Posts Tagged ‘tax evasion’

Hunter Biden To Plead Guilty Rather Than Face Trial

Thursday, September 5th, 2024

It turns out that if you were crackhead bagman for your father’s multi-million dollar influence peddling operation, you’re none to eager to stand trial for tax evasion.

Hunter Biden intends to plead guilty to criminal tax charges to avoid a potentially damaging trial that would have brought his lucrative foreign business dealings and lavish lifestyle back into the spotlight.

Defense attorney Abbe Lowell announced Thursday morning that the younger Biden will be reversing his not-guilty plea on the first day of jury selection for the tax trial. He will be entering an “Alford plea” agreement where he maintains his innocence but accepts a sentence from federal judge Mark Scarsi, who has yet to sign off on the arrangement, CNN reported. The tax charges, three felonies and six misdemeanors, carry a maximum of 17 years in prison.

Special counsel David Weiss is prosecuting Hunter Biden on nine federal tax charges based on his alleged failure to pay more than $1.4 million of taxes in a timely manner over a four-year period last decade. Along with tax-evasion, Biden was charged with filing false tax returns for attempting to deduct expenses incurred from his drug-fueled escapades.

Most of Biden’s income from that time period came from foreign business dealings with individuals and entities in Ukraine, Romania, and China. Those business dealings and his messy divorce from ex-wife Kathleen Buhle were laid out in a searing indictment last year that gave a detailed look into the exorbitant amounts of money Biden spent on his lavish lifestyle and sexual deviancy.

Leading up to the trial, federal prosecutors spotlighted Hunter Biden’s Romanian dealings in court papers laying out how he his business partners agreed to lobby U.S. officials on behalf of a Romanian oligarch accused of corruption. Biden’s attorneys disputed the Justice Department’s characterization of the agreement and suggested that the court papers were meant to generate headlines.

In June, Weiss’s team won a conviction against Hunter Biden on three federal gun charges for lying about his crack-cocaine addiction on gun paperwork and possessing a firearm while he was addicted to crack almost six years ago. Biden’s sentencing for the gun charges is scheduled to take place in November. He faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison on the gun charges, but will likely receive a lesser sentence as a first-time, non-violent offender.

The tax trial was expected to be politically damaging for Hunter’s father, President Joe Biden, until he dropped out of the presidential race in July following a public Democratic Party revolt over his apparent mental decline.

Given their shady dealings in Russia, Ukraine and China, I can certainly see why the Biden Crime Family wouldn’t want the bright sunlight of a high profile trial directed at their dealings, so a plea deal was always going to be the smart way to go. After all, Joe Biden isn’t going to be able to get the memory care he obviously needs if he’s behind bars.

The question is just how much of a sweetheart deal can the DOJ get away with offering Hunter. The average jail time for federal tax evasion is evidently 3-5 years, so I’m guessing Hunter gets 1-3 years, and that probably at a relatively cushy minimum security prison. If it’s merely probation, then the fix is truly in…

Update: Actually, it appears that the prosecutors in the case are calling for the judge to reject the please deal.

It would appear that Hunter Biden doesn’t have a nicely arranged plea deal with the DOJ after all – as prosecutors have urged the judge in the case to reject his proposal to plead guilty.

Of note, Hunter is attempting to plead guilty via an “Alford plea,” which would have to be approved by the prosecution and higher-ups at the DOJ.

It appears they were caught off guard.

So it’s not a done deal, just something Hunter’s side has floated. Developing…

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Posted in Crime, Democrats, Waste and Fraud | 11 Comments »

One Rule For the Hunter Bidens Of The World, Another For You

Tuesday, June 20th, 2023

Hunter Biden will get a slap on the wrist and no prison time for federal firearm and tax evasion crimes, just the way you or I wouldn’t.

As you may recall, Biden owed a whopping $1.2 million tax liability for 2017 and 2018, but despite multiple warnings he was flouting the law, Biden didn’t pay back the tax bill until 2021, well after the Justice Department and IRS opened investigations into President Joe Biden’s son. Prosecutors are reportedly set to recommend probation as punishment, not jail time.

Of course, this blatant display of a two-tired justice system (one for Democratic Party Royalty and their rich backers, another for everyone else) is the point.

Under Justice Department policy, even with a plea agreement, the government is supposed to seek a plea to the “most serious,” readily provable “offense that is consistent with the nature and full extent of the defendant’s conduct.” Hunter Biden committed tax offenses that could have been charged as evasion, which is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment for each count. Furthermore, he made a false statement that enabled him to obtain a firearm; that’s a ten-year felony under legislation pushed through by then-senator Joe Biden to show how very serious Democrats are about gun crime.

Biden apologists have tried to minimize that transaction as a “lie and try” case, which they say is often not prosecuted. But such non-prosecution (though it shouldn’t happen) occurs because of what you’d infer from the “try” part — i.e., the liar got caught and failed to obtain the gun. Hunter’s case, to the contrary, is a lie and succeed case. He got the gun. What’s more, he was then seen playing with it while cavorting with an “escort” (see the New York Post’s pictorial, if you’ve got the stomach for it). Shortly afterwards, he and his then-paramour — Hallie Biden, the widow of his older brother — managed to lose the gun near a school (it was later found by someone else).

