CNN has shared what it says are “forensically authenticated” emails gleaned from Hunter Biden’s laptop showing that the Internal Revenue Service, his accountant and others spent years hounding him to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of unpaid taxes.
A 2019 document prepared for Biden by an assistant showed some $559,902 in debt, including a $112,000+ tax lien, $32,655 in taxes owing in 2016 to the IRS and tax authorities in California and Illinois, and over $200,000 owed to the IRS and the District of Columbia in 2017.
In an October 2018 email, Hunter’s accountant urged him to fill out his tax returns as soon as possible to avoid continuing accrual of additional late filing and payment penalties. “Once they are filed, we can negotiate a payment plan with IRS,” Hunter’s CPA wrote, stressing that his client had missed an already extended deadline. Two weeks later, the accountant sent additional emails urging Hunter to file the 2017 returns immediately, and reminding him of a 2015 lien of $158,000.
“IRS has notified the State Department and they will not renew your passport until this is resolved,” the accountant warned.
In another email, a flustered assistant to Hunter informed him that she was having a hard time prioritizing which bills to pay, with Biden responding by telling her to “pay the health care” and pay off his Porsche, and to pay herself $1,500 instead of the promised $3,000 because he simply didn’t have enough income coming in.
Biden also received emails from his bank Wells Fargo, informing him about “insufficient funds” and warnings that his credit card balance was above preset limits.
In a frank admission of a kind that’s unusual for the network, CNN pointed out that Hunter’s tax troubles came about despite his lavish income, including a $50,000-a-month no-show job on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, has been caught on tape bragging about how he stopped a Ukrainian prosecutor’s money laundering investigation into Burisma during his tenure as vice president, and Donald Trump’s attempts to pressure Kiev into restarting the probe ultimately got him impeached in late 2019.
CNN’s reporting on Hunter’s taxes comes as federal investigators hone in on potential criminal charges against the president’s son. Last week, sources told the media that a Department of Justice probe into Hunter Biden had reached a “critical juncture,” and that investigators were weighing possible criminal charges over alleged tax-related crimes and a false statement to authorities in connection with the purchase of a firearm.
The broad-ranging DoJ probe reportedly included focus on Hunter’s foreign business dealings, as well as potential money laundering and violations of campaign finance, tax and foreign lobbying laws. One source told CNN that Hunter’s defense strategy may include pleading innocence on the basis of his raging drug addiction.
Republicans have promised to investigate Biden to the fullest extent possible in the event that they win back the House and Senate in November. Last week, Kentucky GOP Congressman James Comer predicted that the DoJ would soon “act on Hunter Biden.” Comer and others have promised formal probes into Biden amid concerns over the implications of his business dealings with foreign agents for US national security.
Hunter and his father have been implicated in an alleged "pay-to-play" scheme in which the younger Biden would sell access to his powerful father in exchange for cold hard cash. Earlier this month, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre flat out refused to answer questions about these business dealings amid reporting featuring an authenticated voicemail from the president to his son discussing overseas business despite previous assurances by the elder Biden that he had never spoken to his son about this subject.
The contents of Hunter’s laptop were first reported on in October 2020 by the New York Post, but dismissed by other news outlets, and by social media giants Facebook and Twitter, as potential “Russian disinformation” and actively censored it to avoid an impact on the 2020 presidential election. Earlier this year, liberal outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post finally carried out their own “forensic investigations” into the computer, confirming its contents’ authenticity.
The laptop contains tens of thousands of emails, text messages, photos, and videos, featuring not only information on Hunter’s business activities, but loathsome details about his personal life, including an apparent affinity for crack cocaine and prostitutes.