Hunter Biden is again in the news.  Unlike other passing nods from the mainstream media, this time it seems like the story is actually being given the coverage it warrants.  Reporting as of today indicates that Hunter’s lawyers just met with the Delaware U.S. Attorney regarding four charges that have reportedly been lodged against their client. 

But: Does the Hunter Biden story actually matter?

The website fivethirtyeight.com documented a study that showed many people simply don’t care about Hunter Biden’s potential crimes.  Whether that is a valid study or not, the Hunter saga is extremely important to our nation and the validity of our justice system. 

This nation needs to believe in the equal application of the law – and Hunter is not helping.  In short: How has he been getting away with it?  The investigation into Hunter is currently in its fifth year – and the FBI reportedly finished its work a year ago.  No wonder a recent Gallop poll shows that people who have a “great deal of confidence” in the justice system is hovering around 14%. 

Is the delay because Hunter’s misdeeds reach all the way to “The Big Guy”?

Here, then, is a rundown of the activity that DOJ has to look at (Hunter’s led a colorful life):

• The Tax Charges: The IRS finished its investigation a year ago.  Finally, Hunter is reported to be looking at two counts of misdemeanor “failure to file taxes” and one felony “tax evasion” charge. 

Why do I get the feeling he pays a few bucks and walks on these?

A large (but dwindling) number of Americans pay taxes.  We know this is a major complaint among all taxpayers who see their money being wasted on pork-barrel nonsense.  To see the President’s son pulling a major tax dodge, with no consequences, is a terrible optic.  The average American doesn’t have a millionaire Hollywood attorney like Kevin Morris to pay our bills — supposedly out of the goodness of his heart (just when did Hollywood attorneys grow hearts?). 

• The Gun Charge: The last charge reportedly lodged against Hunter by the Delaware U.S. Attorney is another felony: lying on a federal form. This relates to Hunter checking a box on an application for a federal gun license attesting that he was “neither addicted to nor abusing any unlawful substance.” 

Hunter clearly lied on this application – he has since admitted to his cocaine use.  The verbiage on the application, however, may not be specific enough to fully support this felony.  So: look for this to be pleaded down.

And that’s it.  Those are the charges he’s looking at. 

What is not being charged, of course, is the litany of influence-peddling and apparent corruption that should be at the heart of any case against Hunter – and yes, potentially against other Biden family members, to include The Big Guy.

The best way to fully comprehend the depth of Hunter’s misdeeds is with a chronology of his “career”:

• In 1996 Hunter was a freshly minted attorney with a degree from Yale University. He could probably have gotten a job anywhere, but he returned to Delaware to work.  His first employer was MBNA, a bank holding company that was heavily involved in issuing credit cards.  At the time, Senator Joe Biden was pushing for a bill that took bankruptcy protections away from credit card holders.  The bill was passed, much to the benefit of MBNA’s bottom line.
  

Hunter rose quickly at the company – he was an Executive Vice President by 1998 (two years out of college – quite a meteoric rise).  His stay was not long, however.  He left shortly after his promotion in 1998 to take a job at the Department of Commerce.  But that didn’t end Hunter’s relationship with MBNA.  He stayed on as a federal lobbyist, drawing $100,000 a year as his father pushed more laws to give credit cards companies an advantage over the little guy. 

Senator Joe Biden actually claimed that his son’s work had nothing to do with his opinions on the issue; others disagreed.  At the time, Byron York went so far to call Joe Biden, “the senator from MBNA”.

• The company that Hunter started to run his lobbying business was a law firm named Oldaker, Biden & Belair. Like most new companies, they got off to a slow start.  But as Joe Biden announced his run for President in 2007, the firm’s profits were soaring.  Among the targets for the firm’s newly profitable lobbying efforts?  A Senator from Delaware named Joe Biden. (“Hey dad, can you take a call?”).  Hunter allegedly left the firm in late 2008, but the company continued its lobbying business. 

According to a timeline compiled by The National Review, Presidential candidate Joe Biden paid his son’s lobbying firm at least $143,000 for “legal services.”

• In 2006 Hunter was appointed to the board of directors for Amtrak. “Amtrak Joe” Biden has always been a supporter of the fiscally shaky railroad.  He continues to push for funding for the quasi-public company that loses money on a yearly basis.  

What Hunter knew about railroads to warrant such an appointment is anybody’s guess.

