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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   33020 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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In an interesting development in US politics, Hunter Biden has apparently reached an agreement with the Justice Department that will allow him to avoid felony firearms and tax charges in exchange for pleading guilty to two misdemeanors.

Hunter Biden Reaches Deal to Plead Guilty to Misdemeanor Tax Charges

Hunter Biden agreed with the Justice Department on Tuesday to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and accept terms that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a separate gun charge, a big step toward ending a long-running and politically explosive investigation into the finances, drug use and international business dealings of President Biden’s troubled son.

Under a deal hashed out with a federal prosecutor who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time and be sentenced to probation.

The Justice Department also charged Mr. Biden but, under what is known as a pretrial diversion agreement, said it would not prosecute him in connection with his purchase of a handgun in 2018 during a period when he was using drugs. The deal is contingent on Mr. Biden remaining drug-free for 24 months and agreeing never to own a firearm again

Right-wing political factions are upset with this agreement. I believe the core argument is best exemplified by Andrew McCarthy at the National Review

The Intentionally Provocative Hunter Biden Plea Deal

Under Justice Department policy, even with a plea agreement, the government is supposed to seek a plea to the “most serious,” readily provable “offense that is consistent with the nature and full extent of the defendant’s conduct.” Hunter Biden committed tax offenses that could have been charged as evasion, which is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment for each count. Furthermore, he made a false statement that enabled him to obtain a firearm; that’s a ten-year felony under legislation pushed through by then-senator Joe Biden to show how very serious Democrats are about gun crime.

Biden apologists have tried to minimize that transaction as a “lie and try” case, which they say is often not prosecuted. But such non-prosecution (though it shouldn’t happen) occurs because of what you’d infer from the “try” part — i.e., the liar got caught and failed to obtain the gun. Hunter’s case, to the contrary, is a lie and succeed case. He got the gun. What’s more, he was then seen playing with it while cavorting with an “escort” (see the New York Post’s pictorial, if you’ve got the stomach for it). Shortly afterwards, he and his then-paramour — Hallie Biden, the widow of his older brother — managed to lose the gun near a school (it was later found by someone else).

Those are the kinds of gun cases that get charged by the Justice Department even if the suspect hasn’t, in addition, committed tax felonies by dodging taxes on the millions of dollars he was paid, apparently for being named Biden.

I have seen arguments and counter-arguments flying around the internet about the appropriateness of this legal action. Those in favor argue that any non-violent offender would be offered a lenient deal. Those arguing against reference past cases for tax crimes and paperwork-related firearms offenses that resulted in far more grievous punishments. In both cases, the other side argues that since the facts of the cases do not map 100% perfectly to this one, they cannot be used as precedent for deciding the fairness of this action.

What do you think? Was this action fair, in an ethical sense? Was this action within precedent, and if so, what other historical actions are you using as your guideposts? Do you think the choice to offer pretrial diversion was politically motivated? I'm interested to hear your opinions.

This is starting with the wrong picture.

Per the Whistleblower testimony (which really needs to be read in detail) the non political appointees that routinely handle tax evasion cases wanted to go after Hunter on more serious tax evasion charges. This is true both of the agents investigating AND the staff level attorneys who review the agent’s recommendation. However, political appointees routinely blocked both their investigation and ultimately precluded them from charging Hunter on these more serious charges. Thus, it appears Hunter got a sweetheart deal before we even get to the charges here.

So it is sweetheart deal on top of sweetheart deal.

Edit—

It is important to note that in addition to the incremental tax issues, the government may have purposefully let other crimes (eg FARA) be statute limited. So you could’ve hit him with multiple tax fraud charges, FARA, gun charges, drug charges (which he evidently used as tender), maybe even bribery.

You could make a colorable case for all of that. Standard practice would be to charge him with all you can and then plea to something that would probably end up with 6-12 months. But here the government is alleged to slow weak charges so they’d fall off giving up leverage they would typically use.

The FARA allegations weren't anywhere near strong enough for the government to prosecute. Having business dealings with foreign interests isn't illegal; it's only when you take the next step of lobbying for these interests without disclosing it. This is where the theory fails, because the evidence of any actual lobbying is weak. The most I've seen from conservative outlets is that he made numerous trips to visit his father while he was involved in these foreign dealings, which, yeah, the guy visited his father. He probably would have visited him regardless of what business he was doing at the time. The defense attorney in that case is going to call every person on the White House visitor log who could have conceivably been in the room with Hunter and Joe on the days in question and they're all going to invariably deny that any lobbying on behalf of foreign interests took place; meanwhile, the prosecution won't be able to put forth a single witness who would be able to testify that it had. This isn't evidence, it's conjecture, and the prosecution would never be able to get this in front of a jury. I'm not familiar with any potential drug charges so maybe you could clue me in on those.

By the way, I’ve seen enough of Garland over the last two years that he needs to be impeached.

Could they have actually stopped it? Couldn’t Biden have just done a recess appointment?

The Democrats controlled the Senate so a recess appointment wouldn't have been necessary.

Republicans that voted to confirm him in the first place are all suspect, IMO. Even aside from his prior career, the Supreme Court situation was pretty obviously going to lead him having an axe to grind against political enemies, and he has not disappointed on that front. I can't even imagine Reagan or Bush following up on the Bork confirmation hearings by appointing him Attorney General, but if they did try it, there's zero chance that Democrats would have gone along with it.