Those are the kinds of gun cases that get charged by the Justice Department even if the suspect hasn’t, in addition, committed tax felonies by dodging taxes on the millions of dollars he was paid, apparently for being named Biden. Yet after refusing for years to appoint a special counsel despite the five-alarm conflict of interest attendant to investigating the president’s son ( . . . and family . . . and the president himself), the Biden Justice Department is permitting Hunter Biden to dispose of the case with misdemeanor tax charges that will allow for a probation sentence, and diversion — essentially, no prosecution — on the gun felony that would result in imprisonment for most Americans who engaged in similar conduct.

Here’s Tucker Carlson, contrasting how different Biden’s treatment was from Biden’s political enemies.

A whole lot of very rich and power people stepped up to help Hunter maintain his cocaine-fueled lifestyle.

Of course Biden and Company are counting on the Democratic Media Complex to keep the story buried. We have to make sure they don’t succeed.

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Posted in Crime, Democrats, video | 6 Comments »

What It’s Like To Be an Honest Taxpayer in Greece

Friday, July 10th, 2015

I came across this comment from a Slashdot thread on programmers leaving Greece (usual online source caveats apply), and thought it was meaty enough to be worth excerpting and highlighting on its own:

Let me tell you what happens when you’re 100% legal and declare everything up to the last penny you get as a software developer. In 2012 I had 100,000 Euros income paid 86,000 Euros spent on taxes (income tax with surprisingly different brackets than last year, “temporary” property tax, “temporary special contribution” 4% on the total turnover, mandatory social security, 55% of your current income tax as downpayment for next year). The year before I made 74,000 Euros and paid “only” 50,000 or thereabouts. In return I got: no schools, no roads, no pension, more taxes, more family members depending on me to live. The more you work the less you make (unless you have an ever-shrinking business). Crazy? That’s the Greek tax brackets for you.

Meanwhile: I have to pay for my own hospital plan because in case I get sick I have to notify the public insurance carrier 15 days in advance of emergency surgery (no kidding!) or 3-4 months before booking an appointment with a doctor. I have to get an additional, expensive pension plan on top of the 350 Euros per month I am currently paying as mandatory social security because there will be no money when I’m 67 years old or have worked 40+ years to get the minimum pension of 700 Euros (nominal; actual payment after taxes and mandatory social security is around 480 Euros). I also need to set aside money to get the kids I’m planning on having to a private school because there are no teachers (not even substitutes) half of the time in the public schools.

If you are wondering why people tax evade you have to first ask the questions: 1. how much does the state take in taxes and 2. what does the state offer for the money it takes from its citizens? If the answers are “most of your money” and “not that much at all” respectively it doesn’t take a genius to see why you get an endemic tax evasion for free.

Anyway. After three years of battling the system I gave up and moved away. My last tax filing in Greece was 2014 for my income in 2013. I am owed a 13,000 Euro tax return since August 10th, 2014. Of course it’s NOT credited. And we’re talking about money I have paid as a tax downpayment to the state since August 2013. They hold my money hostage for 2 years and they won’t give it to me. Also, don’t make the mistake of asking whether there’s an interest rate for those two years. Don’t be silly. There’s not! Adding insult to injury I’m still a Greek tax citizen which means I get to pay taxes for the dividends I’m paid from my company abroad. Don’t be ridiculous, of course they are NOT offset by the money the Greek state owes me! I have so far paid another 40+ thousand Euro taxes in these two years where the Greek state owes me the 13,000 Euro tax return.

I understand all this sounds alien to you. Why so much taxation, why no services in return, why the state isn’t punctual in paying back. Beats me, brothers and sisters. I have concluded that one must be outright insane to try and do business if they’re born in Greece.

And here you have the endpoint of the cradle-to-grave welfare state: benefits are theoretically generous for those on the dole (though good luck navigating the maze of inefficient, corrupt bureaucracy to collect them), while taxes are prohibitively high for those actually work for a living.

This is why implementing fake austerity through higher taxes never works: It drives out the productive, the social compact is irreparably broken, and those living off the state’s largess feel no qualms about wringing every last possible penny from it.

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Posted in Budget, Economics, Foreign Policy, Welfare State | No Comments »

Charlie Rangel Found Guilty

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

Of 11 of the 13 counts against him by the House ethics committee.

And what will Rangel be sentenced to for tax evasion, rent control fraud, etc.? Most likely, a strongly worded letter. He’ll get to live on in the 112th congress as reminder of Nancy Pelosi’s “most ethical congress ever.”

And how badly did his ethics problems hurt him at the polls? He won his race against Michel Faulkner by 86% of the vote. Maybe if he had killed someone on live television, his poll numbers might have dipped into the 70s…

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Posted in Democrats, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »