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by Josh Boswell
Emails, text messages, and photographs published by DailyMail.com are among a wealth of evidence that prosecutors could use at trial if Hunter Biden is charged with tax crimes and lying on gun purchase documents.
The FBI believes it has enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with failure to declare income from his foreign business deals and a failure to declare he was a drug addict on a gun application, sources told The Washington Post Thursday.
Agents told the Post they assembled enough evidence for a criminal case against the First Son ‘months ago’ – and the decision to charge now lies with federal prosecutors.
The agents claim they have sufficient proof that Hunter failed to declare income from his overseas business dealings to the IRS.
The First Son also wrote on a gun application that he was not a user of illegal drugs, but later admitted in his own memoir that he was a crack addict at the time.
Since 2019 the Bureau has been in possession of revealing emails, furtive text messages and photographs from Hunter’s abandoned laptop that he never intended to fall into law enforcement’s hands.
Now DailyMail.com can reveal some of the most suspicious pieces of evidence prosecutors could use in a potential trial.
A SMOKING GUN
On October 12, 2018 Hunter bought a .38 caliber handgun from StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply in Wilmington, Delaware.
The federally required Firearm Transaction Record for the purchase, obtained by DailyMail.com, asks: ‘Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?’
Hunter checked the box: ‘No’.
But in his memoir, Beautiful Things, he admitted to his continued ‘full-blown addiction’ at the time – and in doing so, appeared to admit to the felony of lying on the firearm form.
‘I had returned [to the East Coast] that fall of 2018, after my most recent relapse in California, with the hope of getting clean through a new therapy and reconciling with Hallie. Neither happened,’ he wrote in the 2021 autobiography.
He said he would go for regular ketamine therapy sessions as part of his rehab treatment but continued to smoke crack throughout.
Hunter bought the .38 revolver from Starquest Shooters in Delaware on October 12, 2018
‘The therapy’s results were disastrous,’ he wrote. ‘I backslid. I did exactly what I’d come to Massachusetts to stop doing. I’d stay clean for a week, break away from the center to meet a connection I found in Rhode Island, smoke up, then return.
‘One thing I did remarkably well during that time was fool people about whether or not I was using. Between trips up there, I even bought clean urine from a dealer in New York to pass drug tests.
‘I doubt much good comes from doing ketamine while you’re on crack.’
A copy of the Firearms Transaction Record and a receipt for the purchase was first obtained by news site Politico last year.
Lying on gun forms is a felony, punishable by a maximum 10 years prison and a $250,000 fine.
However, not all cases are prosecuted. Of the 478 referrals for ‘lying and buying’ the Justice Department received in 2018, charges were filed for 298 cases, about 60%.
Hunter barely had the gun for a two weeks when a dangerous incident occurred.
His lover and brother’s widow Hallie Biden found it in his truck on October 23 and threw it in a trash can outside local grocery store Janssens, opposite a high school.
It was discovered by a homeless man rifling through the trash. Local police as well as the FBI were called.
Hunter argued about the incident with Hallie in panicked text messages in the following days.
‘The f***ing FBI Hallie. It’s hard to believe anyone is that stupid // so what’s my fault here Hallie that you speak of. Owning a gun that’s in a locked car hidden on another property?,’ he wrote.
‘It was open unlocked and windows down and the kids search your car,’ Hallie replied. ‘I’m scared you would use it hunt … I’m scared for your life hunt.’
Despite the Bidens not having Secret Service protection at the time, USSS agents reportedly showed up and asked the gun store owner, Ron Palmieri, to hand over purchase documents.
Suspecting the case would be covered up, Palmieri refused and instead later gave his papers to agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, according to a March 2021 Politico report.
In texts obtained by DailyMail.com, Hunter messaged his therapist to tell him about the ordeal. ‘She stole the gun out of my truck lock box and threw in a garbage can full to the top at Jansens. Then told me it was my problem to deal with,’ Hunter wrote
Hunter argued about the incident with Hallie in panicked text messages in the following days. ‘The f***ing FBI Hallie. It’s hard to believe anyone is that stupid // so what’s my fault here Hallie that you speak of. Owning a gun that’s in a locked car hidden on another property?,’ he wrote. ‘It was open unlocked and windows down and the kids search your car,’ Hallie replied. ‘I’m scared you would use it hunt … I’m scared for your life hunt’
The Secret Service has denied any involvement. But in texts from Hunter’s laptop he also claimed they had a role in the debacle.
‘She stole the gun out of my truck lock box and threw in a garbage can full to the top at Jansens. Then told me it was my problem to deal with,’ Hunter wrote in a three-way text message with Hallie and his therapist in January 2019.
‘Then when the police the FBI the secret service came on the scene she said she took it from me because she was scared I would harm myself due to my drug and alcohol problem and our volatile relationship and that she was afraid for the kids.’
Transparency organization Judicial Watch is currently suing the Secret Service over its refusal to hand over records relating to the incident under the Freedom of Information Act.
Last year the agency told Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, who have been investigating Hunter’s potential criminal activity, they weren’t involved.
‘The Secret Service did not provide protection to any member of the Biden family in 2018,’ special agent in charge Benjamin Kramer said in a letter published by the Republican senators.