That is a great point. It would be difficult for Garland to be impartial given that his dreams were dashed by the Republicans.

Then again, doesn't that show that he wasn't fit to be a Supreme Court justice? If he can't be impartial because he has an axe to grind here, how would he have managed on the bench trying cases leaning one way or the other politically?

A relevant fact that I don't think has been established is what the typical outcome is for a drug user who says "no" to question six on form 4437 (which asks if the purchaser is "an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana or any depressant or stimulant drug") but isn't charged with other crimes. The fighting has mostly been Democrats suggesting that since felons who "try & lie" on form 4437 aren't prosecuted it's unusual for Hunter to be prosecuted and Republicans rebutting them and saying that Hunter is different since he actually got the gun where "try & lie" felons are denied. This still leaves the question unanswered of what is the typical outcome is for a drug user who lies and successfully obtains a gun but isn't charged with other drug-related or violent crimes. Can anyone provide examples of someone who did a similar crime and compare what penalties they faced?

The Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee put forth an interesting example of a tax case that closely fits what Hunter did. Steven E. Smiff was a Florida Lawyer who didn't file taxes from 1997-2011 for the ~8 million in profits from his law firm. He paid the back taxes and got thirteen months in prison. Hunter didn't pay taxes for two years on roughly three million, paid the money back, and got two years probation in conjunction with the gun crime. Hunter's offense seems less severe since it was 1/7th of the years and 1/3 of the money, but maybe he should have done four or five months for failing to pay. It does look like Hunter got off a bit light for the tax stuff, but if that's the closest comparison a Republican congressional research team can find then the five years jail per count that The National Review suggests was never on the table.

Except the whistleblower is alleging that it wasn’t just failure to pay taxes but willfully evasion. The DOJ then agreed to a plea wherein Hunter would plea him i failure to pay. So it appears the cases are not identical; what Hunter did was worse.

You're going to have to elaborate on this, because he was charged with willful nonpayment.

And note that the indictment and plea deal were announced simultaneously, which implies he agreed to plead to a lesser crime in order to avoid greater charges. I am not sure there is a substantive difference between that and charging the greater crime and subsequently accepting a plea to the lesser charge.

You do realize this shouldn’t really be mitigating? Hunter, due to his political connections, got a gift. Absent that gift it appears Hunter cannot repay. Why should Hunter’s political connections change whether he did something wrong and should be punished?

This is putting aside that Hunter may have willfully evaded declaring a bunch of income (ie not just failure to pay but attempted to conceal)

Section 7203

Can anyone provide examples of someone who did a similar crime and compare what penalties they faced?

Most publicized cases tend to involve a lot more firearms and a lot more drugs, but cases do happen and can result in lengthy sentences. Some of those have further moron taxes than present for even Hunter Biden, but Hunter's not exactly off the moron tax list himself.

If anyone wants the statistics, this report says (on pg 24) that of the 7373 §2K2.1 convictions in the 2021 year, 5.3% (or 347) were for prohibited persons where the prohibition was due to unlawful drug use. Unfortunately, looking the other direction -- how many people who are prohibited persons related to drug usage get caught and sentenced -- is an unknown and probably unknowable thing.

So going through those examples

  1. Paul Letts was alleged to have let people cook meth in RV's on his property in exchange for some of the meth. The police raided his property and found 55 guns, equipment for manufacturing meth, possession amounts of meth and Letts later tested positive for Meth. He didn't plead guilty and lost his trial in two days, he had a criminal history and got 57 months in jail.

  2. Suzanne Wilcox pled guilty after being found at a traffic stop to have drug paraphernalia and a newly purchased handgun. She got time served (five months) and two years probation

  3. Isca Johnson was found to have marijuana and a gun in his home, he got 21 months jail. This one is weird because it says he was part of a joint state federal operation called "Crime Drivers" which targeted people with warrants out for violent crime, but it doesn't say anything about his criminal history.

  4. Darion Hayne had a [Edit:] 5.7 x 28mm handgun and 5.4g of Marijuana, he got five years probation with six months home confinement.

  5. Your fifth link goes to the Isca Johnson one again so I'll add one Sauma Brata Deb got 12 months for illegally posessing two guns.

So just looking at these cases the most lenient sentences available to a normal drug user who illegally possesses a single gun are six month prison or home confinement and two to five years parole. In that context it looks like Hunter did better then a normal person would, but only by a small amount because the penalties for this crime are normally quite small.

If lying on the Form 4473 were the only crime he committed, sure. But it's not even the only gun he unlawfully possessed: it was a .38 revolver, while some of the photos from the Laptop That Wasn't show (in addition to way too much of Hunter for me to want to link directly or see again) Hunter holding a semi-automatic. And then there's the crack possession, the tax fraud, the likely FARA violations, the regular hiring of prostitutes/escorts (state-law only).

Hence my comments about being on the moron tax list himself.

This one is weird because it says he was part of a joint state federal operation called "Crime Drivers" which targeted people with warrants out for violent crime, but it doesn't say anything about his criminal history.