• In 2008 Hunter and his uncle James Biden then started a “consultancy” company called Seneca Global Advisors, which helped companies expand into foreign markets. It was in November of 2008, you will recall, that Joe Biden was elected Vice President.  Joe Biden was selected for the ticket, in part, due to his foreign policy acumen after having served as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Vice President Biden soon became the foreign policy point man for the Obama Administration.  Hunter went on to found Rosemont Seneca Partners, also to consult on foreign business concerns.  Suddenly, as Joe Biden became “Foreign Affairs Joe,” Hunter Biden became a foreign policy expert and international dealmaker (see a pattern developing?).

• In 2013 Hunter was named to the board of the Chinese private equity firm, BHR Partners. He purchased a 10% stake in the company, operating through his Skaneateles LLC company (Hunter spins up numerous LLCs to conduct transactions). His American partner in this endeavor was James Bulger, the nephew of infamous Boston Gangster Whitey Bulger.  James’ father was a longtime Massachusetts politician who was forced to resign from his position as head of the University of Massachusetts system for his unreported contact with Whitey. 

BHR was formed as a capital-raising company to support Sinopec, a Chinese energy firm. When in 2022 Joe Biden released oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve, about 2.75 million barrels were sold to Unipec – a subsidiary of Sinopec.  Essentially, Hunter sold U.S. emergency oil to our principal global adversary. 

BHR Partners (recall, Hunter had 10% of this firm) have also gotten involved in Cobalt mining acquisitions.  Cobalt is an element necessary to produce lithium-ion batteries, for use in digital products like smartphones and electric cars.  BHR purchased a copper and cobalt mine in the Congo from an American company in 2016.  Hunter promised to divest himself from this company when Joe Biden became President, but Hunter’s company Skaneateles LLC still may have an interest in the BHR.

So at a time when America is competing with China for access to the rare earth elements so essential to digital products, Hunter may well still be in business with our opponent in this race.

• Over the years, while Joe Biden was VP and then President, associates of Hunter Biden were granted White House visits.  Their contact person at the seat of executive power was often Anne Marie Person, who had been hired by VP Biden as a personal assistant.  She had just left a similar position at Rosemont Seneca working for… Hunter Biden. 

Anne Marie Person had replaced none other than her own brother Francis “Franny” Person on Biden’s staff.  Franny had just left for a job with a Chinese investment company called Harves Group.  That company was run by Hunter Biden associate Bo Zhang.  According to the company website it, “specializes in fostering US-China business development” and is closely tied to the Chinese government.

• In 2013, Hunter joined the US Navy Reserve, an unusual move for a 43-year-old millionaire. He needed an age waiver and a waiver to excuse his prior drug use, but of course got in.  His tenure with the Navy, however, did not last long, as he tested positive for cocaine in a drug test when he initially reported for duty.  As such, he was later administratively discharged.  The story was covered up until the Wall Street Journal got hold of it and published it.  There has never been any good explanation as to what led Hunter to join the Navy.  Maybe he thought he’d joined the Chinese navy.

• In April 2014, Hunter joined the board of Burisma Holding, a Ukrainian energy company. Despite having no background in the energy business (other than selling American oil to the Chinese), his “job” was reportedly to assist with corporate governance best practices.  The consulting firm of Boles Schiller Flexner, where Hunter was employed, was also hired by Burisma (is there anywhere Hunter didn’t work?).  He was given a fluctuating salary that often rose to $50,000 a month. 

The Burisma hiring occurred shortly after President Obama appointed VP Biden as point man for Ukrainian policy.  VP Biden would later famously brag that, by threatening to withhold roughly $1 billion in U.S. aid, he got rid of state prosecutor Victor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma and its owner. 

The Bidens vociferously deny this was the reason for the pressure to get Shokin fired.  The current Biden story on this is that VP Biden simply felt that Shokin was corrupt and not prosecting corruption cases (sort of like the US DOJ).  Several released emails and memos, however, paint a different picture.  Shokin later stated in a sworn affidavit that he was told his firing was due to his investigation into Burisma.  The Burisma angle seemed like a significant cause for concern for Presidential candidate Joe Biden, and Hunter left Burisma in April of 2019.

As a side note: in an email leaked from the laptop, Freeh references speaking to Joe Biden about working on this case, and others in the future.  Yes, that Joe Biden.  At least he didn’t call him The Big Guy.

• One of Hunter Biden’s consulting “clients” was CEFC, a Chinese energy company. As per a 2017 agreement, Hunter Biden began collecting a salary of $10 million a year for three years.  In a meeting with the CEFC Chairman, Hunter was even gifted a diamond valued at $80,000.  Hunter’s Owasco company and James Biden’s Lion Hall Group received a large sum of money from CEFC through a third party.

Soon, however, the company came under scrutiny for engaging in massive corruption schemes.  An FBI investigation found that CEFC secretary general “Patrick” Ho was running an international bribery scheme, probably with the help of the Chinese government (Hunter himself called Ho, “the f***ing spy chief of China”).  

