I’ll admit it. I’m surprised. While it was obviously a slam-dunk case, I did not think that a Delaware jury would convict him. I don’t expect that he will see a day in jail, but the verdict surprises me. I doubt that the verdict moves a single vote for the presidential election, but it’s something.
Here’s where things currently stand:
Hunter Biden has been found guilty of lying about his drug use when buying a gun. After three hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty on all three counts.
Hunter faces a maximum of 25 years in prison for all three counts. An exact date has not been scheduled. The judge has said sentencing dates usually take place within a 120-day period.
Hunter showed little emotion as the guilty verdicts were read out, staring ahead with his arms folded before turning around to hug some of the associates on his legal team.
Hunter Biden used Joe Biden’s appearance at a Sandy Hook memorial service to arrange a meeting between his dad and his Chinese business partners, new texts reveal.
[…]
Hunter Biden used Joe Biden’s appearance at a Sandy Hook memorial service to arrange a meeting between his dad and his Chinese business partners, new texts reveal.
‘Can you meet this evening early,’ Hunter wrote. ‘My father will be in New York also and he wants me to attend the Sandyhook memorial service with him and I would like him to meet you along with my uncle [Jim Biden] and then you and I can talk let me know if that works.’
‘No problem,’ Yadong replied. ‘Pls let me know where and when to meet.’
The texts to set up a meeting with Joe came after months of negotiation about the Biden family’s involvement in the deal with the Chinese government-linked company, in exchange for $10 million a year.
[…]
‘In the message, Hunter Biden twice mentioned he was with his father. In the deposition, Hunter Biden sought to dismiss the message, claiming that he was either ‘high or drunk’ when he sent it, and in that state, had sent it to the wrong Zhao, and not actually the one affiliated with the Chinese energy company, CEFC.
‘Hunter claimed under oath that the recipient, ‘had no understanding or even remotely knew what,…I was even…talking about,’ Smith added.
‘However, phone records in front of the Committee today show Hunter Biden sent the message to the correct Chinese businessman by the name of Raymond Zhao who not only was affiliated with CEFC, but knew exactly what Hunter Biden was talking about.’
by Owen | 1929, 24 Jan 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
Yes, this is bribery and/or money laundering in broad daylight. Smart to use art because the value of art is extremely subjective. But I guarantee you that Hunter’s paintings will never be in a museum or sold at auction for more than they were originally purchased. Never.
Two of Biden’s top allies − a Los Angeles gallery owner and a Hollywood attorney and novelist − revealed those financial details to the House GOP involved in those probes. The gallery owner who sold the paintings, George Berges, and California lawyer Kevin Morris, who loaned the money, both told the House committees they did not discuss their business with the White House or seek favors.
I have so little confidence in our justice system that I assume that there is a game being played here where Hunter will get off with a slap on the wrist and they will use that to deflect any further investigations. The tell is in the dates. According to the indictment, all of Hunter’s criminal activity happened between 2016 and 2020. Coincidentally, those were the only years in Joe’s adult life when he wasn’t in office.
Federal prosecutors have filed tax charges against Hunter Biden, a second criminal case against the US president’s son.
The indictment alleges 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 nine charges include failure to file and pay taxes, false tax return and evasion of assessment.
[…]
Federal prosecutors allege Hunter Biden “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills”.
Prosecutors allege that Hunter Biden instead spent his money on “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes”.
The indictment says that the president’s son “individually received more than $7 million in total gross income” between 2016 and mid-October 2020, but “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”.
[…]
Between 2016-19, he paid over $188,000 on “adult entertainment” and over $683,000 on “payments – various women”, according to the charge sheet.
Hunter Biden “continued to earn handsomely and to spend wildly in 2018”, prosecutors allege.
As his income increased, so did his expenditures, says the indictment.
In 2018, the defendant spent more than $1.8m, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash withdrawals, about $383,000 in payments to women and $151,000 on clothing.
But where did the money come from? And for what was Hunter paid?
Again it must be noted how the Bidens are on both sides of all of these machinations. It’s theater.
Hunter Biden has sued the Internal Revenue Service over claims agents illegally released his tax returns.
President Joe Biden‘s son claims the agency violated his privacy by unlawfully disclosing his records to members of Congress and to the news media.
[…]
It targets two IRS whistleblowers who testified to Congress about the income Hunter received from his work with a Ukrainian gas company and their concerns about how Hunter was getting special treatment due to his last name.
In 2021, when a New York art gallery debuted Hunter Biden’s paintings with asking prices as high as $500,000, the White House said that Hunter Biden’s team had a process for carefully vetting buyers, and that their identities were known only to the gallery, and not to Hunter Biden himself. The messaging seemed to suggest that Hunter Biden’s art patrons came from a rarified universe of collectors who had nothing to do with the hurly burly of politics.
Neither of those things has turned out to be the case. Hunter Biden did in fact learn the identity of two buyers, according to three people directly familiar with Hunter Biden’s own account of his art career. And one of those buyers is indeed someone who got a favor from the Biden White House. The timing of their purchase, however, is unknown.