Jodeci Young from the same charging burst was in a similar boat; it's not clear if they were never convicted or if it was just never reported. Lot of possible explanations, unfortunately, both for why they were bundled in and for why they may have had different outcomes.

It should be noted that Hunter’s gun ended up in a school trash can. That makes this…a bit worse

It was not a school trash can, but a trash can within 1,000 feet of a school zone. That is a felony under the GFCZA if Hunter Biden does not have a Delaware carry permit.

Do we have any evidence on that in either direction?

Isn't the claim there that Hallie Biden threw it in the trash (of a supermarket near a school) because she was worried he would kill himself? We have a text exchange from the laptop that sort of supports that. What would they charge Hunter with in that instance?

The larger point was the general carelessness of handling the gun. This wasn’t the case of a guy who smoked weed and had a gun locked up in his closet in a gun safe.

I couldn't find mug shots for all of those with any certainty, but all the faces I could find were Black. Maybe what we're seeing here is... Garden variety racism and wealth? Wouldn't that be funny if we worked our way back around.

Or the others were involved in more serious crimes and this was the easiest way to get them off the streets and/or they had much worse prior records.

Darion Hayne had a 28mm handgun and 5.4g of Marijuana, he got five years probation with six months home confinement.

...bolded for WTF, mate. Is Darion Hayne a combat cyborg? Is this a typo for 2 9mm handguns?

[EDIT] ...oooooh, he had a 5.7x28mm handgun. that makes more sense.

MAIN POINT OF SELLING BELGIAN FIVE SEVEN PISTOL IS EXTREME PRICE OF WEAPON AND CARTRIDGE.

That would be a tokarev, I think, which is dimly hilarious because it’s unlikely he bought that off the shelf at a gun shop. I mean maybe a collector pawned their tokarev?

Ah, got the numbers reversed.

It is being reported that the US Attorney was prevented from filing charges by the Biden DOJ / the IRS personal were stopped from fully investigating what they wanted to because of Biden / government officials tipped off Hunter prior to searches.

Source?

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/irs-whistleblowers-accuse-doj-fbi-irs-of-interfering-with-hunter-biden-tax-probe/

FBI whistleblower claims. Freebeacon or similar will be carrying that sort of thing. It'll also be the source of things like the IRS recommended felony prosecution but the DOJ did not do that.

The exaggerations about the possible 10 year sentence for the lying on a gun form or 5 years for tax evasion is silly. That is simply not how federal sentences work. Sentences for crimes intentionally vary wildly based on how many prior offenses the criminal has. A level 12 offense will have 10 months for a first time offender, but up to 37 for a serial criminal. Almost all the reasonable outcomes for Hunter should have been in the 6-14 month sentence range.

So getting off with zero is clearly a huge favor to him. But he was never facing decades in prison.

I disagree with your reduction to 6, but all the rest is correct.

However, there is also the group rule where the two tax offenses are one group, and the weapon charge is another.

I'm not sure 18 USC 922 (g) is the right charge: the false statement is 18 USC 922 (a) (6) and really the thing feds go after if they have the paperwork in hand. 992 (g) is more for someone who's prohibited and is found with a gun, and didn't get it through an FFL. 992 (a) (6) starts at an offense level of 14, and while it's still potentially subject to the offense-level-6 drop if solely used for lawful sporting purposes.

that’s a ten-year felony

The media loves to look at the longest conceivable sentence for a crime and pretend that it is the norm. The other day, the lawyer for Kodak Black was complaining that his client got three years for the same crime. But of course his crime involved four guns, not one, and Kodak Black has a lengthy arrest record, including sexual assaults. And he has previously violated probation. So, if he is any measure, no it would not be normal for someone in Hunter Biden's shoes to get 10 years.

The phrase "for protecting them, by a mock trial" keeps going through my mind in connection with this. Though to be fair Hunter as far as I know has committed no murders. Like the Trump prosecution, the Hunter Biden deal is clearly political no matter how easy it is to "steelman" a case for it not being so.

Goodness. I didn’t realize this idiot was still working his way through the legal system.

I’m not opposed to pretrial diversion as part of a larger bargain. Still not a good look. I tend to agree with this take: if lying about drugs isn’t worth prosecuting here, maybe it shouldn’t be asked at all.

Interested in hearing what our resident lawyers have to say about the likelihood of conviction on these charges. How hard would it be to actually prove he was high in the two weeks he had the gun? Any political motivation is going to take a back seat to that calculus.

Interested in hearing what our resident lawyers have to say about the likelihood of conviction on these charges. How hard would it be to actually prove he was high in the two weeks he had the gun?

I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, but the law isn't about owning a firearm as a drug user, but lying on this form, which asks:

Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?

The ATF's older published rule is that :

Moreover, under the proposed definition, a person must be a current user of a controlled substance to be prohibited by the GCA from acquiring or possessing firearms. Although there is no statutory definition of current use, applicable case law indicates that a person need not have been using drugs at the precise moment that he or she acquired or possessed a firearm to be under firearms disabilities with respect to acquiring or possessing a firearm as an unlawful user of a controlled substance...