‘Further, records searches concerning the reported involvement of Secret Service personnel in the alleged incident have yielded no results.’
SHADY BUSINESS DEALS
Hunter’s foreign business dealings have been controversial for years and have come under intense scrutiny since details from his laptop emerged.
Potential charges for alleged undeclared income may focus on his work for allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma, his deals with Chinese financial firms and Beijing-backed oil giant CEFC, or his business schemes hatched with oligarchs from Russia, Kazakhstan and other Eastern European magnates.
An excerpt from a bank statement showing Hunter receiving $1million from Patrick Ho as a legal retainer. Ho was one of Hunter’s Chinese business partners, and paid Hunter $1million to represent him after he was arrested by the FBI on bribery charges. It is unclear whether Hunter declared this income
A bank statement showing $5million wired to a company linked to Hunter in his business deal with Chinese oil giant CEFC. It is unclear whether he reported income from this deal to the IRS
Transactions involving Hunter or his family members have triggered more than 150 suspicious activity reports, filed by banks for law enforcement to draw on in future financial crime investigations, according to House Oversight Committee ranking member, Republican James Comey.
Those voluminous reports have been in the hands of the FBI and were part of the evidence used by the Senate Homeland Security Committee for its bombshell 2020 report that flagged ‘millions of dollars in questionable transactions’ and national security concerns over Hunter’s foreign business dealings.
Emails and documents from Hunter’s laptop show he made at least $11million from his overseas deals between 2013 and 2018 – and the total he got from Chinese businesses alone has been estimated as high as $31million.
A bank statement from August 2017 on Hunter’s abandoned laptop shows a wire transfer of $5million to an account for Hudson West III, linked to Hunter in his deal with CEFC.
When CEFC executive Patrick Ho was arrested on bribery charges that year, contracts and wire transfers show he paid Hunter a $1million retainer to represent him.
Hunter even recounted once being presented with a 2.8 carat diamond by CEFC Energy China tycoon Ye Jianming – though he claimed he gave it to his associates and never saw it again.
UNDECLARED INCOME
A 2017 email from Hunter’s business partner Eric Schwerin warns him that he needs to ‘amend’ his 2014 tax filing to reflect the thousands he received from Ukrainian gas firm Burisma
Pictured above is an October 2018 email from his accountants and lawyers discussing income from Hunter’s overseas businesses
Hunter sold his reported 10% stake in another Chinese venture, Bohai Harvest RST, late last year. The fund had $2billion under its management and experts estimated Hunter’s share at around $20million.
The enormous sums, if not fully or properly declared, would make prime targets for Delaware US attorney David Weiss in his potential tax prosecution of the First Son.
A 2017 email from Hunter’s business partner Eric Schwerin warns him that he needs to ‘amend’ his 2014 tax filing to reflect the thousands he received from Ukrainian gas firm Burisma.
‘In 2014 you joined the Burisma board and we still need to amend your 2014 returns to reflect the unreported Burisma income,’ Schwerin wrote.
‘That is approximately $400,000 extra so your income in 2014 was closer to $1,247,328.’
A November 2018 email from Hunter’s assistant lists $412,309.23 in unpaid tax bills.
That figure may have swelled considerably, as Hunter’s ‘sugar brother’ lawyer Kevin Morris reportedly paid off over $2million in Hunter’s tax bills this year.
Despite the millions of dollars Hunter earned, by 2019 he was claiming in court filings that he did not have enough money to pay child support to a former employee he impregnated then ghosted.
Lunden Roberts, 31, coached his daughter in basketball and worked at his firm, Rosemont Seneca. He at first denied her son was his, then when she sued him in Arkansas and a DNA test proved paternity, he said he had insufficient income to pay child support.
A Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) filed by JPMorgan Chase named Florida and New York-based Ekaterina Moreva after she received tens of thousands of dollars from Hunter’s company and women who the First Son paid for sex. The SAR, leaked to the anti-corruption nonprofit Marco Polo and obtained by DailyMail.com, says ‘student’ Anna Dekhtiar from Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, received $274,873 betwe en November 2018 and March 2019 with ‘no clear, legitimate economic purpose’ then sent thousands on to Moreva
‘I am unemployed and have had no monthly income since May 2019,’ he wrote in a November 2019 affidavit in the case.
The First Son settled with Roberts two days before a hearing to decide whether he should be held in contempt for failing to produce financial records proving his alleged penury.
Hunter’s lawyers reacted with fury to the Washington Post’s Thursday story that quoted sources saying the feds had enough evidence to charge the First Son.
‘It is a federal felony for a federal agent to leak information about a Grand Jury investigation such as this one,’ attorney Chris Clark told the paper.
‘Any agent you cite as a source in your article apparently has committed such a felony. We expect the Department of Justice will diligently investigate and prosecute such bad actors.
‘As is proper and legally required, we believe the prosecutors in this case are diligently and thoroughly weighing not just evidence provided by agents, but also all the other witnesses in this case, including witnesses for the defense. That is the job of the prosecutors. They should not be pressured, rushed, or criticized for doing their job.’
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