That buyer, Insider can reveal, is Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a Los Angeles real estate investor and philanthropist. Hirsh Naftali is influential in California Democratic circles and is a significant Democratic donor who has given $13,414 to the Biden campaign and $29,700 to the Democratic National Campaign Committee this year. In 2022, she hosted a fundraiser headlined by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Insider also obtained internal documents from Hunter Biden’s gallery showing that a single buyer purchased $875,000 of his art. The documents do not indicate the buyer’s identity, which is also unknown to Insider at this time.
In July 2022, eight months after Hunter Biden’s first art opening, Joe Biden announced Hirsh Naftali’s appointment to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. It is unclear whether Hirsh’s purchase of Hunter Biden’s artwork occurred before or after that appointment. Membership on the commission is an unpaid position that is often filled by campaign donors, family members, and political allies — the same crowd that often winds up with US ambassadorial appointments. Hirsh Naftali’s fundraising activities mark her as the kind of well-connected donor who often wins such appointments, regardless of any relationship they might have with the president’s family. But they do not address the possibility that Hunter Biden might have voiced his support for her appointment.
Consider that we have solid proof that several federal agencies were actively covering up the crimes, and likely treason, of the nation’s First Family. It’s not that they were lazy or negligent. They proactively covering up the hide the crimes of favored people. This is Banana Republic stuff.
Ziegler and IRS Supervisory Agent Gary Shapley testified before the House Oversight Committee that their investigation ‘supported felony and misdemeanor tax charges,’ which were ultimately not brought against the president’s son Hunter due to political pressures.
Ziegler, a 13-year veteran of the IRS who was the main case agent on the Hunter probe, claimed the federal tax investigation into the president’s son ‘supported felony and misdemeanor tax charges’ – rather than just the misdemeanor tax charges Hunter is scheduled to plead guilty to next week as part of a deal that allows him to and avoid prosecution for a separate gun charge.
The agents said under oath that U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the lead Hunter Biden prosecutor, asked Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves to bring those charges. But after Graves refused, Weiss threw out the potential felony charges and struck a plea deal with the president’s son.
‘I watched U.S. Attorney [David] Weiss tell a room full of senior FBI and IRS senior leaders on October 7, 2022, that he was not the deciding person on whether charges were filed,’ Shapley said, contradicting Weiss’ previous public statements.
‘If the Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss followed DOJ policy as he stated in his most recent letter, Hunter Biden should have been charged with a tax felony, and not only the tax misdemeanor charge,’ said Ziegler. ‘We need to treat each taxpayer the same under the law.’
A trove of photos from Hunter Biden’s laptop has been made available to the public through a new website that launched Thursday.
The website – BidenLaptopMedia.com – will house almost 10,000 photos spanning from 2008 to 2019 and took months to complete, Garrett Ziegler, the founder of nonprofit Marco Polo, told Fox News Digital.
“It’s taken us a couple of months to, one, go through the photos, about 10,000 of them, and redact the genitalia on the photos,” Ziegler, a former Trump White House aide, said of the contents found on the laptop once owned by President Biden’s son.
“The number one thing we’re about… is truth and transparency,” he said. “If the American people want to know what their first family is like, they’re going to get it. And we’re not going to be taking out photos that paint the Bidens in a good light.”
I admit. I was skeptical, but Wow. Always follow the money. This is specific, damning evidence that the Biden family has been engaged in a long-term extortion scheme to sell policy to foreign interests – including some of our most ardent foes. This is treasonous. I don’t use that word lightly. This is not about a policy dispute. This is old-fashioned corruption of selling public policy to foreign interests for personal enrichment.
Republicans are digging in on over $10 million received by Biden family members from foreign actors, including previously undisclosed $1 million in Romanian-linked payments, and a ‘web’ of 20 companies created while President Joe Biden was vice president and pushing anti-corruption efforts abroad.
On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Republicans led by Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., released a ‘Second Records Memorandum’ that expands on information it received from subpoena returns as the committee continues its investigation into the Biden family’s business practices.
The memo specifically outlines the Biden family’s ties to Romanian ‘influence peddling’ and a web of LLCs created while Biden was vice president. It also accuses President Biden for a ‘lack of transparency’ regarding his family’s receipt of funds from China, which he has said are ‘not true.’
[…]
The Romanian transactions outlined in the bank records released by the committee were from Cypriot – a company controlled by Gabriel Popoviciu, who was at the time under investigation for criminal corruption in Romania and later convicted for bribery-related offenses.
Between 2015 and 2017, Robinson Walker, LLC received $3 million from Bladon Enterprises Limited – Popoviciu’s Cypriot company – which was then paid out to Biden family members in a total sum of over $1 million.
The first payments were received by the LLC just weeks after then-Vice President Biden hosted Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House and they discussed anti-corruption policies.
Biden family accounts gained $1.038 million from Robinson Walker, LLC in a series of 17 deposits, 16 of which were made while Biden was still in the White House. The payments went to associate James Gilliar, Hunter Biden, Hallie Biden, Owasco LLC and an ‘unknown Biden bank account.’