The proposed definition is also consistent with the definition of ‘‘current drug user’’ applied by the Department of Labor in its administration of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101–12213. Regulations issued pursuant to the ADA indicate that the term ‘‘current user’’ is not intended to be limited to the use of drugs on a particular day, or within a matter of days or weeks before, but rather that the unlawful use occurred recently enough to indicate that the individual is actively engaged in such conduct.

Similarly, the definition of ‘‘addicted to any controlled substance’’ is based on Federal law, 21 U.S.C. § 802, and defines an ‘‘addict’’ as an individual who uses any narcotic drug and who has lost the power of self- control with respect to the use of the narcotic drug.

More recent guidance is even more explicit:

If there is evidence that an individual admits, within the past 12 months, to using or possessing a controlled substance, the federal drug prohibition 922(g)(3) would apply. Admission of use/possession of a controlled substance may often be found within the narrative of a criminal incident report. An admission of drug use/possession does not have to result in a drug arrest to be disqualifying.

Individuals admitting to illegal use/possession of a controlled substance are prohibited from the receipt/possession of a firearm for one year from the date of admission. It should be noted this must be a self-admission. If a second party states the controlled substance belongs to another subject, either would be disqualified based solely on that statement.

Hunter bought the gun Oct. 12, 2018, and Hallie threw it in the trash Oct. 23, 2018. Hunter's book details on-and-off cocaine use from at least his dismissal from the Navy Reserve until early 2019, but particularly emphasizes 2018 as "I was smoking crack every 15 minutes" after falling off the wagon in spring of that year.

It's not quite a signed confession, but there's few easier cases to prove than when someone literally writes a book about it followed by an interview tour.

Sorry, I realized that it was about lying on the form rather than use. My thought was that he had a plausible defense of being on the wagon during, say, that month. Thank you for pointing me to the one-year limit.

It does in fact sound like this should have been open-and-shut.

which is what he is getting anyway.

As a small nitpick, the firearm charge is being put through a pretrial diversion program.

The probation is for the tax charges.

I am not licensed to practice law, but my discussions with a few lawyers seem to suggest that pretrial diversion for a federal firearms charge is fairly rare, compared to probation or other penalties.

He's getting probation for other, unrelated crimes that he unquestionably committed. The guidelines for multiple counts in the same sentencing are a mess, but I think it'd end up adding two or four offense levels, depending on how you do the math.

Just these three matters alone get him to Zone B, where the sentencing guidelines hold that "the court may impose probation only if it imposes a condition or combination of conditions requiring a period of community confinement, home detention, or intermittent confinement sufficient to satisfy the minimum term of imprisonment specified in the guideline range."

And then there's the other gun we have photographic evidence that he possessed illegally, that possessing the firearm and lying on the form are different violations of law, the piles of cocaine, the potential FARA violations, so on.

Those in favor argue that any non-violent offender would be offered a lenient deal.

Is that true? Would a random citizen from Sticks, IA get a "diversion program" if he violated firearms laws, while on drugs, didn't pay taxes for several years and also has been involved in a million-sized international bribery scheme, and there were actual multiple witnesses and documents confirming it? Or would he been sent to jail for many years? "Non-violent" alone doesn't cut it - Bernie Madoff didn't hurt a fly, violently, as far as we know it. If the answer is the latter, then we have a problem. We have a two-tier justice system, which is extremely hardcore and unforgiving for plebes and soft and gentle for patricians.

the other side argues that since the facts of the cases do not map 100% perfectly to this one

No two cases ever map 100%. Still, a competent and experienced person would be able to estimate what the prosecution usually requests in similar cases - and, in fact, there are multiple guidelines and procedures about establishing the punishment for such cases. There's certain wiggle room when it comes to plea bargaining, but these things are not arbitrary.

Was this action fair, in an ethical sense?

Absolutely not. Biden got a sweatheart deal, and he got it explicitly and brazenly, to show us all - again and again - that the elites are above the law, and that even is the case where the crimes are known, well documented and undeniable, the Deep State would protect their own and ensure there's no consequences for anything, and they wouldn't even hide it too much, because what we're gonna do? Tweet harder about it? Produce more memes? Note that the main scandal - the bribery schemes - aren't even touched. We had multi-year multi-million hyper-hyped investigation of Trump over much flimsier evidence. Here all the efforts of the law enforcement so far have been directed to burying the case (and insinuating those that want to investigate are foreign agents, and getting them silenced) rather than investigating it. It's not even in the same universe with "ethical" or "fair".

Was this action within precedent

Mostly, yes. There is a long history of political favoritism and elites getting away with all sorts of criminal behavior. We like to pretend we try to do better, usually, but in this case all pretenses are being dropped and the corruption is shoved in our faces with all its naked ugliness. Half of the country is cheering it, because it's their team is getting away with it, so they "owned" the other side. The other half is seething helplessly, suffering what they must and being unable to change anything. This is a completely routine thing for many countries and times, and happened in the US before. It's not a healthy state for the society, it's not where any ethical person wants the society to be, it's likely to end badly and cost us a lot, but yes, it's "within precedent", just as crime and corruption are within precedent - Bidens did not invent either.

Do you think the choice to offer pretrial diversion was politically motivated?

There's an Arab (supposedly) parable: One asked a camel: "Why your neck is so crooked?" and the camel answered: "What in me isn't crooked?"

