President-elect Joe Biden’s son revealed Wednesday that he’s under federal investigation for possible tax fraud, with a report saying the Justice Department is examining his overseas business dealings.
The probe also reportedly involves a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden, the existence of which was first reported by The Post, and which contains communciations and documents detailing some of his business dealings in China and Ukraine.
Hunter Biden, 50, disclosed the probe in a statement released by his father’s presidential transition office.
“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,” Hunter Biden said in the statement.
“I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”
A statement attributed to “the Biden-Harris Transition” said, “President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger. “The probe began in 2018, sources told Fox News and CNN.
Investigators are looking into whether Hunter and his business associates violated various tax and money laundering laws, CNN said.
The probe is focused on Hunter’s business dealings in China and other countries and invovles transactions with people who posed counterintelligence concerns, CNN said.
The investigation was put on hold during the run-up to the November election due to Justice Department guidelines that prohibit activity that could influence a political race, CNN said.
But it’s since resumed and is entering a new phase, with the FBI and IRS issuing subpoenas and seeking interviews, CNN said.
Fox News reported that the probe includes examining the Hunter Bidne laptop exposed by The Post, citing two sources familiar with the investigation.
In September, Republican senators released a report on Hunter’s business affairs that said he “and his family were involved in a vast financial network that connected them to foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.”
Some of those ties “raise criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns,” the report said.
Wednesday’s surprise disclosure of the federal probe came exactly one year after FBI agents seized a laptop from a Delaware computer shop whose owner claims it was left there by Hunter and never retrieved.
In October, The Post exclusively revealed that a copy of the computer’s hard drive contained a 2015 email that showed Hunter introduced his father, then vice president, to a top executive at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company where he was a board member earning a reported $83,000 a month.
Less than a year later, the elder Biden pressured officials in Ukraine into firing a top prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.
Joe Biden has said he used a $1 billion US loan guarantee as leverage to get Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin canned because of corruption concerns shared by the European Union.
Other emails showed Hunter pursued lucrative business deals involving China’s largest private energy company, including one that he described as “interesting for me and my family.”
A related email from 2017, after Joe Biden left the White House, detailed a “provisional agreement” to divide ownership in a new company that included a 10 percent share “held by H for the big guy?”
A participant in that deal, Tony Bobulinski, later confirmed that “H” stood for Hunter and his dad was “the big guy.”
The company’s planned joint venture with CEFC China Energy Co. was never funded and no deals were struck, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In addition to the emails and related business documents, the laptop contained numerous sexually explicit images, including a 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter — who’s acknowledged repeated struggles with drug and alcohol addictions — smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman.
source nypost