‘It appears from bank records the Bidens were using Robinson Walker, LLC to conceal that the source of these payments was Popovici,’ the memo says.
According to emails from Hunter’s laptop obtained by DailyMail.com, Popoviciu hired the president’s son in 2016 as part of an influence campaign to persuade anti-corruption prosecutors to cut a deal or drop the case – all while his father was sitting vice president.
For all of the finger wagging about people who have ties to Russia or China, it is glaringly clear that the Biden family has been engaging in crooked deals with the two totalitarian regimes for years. It is foolish to not at least consider that our President may have been involved even if he isn’t today. For all of Joe Biden’s faults, he has a long history of loving and supporting his kids. Is it too much of a stretch to think that he might have thrown his influence around on their behalf for foreigners?
Newly unearthed photos show the Biden family’s Chinese business partner meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Zang Jianjun was executive director of Chinese oil giant CEFC, which partnered with Joe Biden‘s brother Jim and son Hunter on a deal that earned the First Family millions of dollars.
Text messages obtained by DailyMail.com reveal Zang was in close contact with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and that the Chinese leader gave the green light for his partnership with the Bidens.
Zang even traveled to Moscow with Xi and met with Putin while brokering a massive $9.1billion deal to buy a share of the Russian state-owned oil firm Rosneft in 2017.
Sleazy Hunter Biden is seen filming himself smoking drugs and fondling himself inside a sensory deprivation tank – during a detox program funded by his dad, President Joe Biden.
The president’s exhibitionist son, 52, is bathed in trippy green light as he floats naked on his back and plays with himself in the shocking cell phone video retrieved from his abandoned laptop.
He leaves briefly to grab a can of White Claw hard seltzer and what appears to be a crack pipe before taking several hits and staring wild-eyed into the camera as ambient music plays softly in the background.
Paintings by Hunter Biden are expected to fetch up to $500,000 (£360,000) apiece at auction this autumn.
The president’s spokeswoman said “reasonable safeguards” had been applied to the upcoming sale.
But a former White House ethics chief said the arrangement was “very disappointing”.
The younger Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere have often been held up by Republican critics as a conflict of interest for his father, which both Bidens deny.
Hunter is currently facing a federal tax investigation, though he has said he is “100% certain” he will be cleared.
When asked on Friday about the White House’s reported role in the art sale, press secretary Jen Psaki said: “After careful consideration, a system has been established that allows for Hunter Biden to work in his profession within reasonable safeguards.
The hiring was revealed in 2019, but DailyMail.com can now reveal the extensive propaganda and persuasion campaign planned by Hunter for the Romanian criminal, all while Hunter’s father was Vice President.
Emails on Hunter’s abandoned laptop reveal how Joe Biden’s son and his colleagues leveraged their US government connections and plotted a propaganda campaign for the grafting Romanian tycoon.
The arrangement raises more questions about Hunter’s dodgy business deals that threatened to compromised his father – the vice president.
[…]
Emails show Hunter’s colleagues, partners in law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, Christopher Boies and Michael Gottlieb, seeking to set up meetings with the US Ambassador to Romania, after discussing among themselves whether he would intervene in Popoviciu’s case.
Hunter brought in political heavyweight and family friend Louis Freeh, the former director of the FBI, to use his US law enforcement contacts for Popoviciu’s advantage, and was offered a referral fee as a result.
Hunter and his colleagues also discussed a media campaign, including to major U.S. publication the Wall Street Journal, to support their client who was later found guilty of bribery.
I’m shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you. Any thinking person already knew this happened. Question is, what did they discuss? What was the deal? And if you think this was an isolated incident, you are a fool. Biden, Inc. has been operating for years.
Joe Biden met with his son’s Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakhstani business associates while vice president, emails show.
Hunter Biden wrote to a friend before the 2015 Washington DC dinner that it was ‘ostensibly to discuss food security’, but was in fact an opportunity to introduce his potential clients and partners to his powerful father.
The shocking communications appear to fly in the face of the president’s claim that he had no knowledge of his son’s business activities.
Yet the White House has remained silent over the revelations – and has failed to respond to every request for comment about illegal activity and scandalous behavior evidenced on Hunter’s abandoned laptop, obtained and exclusively verified by DailyMail.com.
A guest list Hunter prepared for the dinner at the private ‘Garden Room’ at Georgetown’s Café Milano included corrupt, late former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkovhis wife Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, and a Mexican ambassador.
The US Treasury flagged in suspicious activity reports $3.5million in wires sent by Baturina to Hunter’s firm Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC in February 2014.
The investment firm was co-founded by the president’s son and Devon Archer, former adviser to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped organize and attended the Café Milano dinner.
One attendee, an executive at now-infamous Ukrainian energy firm Burisma where Hunter was a board member, wrote an email the day after thanking Hunter for the ‘opportunity to meet your father’.
‘Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure’, Vadym Pozharskyi wrote on April 17, 2015.
Hunter Biden put out a statement Wednesday saying he is under federal investigation over his taxes.
‘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,’ Biden said.
The statement was put out by President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris‘ transition office.
