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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
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
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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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?
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There's more:
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.
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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:
Can a random Joe (not Biden) get DOJ to sanction IRS investigators that recommend to prosecute him? Stupid question, I know.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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That’s weird. Sorta seems like a gift. Something to look into.
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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.
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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.
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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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