In 2017, The Southern District of New York charged Ho with bribing several officials in Chad and Uganda to get sweetheart oil and gas rights deals, and CEFC mysteriously went bankrupt as the walls were closing in on them.  He was later convicted of these crimes.  Emails recovered from Hunter’s laptop appear to reveal that  Hunter and James Biden received $1 million directly from Patrick Ho.  Somehow I suspect the people of Chad and Uganda weren’t quite so lucky.

• Elena Baturina was the wife of Yuri Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow (he was fired for corruption). In 2014 she paid Rosemont Seneca Thornton (a company associated with Hunter Biden) $3.5 million for “consulting” (which must be Hunter’s favorite word).  It is unclear what consulting was done, if any.  Baturina is Russia’s wealthiest women and a purported ally of Vladimir Putin.  For reasons that are not clear she was left off the list of Russian oligarchs who were sanctioned by the United States after the invasion of Ukraine. 

• In 2016 Hunter Biden travelled to Romania to meet with convicted fraudster Gabriel Popoviciu. Popoviciu was convicted of bribery and running a real estate scam.  Biden brought in former FBI director Louis Freeh to “help” with Popoviciu’s appeal.  Freeh was soon reaching out to contacts to help Popoviciu.  Freeh also later made a “donation” to the Biden family as a token of appreciation for the referral.  He paid $100,000 into Joe Biden’s granddaughter’s college funds.  An odd way to get paid for referring an attorney.  Hunter himself was allegedly paid millions directly from Popoviciu.  He also suspiciously met with Joe Biden shortly after many of the developments in the Popoviciu case.  In an email, Freeh references speaking to Joe Biden about working on this case and others in the future.  We do know that Louis Freeh wound up on the board of directors for the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children 501c3 charity. Maybe the Foundation is just protecting Biden children.

• As noted above, in 2018 when Hunter was in the throes of his cocaine addiction, he illegally purchased his firearm after lying about his drug use on the application. This gun was later thrown in a supermarket garbage dumpster by Hunter’s girlfriend and widow of his brother, Hallie Biden.  The Secret Service (who was not protecting Biden at the time) attempted to recover the weapon, without success.  Agents then tried to cover up the fact that Hunter owned a gun by going to the location of the purchase and attempting to strong-arm the owner into turning over the sale paperwork. This information has been known for over a year but the DOJ but according to reports, is only now being charged.  What was so complicated about investigating a lie on a single piece of paper – when Hunter has admitted his cocaine use – remains yet another mystery.   

• In 2017 Hunter, James, Hallie, and one unnamed Biden received $1.3 million from State Energy HK, a Chinese energy company. The money was paid through intermediary Rob Walker to several accounts owned by Biden family members.  It is not known what the payments were for.  The payments started weeks after Joe Biden left office as Vice President. 

This story is still developing; expect more on this from the investigation being conducted by the House Oversight Committee. 

Expect nothing on it from DOJ.

• In December of 2020 Hunter Biden publicly admitted that his tax returns were under federal criminal investigation. One point of contention was unpaid taxes for millions of dollars paid by CEFC Energy and other overseas salaries.  Biden owed as much as $2 million in back taxes and knew he was likely headed to a federal prosecution.  In came Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris with a $2 million “loan” to pay the taxman. There is little information about the plan to repay this generous benefactor, or what led to Morris’s spasm of largesse.

Quite a list, isn’t it?  And that’s just what is known.

So, despite years of this egregious conduct, as of now David Weiss, the U.S. Attorney in Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, appears to have no plan to bring any charges beyond the four outlined above. 

One needn’t wonder too hard as to why.

But is it possible Hunter was extremely careful in his business dealings?  That all along, he ensured there was no colluding with government officials and all transactions were on the level, leaving the U.S. Attorney’s office nowhere to go? 

Let’s finish with this quote from a story about Hunter’s divorce:

In a February 2017 divorce filing, an attorney for Biden’s ex-wife said the couple’s outstanding debts were “shocking and overwhelming” and that they owed $313,000 in back taxes. According to the filing, they had bounced checks to their housekeeper and owed money to doctors and therapists. The filing alleged that Hunter Biden had spent copiously on drugs, strip clubs, prostitutes and girlfriends “while leaving the family with no money to pay legitimate bills.”

That doesn’t sound like someone careful not to cross any red lines, someone in charge of his faculties enough to ensure he wasn’t leaving a trail of evidence behind.  As in, for instance, years of incriminating records on an unencrypted laptop that he somehow forgot to pick up.