Of course it's politically motivated. Everything around Bidens is politically motivated. The question is what policy it reflects. The current development reflects the policy of "the elites are above the law". It could reflect the policy of "there are things that are too much even for a prince" (not likely, but could happen in theory) or even "the law applies equally to everybody" (rrrrriiiiight...) but it obviously didn't happen.

More:

https://hotair.com//ed-morrissey/2023/06/23/too-bad-to-check-by-doj-guess-who-paid-for-hunters-hookers-n560029

United States Attorney Weiss was present for the meeting. He surprised us by telling us on the charges, quote: “I’m not the deciding official on whether charges are filed,” unquote. He then shocked us with the earth-shattering news that the Biden-appointed D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves would not allow him to charge in his district.

It's not "there's no case" or "it's hard to prove". It's "I'm not letting you to charge my tribe in my district". Please tell me where I can get such a deal - is there a US Attorney that would block prosecutors from charging me with anything in their district? Is it the deal available to every citizen?

There's more:

https://nypost.com/2023/06/22/hunter-biden-deducted-payments-to-prostitute-sex-club-from-his-taxes-whistleblower/ Hunter Biden illegally deducted tens of thousands of dollars in payments made to a prostitute and a sex club from his taxes, according to bombshell IRS whistleblower testimony to Congress released on Thursday.

This is not "forgot to submit tax return". This is deliberate tax fraud. The whole tax system in the US resides on the premise that most tax returns are accepted as is, but if you cheat, you get your ass kicked. Not just pay what you owed - then it wouldn't be any incentive not to cheat, worst thing you're back to zero - but actually made to feel the pain. And here it's not some 20 bucks difference - it's over $100K. And extremely brazen, of course, as everything Bidens do - he didn't just deduct some questionable business expenses, he deducted his expenses on prostitutes. Of course, no consequences - but not only that, people are coming out of the woodwork and defend him. Tribal loyalty is a hell of a drug.

I’ve seen on other websites people repeating the assertion “the irs only cares if they get their money back; they don’t proceed on fraud otherwise.” I wonder what media source sent out that nonsense that the blue tribe is parroting.

I don't think it requires any special source. When dealing with elite Democrats, that's exactly what is happening, so they are right - the most IRS would do is ask for the money back, and even that only if those pesky reporters find out. Of course, when dealing with regular proles, the situation would be different, but it's not something that is useful for the cause to remember, so it's not remembered.

You're presenting it as if IRS was recommending the lenient treatment of Biden, which the DOJ had no alternative but to agree to. But this is the opposite from the truth - IRS whistleblowers suggest they wanted to prosecute, and the DOJ blocked them. For example:

https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1671931171071049733 House Ways & Means Chair Jason Smith details multiple felony charges whistleblowers say the IRS recommended against Hunter Biden, covering "$2.2 million in unreported tax on global income...from Ukraine, Romania, and China."

https://twitter.com/RepMalliotakis/status/1671908832463708160 @WaysandMeansGOP just released the testimony of IRS whistleblowers who investigated Hunter Biden for tax evasion on money received from foreign entities. Despite thousands of pages of evidence, they were stonewalled & retaliated against after recommending prosecution.

Can a random Joe (not Biden) get DOJ to sanction IRS investigators that recommend to prosecute him? Stupid question, I know.

https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1671933079449903104 According to IRS whistleblowers, DOJ tipped off Hunter Biden about a search of his storage unit, prohibited investigators from executing a warrant on Joe Biden's guest house, and repeatedly prohibited charges from being brought against Hunter Biden.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/06/22/bombshell-new-information-on-hunter-biden-investigation-says-the-fix-was-in-merrick-garland-directly-implicated-n765394 New Info Shows DOJ Warned Hunter Biden's Lawyers of Upcoming Searches, Refused to Allow US Attorney to File Felony Charges

Can I get a tip off from DOJ if IRS is going to investigate me, to prohibit them from executing searches in my properties and to block any charges against me? Is this service available to every citizen, and if so, what's the phone number I should be calling? Stupid question, I know.

So there's no use to pretend that the situation is just "Biden has good lawyers, just as any rich man would, and so he could pay off the debt". The situation is that the top of the DOJ is actively blocking the investigation, and actively retaliating against the agents that do not play for the Biden team - to the point that they as so pissed off they go to complain to the Congress - which I can't imagine is a winning career move, and probably would kill any hope for any promotion and permanently place them on every blacklist there exists within the Deep State.

To your Bernie Madoff example, if he'd paid back all the people who were conned, yes, he would have probably skated

Martin Shkreli made money for all his investors and was still charged and served jail time.

Well yes, because he delighted in being on front page news as an asshole.

That is not a good point in the DOJ's favor...

Besides that, hard to square with Hunter who…well seems to be a giant asshole. Look at his laptop. Or how he treats his daughter Navy.

There does not seem to be a provable bribery case to me, at least not one under US law. The US bribery statutes are construed quite narrowly, requiring prosecutors to prove a specific official act was undertaken in exchange for money.

Bribery is tough, yes, but the DOJ's newfangled love to criminalize FARA violations with regard to Trumpy people would make for a fairly easy Hunter case. The difference in the level of caring/pretending to care about technical violations of the law is pretty stark. Compared to the Flynn or Ted Stevens level of vigilance on silly charges.

