FEDS HAVE THEIR SIGHTS ON HUNTER
Probe Biden son’s taxes amid shady overseas dealings
President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter revealed Wednesday that he’s under federal investigation for possible tax fraud, with a report saying the Justice Department is examining his overseas business dealings.
Hunter, 50, acknowledged the probe in a statement released by his father’s presidential transition team.
“I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” Hunter Biden said.
“I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”
A laptop belonging to Hunter that he left at a Delaware repair shop — obtained by The Post in October — is part of the probe, two sources told Fox News. The computer contains e-mails outlining a proposed investment fund run by the Biden family with Chinese money.
A statement from “the Biden-Harris Transition” said, “President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.”
The probe began in 2018, sources told Fox News and CNN. Investigators are looking into whether Hunter and his business associates violated tax and money-laundering laws, CNN said.
Fox News reported that the probe is before a grand jury, and involves so-called “Suspicious Activity Reports” from banks flagging transfers of funds from China and other nations.
The probe focused on Hunter’s business dealings in China and other countries and involves transactions with people who raised counterintelligence concerns, CNN said.
The investigation was put on hold during the run-up to the November election due to Justice Department guidelines that prohibit activity that could influence a political race, CNN said. But it has since resumed and is entering a new phase, with the FBI and the IRS issuing subpoenas and seeking interviews, CNN said. In September, Republican senators released a report on Hunter’s business affairs that said he “and his family were involved in a vast financial network that connected them to foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.” Some of those ties “raise criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns,” the report said. Wednesday’s surprise disclosure of the federal probe came exactly one year after FBI agents seized a laptop from a Delaware computer shop whose owner claims it was left there by Hunter and never retrieved.
In October, The Post exclusively revealed that a copy of the computer’s hard drive contained a 2015 e-mail that showed Hunter introduced his father, then vice president, to a top executive at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter was a board member paid a reported $50,000 a month.
Less than a year after the e-mail, the elder Biden pressured officials in Ukraine into firing a top prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. Joe Biden has said he used a $1 billion US loan guarantee as leverage to get Prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin canned because of corruption concerns shared by the European Union. Other e-mails showed Hunter pursued lucrative business deals involving China’s largest private energy company, including one that he described as “interesting for me and my family.” A related e-mail from 2017, after Joe Biden left the White House, detailed a “provisional agreement” to divide ownership in a new investment firm, funded by CEFC China Energy Co., that included a 10 percent share “held by H for the big guy?” A participant in that deal, Tony Bobulinski, later confirmed that “H” stood for Hunter and Joe Biden was “the big guy.” The president-elect has denied being involved with any deal involving a foreign entity.