The Volokh Conspiracy

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The House of Representatives Needs to Open An Impeachment Inquiry Into President Joe Biden

Bribery is a High Crime and Misdemeanor

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On Dec. 7, 2023, a federal grand jury filed an explosive indictment that charged Hunter Biden with a scheme to evade taxes on millions of dollars in income from foreign businesses.  Prior to this, he was charged with violating federal law by lying about his drug usage on a federal form, and he was administratively discharged by the U.S. Navy for failing a drug test on his first day at work—a job which Vice President Joe Biden had helped him to get which he was too old to hold.

Hunter Biden's indictment is a public document, and there is no purpose in reprinting it here.  The key takeaways are that: 1) Hunter Biden received more than $7 million in income between 2016 and 2020 much of it from Chinese sources; and 2) that the corrupt Ukrainian Burisma Holdings Corporation paid him an annual salary, for a while, of one million dollars a year.

Count 4 of the Indictment says that Hunter Biden "engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed ***.  In furtherance of that scheme, the Defendant:

a. subverted the payroll and tax withholding process of his own company, Owasco, PC by withdrawing millions from Owasco, PC outside of the payroll and tax withholding process that it was designed to perform;

b. spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills;

c. in 2018, stopped paying his outstanding and overdue taxes for tax year 2015;

d. willfully failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 taxes on time, despite having access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes;

e. willfully failed to file his 2017 and 2018 tax returns on time; and

f. when he did finally file his 2018 returns, included false business deductions in order to evade assessment of taxes to reduce the substantial tax liabilities he faces as of February 2020.

Now, it is theoretically possible that Hunter Biden is a financial genius who earned all of these millions of Chinese and Ukrainian dollars legitimately, and it is also theoretically possible that he just has writer's block about filling out his tax returns.  These excuses just do not fly here as I will show in recounting Hunter's life story as told by those right-wing infidels the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN.

Before recounting the sad and frankly pathetic life of Hunter Biden, we need to remember that his father, Joe Biden, is the President of the United States—which is a fact not lost on the Chinese and Ukrainian shady "interest groups" funding Hunter Biden's jet set lifestyle.   Unlike King Charles III, Joe Biden is probably the most powerful man on the planet—a status Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping would dearly like to change.  Chinese and Ukrainian shady interest groups with government ties would no doubt like to influence President Joe Biden's actions by showering money on Joe's son Hunter.

Also, unlike King Charles III, President Joe Biden is subject to impeachment and removal from office on "Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."  The U.S. House of Representatives is the sole custodian of the power and the duty to impeach corrupt officials.  No other entity in the country has that power or duty.  The U.S. Senate sitting as a Court of Impeachment, presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts, has the sole power and duty to try and, by a two-thirds vote convict, President Joe Biden for being bribed through his family members.  After this most recent indictment, it is the sworn duty of the House of Representatives to make sure that Joe Biden isn't getting a cut or a benefit out of bribes paid to his son Hunter and that he was somehow not aware of the fact that his son was being given inordinate amounts of money by Chinese and Ukrainian interests perhaps due to senility.

Hunter Biden is President Joe Biden's second son.  He survived a car crash that killed his mother, his sister, and that seriously injured both him and his older brother who died in 2015 of brain cancer.  For these reasons, mainstream Republicans have, like his father, given him a pass in life.  Unfortunately, his recent, serious, criminal behavior make it impossible to look the other way any longer.  He is behaving like someone who expects to be pardoned by his father for any crimes he chooses to commit.

The long sordid saga of Hunter Biden's life began in 1996 to 1998 when he worked for a credit card company.  The Clinton Administration's Commerce Secretary, William M. Daley, then swooped in to hire Hunter to work for the Commerce Department from 1998 to 2001.  From 2001 to 2008, Hunter worked as a lobbyist probably selling access to his father, a powerful Senator.  Records show that Hunter Biden had earned more than $2.8 million in fees during this period of time.  This is also the period in Hunter Biden's life when he began heavily drinking.

His clients during this period included an online gambling venture, biotech companies, and colleges seeking earmarks.  Hunter quit lobbying  during the 2008 presidential election to serve on the Board of Amtrak—a job secured for him by Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.).   His credentials for the post were slim.  By the time of his father's election as Vice President, Hunter Biden had resigned from Amtrak, did some investment management business, and was unemployed.

Hunter Biden was then commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2013 due to Vice President Biden's influence, which was improper to say the least.  The Navy had to waive a rule that Biden was too old for him to serve in the job he was appointed to for Hunter to be commissioned.  On his very first day at the naval base, Hunter Biden was fired and administratively discharged when a drug test showed that he was using cocaine.

Within months, Hunter Biden was invited to join the Board of Directors of Burisma, a very shady Ukrainian energy company that was under investigation for corruption.  At the very same time Hunter's father Vice President Joe Biden was overseeing White House policy for President Obama toward Ukraine.  Hunter Biden made more than $800,000 from Burisma in 2013 and more than $1.2million in 2014—not bad for a forty-four year old who had just been discharged from the Navy for using cocaine.

Hunter had met his first wife, Kathleen Buhle in 1993; they were married from 1996 until 2017; and they have three children together.  Hunter plunged into alcoholism and drug abuse. following the death of his brother Beau in 2015.  Ms. Buhle accused Hunter of "spending extravagantly on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations) while leaving the family with no funds to pay legitimate bills".

Hunter is the biological and legal father of a child born to an exotic dancer from Arkansas who Hunter has no recollection of every having met much less having had sexual relations with her.  Hunter Biden was also in a years-long custody battle to force him to pay child support for his illegitimate child.

Hunter then entered into a relationship with his brother's widow, Hallie Biden.  A month after he left his brother's widow, Hunter married South African native, Melissa Cohen, in May 2019.  They have a son, Beau Biden Jr., who is named after Hunter's brother.  Hunter Biden thus has five children by three different wives.

On October 12, 2018, Hunter Biden bought a .38 caliber handgun, and he lied on a U.S. government form that he was not using drugs when he was in fact using drugs at the time.  The standard penalty for lying on government forms, if you are not a Biden, is five years in prison.  First time offenders would not get the maximum penalty.

In April 2019, Hunter Biden left a damaged laptop with "alarming" and "embarrassing" content at a computer repair shop.  The owner of the shop copied the contents and sent them to the FBI.   In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden falsely denied that Hunter Biden had made money doing business in China.

Hunter Biden's biography is not the biography of a brilliant investment manager, hedge fund executive, or financial genius.  When China drops $7 million on Hunter Biden or Ukraine hires him for a salary of $1 million a year—right after he was discharged from the U.S. Navy for cocaine use—they are not buy brilliance, they are buying influence on great power—Joe Biden's power.  It is now the job of the U.S. House of Representatives to determine whether a possibly senile President Biden has noticed that he is being bribed through his son.