FARA is an idiotic and shameful law, but if taken seriously, Biden has dozens of FARA violations with all the documentation and witnesses. But of course, everybody realizes FARA is nothing but a weapon to prosecute the opposition, nobody ever in the DOJ seriously treats it as a neutral law applicable to everybody equally.

The whistleblower alleged DOJ purposefully let the statutes run.

If true, it is pretty damning. The whistleblower seems to have receipts and was testifying under oath so these accusations must be taken seriously. The house does need to investigate further.

On the other hand, part of the reason the DOJ is so interested in criminalizing technical violations when trump does them is because trump tends to have terrible lawyers.

They wouldn't need have to have good lawyers if DOJ wasn't actively persecuting them. You can say that the innocent people that sit in jail are there because their lawyers weren't that good - and there's truth in it. But the main reason they are there is because somebody prosecuted an innocent person (often - knowingly and deliberately). It's not the lawyers' fault.

Also, given that working for anybody high-level deplorable leads to instant cancellation, you have to be really, really good lawyer for your career to survive this. And why exactly would you need this trouble, if you're a good lawyer anyway and have all the money you could spend?

Trump, Manafort, Flynn, Bannon,.... all have terrible lawyers?

Expanding the theory to think that all right of center populists can't get good representation makes it worse.

Expanding the theory to think that all right of center populists can't get good representation makes it worse.

There's a bit of a chilling effect when there are groups out there pushing to have Trump's lawyers "held responsible" (that is, punished) for representing him. Usually pushing novel legal theories isn't punishable, but for some weird reason, Trump's lawyers do get punished.

The firearms charge is a fairly hard to prove one since it was a false statement on a background check question, and the falsity of the statement is likely ambiguous. In particular the question asks “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” If you took it to trial, the present tense nature of the question could be a problem, as Hunter could make a decent case that his drug use had been in the past, and when he answered "no" he was not at that time an unlawful user or addicted to those substances. He might not win on that, but it's not a slam dunk case.

Hunter published a book in 2019, writing that he was "I was smoking crack every 15 minutes" during the middle of 2018 up til early 2019. And then followed up with a set of publicity interviews repeating the same matters. He submitted the paperwork for October 12th, 2018, and the ATF has taken the position that using or possessing within the past twelve months triggers this law.

So, no, this is about as slam-dunk a case as this particular matter gets, and that's before all of the photographic evidence from the Laptop That Wasn't.

The main thing to note is that Hunter's main advantage was having the money to pay the tax debt. That is where his status and connections distinguish him. I don't know where he got that cash.

Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris loaned him the money to make the tax payment and has apparently been bankrolling his housing and travel for a few years now.

And I'm pretty sure he's not doing it out of charitable reasons. But of course, nobody is interested in investigating that.

"Accused bribe-taker receives money for no special reason from rich lawyer allowing him to escape prosecution and avoid the public airing of alleged tax evasion on hidden payouts from overseas" -- weird is certainly a word for it.

That’s weird. Sorta seems like a gift. Something to look into.

Reading the article, I was thinking this illustrated the difference between playing ball and playing the victim.

I didn’t realize he’d paid the debt. Doing so is really the last word in cooperation. If we want to incentivize that, the cooperator has to get a lighter punishment than the defector.

But the whole point is you need to punish fraud regardless of whether upon being caught you cough up the cash. Most returns aren’t audited. So if you are wealthy you can (1) play audit lottery and (2) cooperate if found out.

Yes, cooperating should be better than further defecting but only marginally.

Did he do fraud? He plead guilty to failure to pay, but not evasion. They're not alleging he set up some illegal shell companies to hide his income, just that he didn't pay what he owed.

The game theory about how to punish attempted fraud vs. late payments seem meaningfully different.

Below is from the whistleblower under oath. Note the whistleblower stated they specifically wanted to charge for evasion; not just failure to pay and that Hunter did in fact evade. Evidently this was agreed to by staff attorneys and it was only when it got to effectively political appointment levels that the charges were rebuked.

And so the way the money worked is there's a document which is the contract between Burisma and Hunter Biden. Those are the two parties. It was for $1 million per year. Of course this was 2014, and it was negotiated in April, so the payments in that year were reduced by the months. So it was $666,000, $83,000 a month he was receiving.

What Hunter Biden did with that is he told Burisma to send that income to Rosemont Seneca Bohai. And then when the money came back to him, he booked it as a loan.

So there's all this machinations of nonsense happening over here in this nominee structure that, "Oh, this is complex, this is complex," and, well, it's not complex, because this is -- it was a taxable event as soon as the income came from Burisma to Hunter Biden. And whatever he did with it after it was really just a scheme to evade taxes for that year.

And to add to it, is that Rosemont Seneca Bohai and Archer, when the money came back to Hunter Biden, they booked that as an expense on their books. So even the two parties didn't treat it the same way.

