing that the top prosecutor in the country, Viktor Shokin, was preventing corruption probs and he organised international leaders to push for his removal – the parliament booted him in 2016.

Republicans have claimed that Mr Shokin was fired because he was looking into Burisma, but there’s no solid evidence that President Biden was connected to his son’s business dealings and he has always said that he didn’t speak about business with his son or his business partners.

But a business partner of Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, testified in a close hearing that Mr Biden often put his father on speakerphone during calls with a number of contacts.

Rep James Comer, who is leading the impeachment inquiry for the House Oversight Committee, has claimed that the then-vice president was made into a brand used to make the Biden family wealthy. But the first impeachment hearing was widely panned as an abysmal failure, with not a single witness claiming to have firsthand evidence of wrongdoing by the president.

Mr Comer pointed to bank records on 9 August, claiming that they revealed that the Biden family and their connections had been paid $20m by Russian, Kazakh, and Ukrainian oligarchs when Joe Biden was vice president.

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry on 13 September, claiming that the Biden family was corrupt, despite a number of Republicans not thinking there was sufficient evidence to launch such a probe, which the White House has argued is “based on lies”.

Hunter Biden appeared on the Moby Pod podcast, published on 8 December.

“They’re trying to destroy a presidency. And so it’s not about me, and in their most base way, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle,” he said about the Republican attacks on him and his family.

Mr Biden met the musician while they both were in addiction recovery and Moby attended a 2021 art show hosted by Mr Biden, Vanity Fair reported at the time.

A paternity suit after Arkansas affair

A DNA test revealed in 2019 that Mr Biden was the father of a child of a woman in Arkansas, something he had strenuously denied. Lunden Alexis Roberts filed a paternity suit against Mr Biden, which was later settled. The now-four-year-old child received an unknown sum of money and several of Mr Biden’s paintings.

Ms Roberts has also ended an earlier attempt to change her daughter’s last name to Biden. In July, President Biden acknowledged having a seventh grandchild for the first time.