By The FirstA federal indictment against President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was filed in California late Thursday.
The nine new charges include: failure to file taxes, evasion of tax assessment, and filing fraudulent documents.
From CNN:
Now, the president will be campaigning for a second White House term and fighting a Republican impeachment bid while his son fights to avoid prison in two criminal cases.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers did not immediately comment, and CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
According to court filings from the now-defunct plea deal, Hunter Biden repeatedly missed IRS deadlines to pay his federal taxes on time, and eventually owed about $2 million to the government. He paid the money back in 2021, with a loan from a friend.
Federal prosecutors have been scrutinizing Hunter Biden’s finances since 2018, and Trump-appointed US attorney David Weiss was designated special counsel in August.
The probe appeared to be winding down this summer when Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors, and prosecutors would recommend no jail time. They also agreed that a gun charge would be dropped in two years if he stayed out of legal trouble.
But both proposed deals collapsed after scrutiny from a federal judge and disagreements over the fine print. Then Weiss indicted Hunter Biden in September on three charges related to his purchase of a gun from a shop in Delaware in 2018 at a time prosecutors say he was an illegal drug user. He has pleaded not guilty in the gun possession and false statements case.