And then Eric Schwerin realized this and looked into it, and he even told

Hunter Biden on multiple occasions, multiple communications, you need to amend your 2014 return to include the Burisma income. And he never did, and the statute's gone

Correct. His tax fraud scheme is far larger and more complex than the DOJ document indicates. It clearly should have been charged as a felony, and most likely should have been sentenced as a LVL 14 offense (because of the size and complexity elevators). So what should have happened in this case is he'd have 2 level 14 offenses for tax fraud, and one level 12/14 offense for lying on a gun form. That gets you to a lvl 15. Pleading out drops you to 13. But that is still Zone B, so prison time is virtually guaranteed.

That’s ignoring the meth charges, FARA, and transporting hookers across state lines.

Yes that is what he pleaded to but it isn’t uncommon to plead to a lesser crime. It seems the Republicans (and the IRS team that was taken off) seemingly are suggesting there was more income — 8+ million). Whether that is true is I guess TBD.

He also set up a system whereby his compensation from burisma was paid to a controlled partnership but he then tried to claim he received no distributive income but a loan. That is, he created a sham that his own accountant allegedly told him didn’t work.

Seems a bit more than garden variety tax fraud.

It sounds like him being dumber than garden variety tax fraudsters.

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Conspiracy tinfoil hat but seems to me they needed a relief valve. There is a bunch of shit coming out implicating the Biden’s potential influence peddling regime. The FBI and DOJ have come under intense criticism for being partisan. Trump was charged for some crimes that Biden also could be charged for.

Hunter obviously committed felonies and yet nothing was happening. This allows the colorable argument “we aren’t biased — we even went after the president’s son and the president allowed it!” But because it is a slap on the wrist, it allows Hunter to close out some legal issues with no harm. So actually beneficial for the Biden while providing cover that there isn’t two tiers of justice.

If this is meant to disprove “biased enforcement” then I think it’s having the opposite effect. No person can plausibly argue that he’s not getting a kid-glove treatment. The man is plausibly accused of influence peddling, numerous drug charges, possibly a gun charge, and numerous other felonies. These same charges would send most of us to federal prison. He’s been given “diversion” meaning that he won’t go to prison or even get the kind of stringent parole that most plebeian criminals doing the same crimes would get. One of Trumps campaign managers failed to report contacts with Russia and was prosecuted for that. The Emolients Clause was seriously considered because Trump didn’t distance himself enough from his real estate holdings and Trump was accused of foreign influence because his kids were trying to build a single tower in Russia.

I've personally had a similar view. This seems like a way to head off any serious implications by claiming that "he's done his time". With that established, any other investigations can be considered "hounding", or a "witch hunt".

In the Hillary case, they offered immunity to people while investigating, preventing any later prosecutions. I would imagine that this deal will similarly prevent any later prosecution of other malfeasance.

Either that, or it is the traditional "modified limited hangout":

PRESIDENT: You think, you think we want to, want to go this route now? And the – let it hang out, so to speak?

DEAN: Well, it's, it isn't really that –

HALDEMAN: It's a limited hang out.

DEAN: It's a limited hang out.

EHRLICHMAN: It's a modified limited hang out.

PRESIDENT: Well, it's only the questions of the thing hanging out publicly or privately.

On the one hand, I sympathize with Joe for having a failson (it doesn’t seem that Joe’s a bad father, Beau turned out well and Ashley seems fine, I guess) and it’s also likely that any president’s child would get a similar sweetheart deal. If the president intervened, well…I think most people here would do what Joe did for their own children if they were president, I’m pretty sure.

On the other hand, Hunter seemingly can’t stop fucking up and it might well have been good for him and good for Joe to put him away for a few years.

I went to uni with a Biden, and she was a total party girl. An absolute embarrassment, in relative hindsight, but I thought she was really cool at the time. I have zero evidence or knowledge but zero doubt that she did several stints of rehab and an extensive "clean up your image" period. I was sure it was going to blow up for Biden when Obama got elected, but nary a peep since.

I think everything you’ve suggested in this comment is within the bounds of normality by the standards of this conversation.

If someone had asked you five years ago whether Hunter seemed fine, you probably would have answered yes as well. He was of counsel at Boies Schiller, was co-owner of an investment company, had bounced around at various government and private lobbying posts throughout his adult life, and carried on publicly like a respectable member of a political family. But for the laptop incident, that would still be the public view of him.

Being well-connected and having sympathetic political press at your disposal is hugely beneficial for families like the Bidens. The respectability is more of an effect of people not looking too closely than actually being respectable. I would venture a guess that a deeper look at the rest of the Bidens would probably reveal more of Hunter-type behavior than you might expect.

I think you couldn’t be more wrong. Hunter’s drug addiction has been discussed for decades, it was a big rumor in 2008. I googled his name and one of the first results was a CNN article from 2014 about Hunter being kicked out of the Navy Reserve for testing positive for cocaine. His shady lobbying activities were a big deal in the 2008 campaign; Obama ultimately forced him to step down over many of Joe’s protestations. There are stories as far back as the late 1990s about Hunter. Of course a sympathetic press is a boon, but the truth is usually printed somewhere.

and it’s also likely that any president’s child would get a similar sweetheart deal.

Would Trump's children receive such a deal?

We didn't prosecute Trump's son for misdemeanors no one is charged for. We didn't prosecute Biden's son for misdemeanors everyone is charged for. Therefore, equal treatment!

Also pretty funny given the foreign agent registration charges against Trump toadies. Here there is a knock down one for Biden but no charges (even though they relate to the tax fraud).

Above you stated it is not the IRS’ MO to seek felony convictions for tax fraud if after the whole process the taxpayer pays the money. Now you are claiming prosecutions for firearm possessions while lying about being a drug addict are “crazy rare.”

This cannot be from personal experience. The overlap between someone who practices enough million dollar plus tax evasion cases to understand the government’s MO and someone who practices enough drug addicts with guns to understand the government’s MO is zero. They are just fundamentally different practice areas for different clients with different skill sets.

This isn’t even a matter of “general legal analysis of the law.” No you are talking about the law as applied not as written which requires some experience.

So, what is your source for your claims? And what is your counter source (ie did you consider someone on the other side of the argument)? And how did you weigh them against each other? Or did you just make shit up and try to sound authoritative hoping no one would say boo?

"Prosecutions for false statements on gun-purchase forms are relatively rare, but they do happen.

Indeed. And it is one of the biggest DOJ/FBI/ATF failures as an institution given that lying on these forms is one of the primary ways that organized crime obtains weapons. Unsurprisingly, the reason for this failure is also because it would be bad politically for Democrats by highlighting the fact that minority women are, in fact, a huge part of the organized crime process

First, you are citing… H&R Block? Seriously? H&R Block isn’t handling complex tax issues. I

Second, even the H&R Block article doesn’t say what you claim it says. It doesn’t say you need to have both unreported income and attempt to hide during the audit.

What it actually says is the IRS looks for is:

Usually, tax evasion cases on legal-source income start with an audit of the filed tax return. In the audit, the IRS finds errors that the taxpayer knowingly and willingly committed. The error amounts are usually large and occur for several years – showing a pattern of willful evasion.

The article then says the IRS then looks for unreported income and/or dodgy behavior during audit. It notes dodgy behavior helps prove fraud. That is it is evidentiary; not substantive.

None of this supports your case that if the target eventually repays the IRS generally doesn’t pursue criminal charges. Once again, if you don’t punish willfully evading you will get more evading even if in the particular case you ultimately get the cash. In this case, the IRS agents investigating the crime noted that there was plenty of evidence of evasion; specifically (1) Biden set up a complex system to try to treat compensation as a loan but didn’t even properly record it is as such and (2) that Biden’s own accountant told him he needed to change his tax return because he did not properly report the income and Biden choose not to.

So please stop pretending to have expertise when you have none in the subject.

Lawyers for gang leaders describes someone familiar with both those practice areas, but also this information seems like it’s reasonably accessible to the general public. Federal charges relating to firearms acquisition are basically never filed, and the IRS’s MO is pretty widely known.

Maybe for gang leaders, but how frequently do gang people go for tax issues, especially more complex tax fraud issues?

And no, how the IRS handles tax fraud is not widely known. It isn’t a common thing. It really only comes up with celebrities and often the details of how and when repaid are entirely unclear. How often do people know about this when it deals with semi complex issues that even the IRS felt should be a felony until the DOJ allegedly overruled them.

As a non-lawyer, it's fairly well known that lying on the ATF Form 4473 basically never results in charges (as of the 2018 GAO report, at least -- they claim they're trying to increase those numbers). In FY 2017, 8.6M reported transactions led to 112k denials, 12.7k investigations, and 12 prosecutions. Presumably every one of those denials lied about eligibility on that form, barring questionable corner cases like "I forgot I have a felony conviction."

Note that Form 4473 here is the one that asks "Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?" and notes in bold that lying on the form is itself a felony. I most often see this referenced by people in gun circles complaining that the law as-written is not enforced.

As much as I wish we'd actually, like, enforce laws in this country, starting to enforce previously-mostly-ignored laws specifically with people close to politicians is a bit of a bad look. OTOH, I'd really like to see us hold those in positions of power to a higher standard, rather than a lower one.

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  1. You could say the same thing about FARA violations but that changed with Trump.

  2. This case seems much worse than the normal. Here the gun was disposed of next to a school while Hunter and his sister-in-law and lover were both strung out. Therefore the activity seems much worse than normal. Also the perp’s own father sponsored the bill…

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This appears to be everyone's favorite CFAA. I have few comments about this specific case, but I mentally group it with the set of laws that exist but the Powers That Be refuse to enforce because they're likely overbroad. Some of the things it criminalizes absolutely should be valid charges, but, for example, in the 2020 Sandvig case, we finally saw a court rule that violating posted website terms of service is not inherently a criminal act.

In this instance (from my brief skim of the page you mentioned) "logging into a service account with a password that had been both posted publicly and also privately messaged" seems like the sort of borderline case which might allow a competent defense (which admittedly, the Trump family seems to have difficulty fielding) to limit the law's utility for acquiring questionable warrants. IMO we'd do well to make challenges to unenforced laws easier.

If trump was president, quite possibly. I’m 100% sure that bush’s kid would receive such a deal.

Bush's kid couldn't even avoid a driver's license suspension in a drunk driving case.

And this doesn’t seem that out of step. The gun charge is rarely prosecuted and he did pay the money back.

In 1976?

No, 2001

It wasn't even a drunk driving case after all, it was just underaged drinking with a fake ID.

Ha. Guess I missed that.

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