by Jonathan Turley
Below is my column in the New York Post on the second indictment of Hunter Biden. The tax evasion charges were brought in a type of Voldemort indictment, skillfully detailing millions acquired from influence peddling without mentioning “he who must not be named.” Indeed, it says nothing of how or why millions were sent to Hunter.
Here is the column:
The 56-page indictment of Hunter Biden for tax evasion makes for racy reading, with the special counsel describing a four-year criminal pattern directed at maintaining Biden’s “extravagant lifestyle.”
That lifestyle included massive expenses for strippers, sex clubs, fast cars and other distractions.
The steps taken by Hunter to evade taxes are impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the efforts of the Justice Department to evade any direct implications for his father, President Biden.
In that sense, the indictment itself is a marvel of evasion.
There are three glaring omissions in the indictment that tend to shield critical payments and conduct that implicate the president.
The Burisma-Ukrainian money
First, the special counsel only indicts tax evasion that occurred in recent years.
That’s because the long “investigation” into Hunter inexplicably allowed the statute of limitations to expire on the most controversial payments starting around 2014 from Ukraine gas company Burisma.
Recent testimony from IRS whistleblowers suggests that wasn’t an accident. Investigators were stonewalled, they claimed, and the Justice Department was previously moving to reject any charges against Hunter Biden.
Exploring those earlier Ukrainian payments opens up questions about Hunter’s influence peddling and would have highlighted the conflict in his father’s extraordinary move to force the Ukrainians to fire a prosecutor investigating Burisma by holding back a billion dollars in aid for the country.
There is still no explanation why special counsel David Weiss would allow the statute of limitations to run out.
>But this recent indictment keeps the focus squarely on taxes not paid, not how the money was “earned” in the first place.
Hunter the foreign agent
Also missing in the indictment is any charge against Hunter Biden as an unregistered foreign agent.
Recently, the Justice Department added a charge to the indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) that he ran afoul of FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. FARA also was used to go after Donald Trump associates such as Paul Manafort.
The problem with charging Hunter with FARA is obvious.
It opens up questions about the millions of dollars going to the Biden family from foreign sources, a topic that Attorney General Merrick Garland has spent years avoiding.
In the second indictment, Weiss spends more time detailing the salacious use of this money rather than how and why it was given to the Bidens.
He just matter-of-factly describes millions flowing through these accounts from China, Romania, Ukraine, Russia and other countries.
The unindicted co-conspirator
By focusing on tax evasion alone, Weiss again avoids any direct reference to the focus of the influence-peddling used to raise these millions of dollars.
Even without mentioning the president, the implications of the indictment are devastating for the narrative and denials of Joe Biden.
The president has continued to maintain that he had no knowledge or interaction with these dealings. Those statements are clearly and knowingly false.
The president also maintained that his son has “never done anything wrong” and never accepted any money from China.
That is also untrue, according to the Justice Department and Hunter himself.
If this was any other person with another name, they would have already been tried, convicted and sent to prison most likely for life.
No matter what they do, the facts are coming out. The House has the proof. They don’t need a Hunter conviction to impeach the most corrupt and treasonous person that ever called themselves President. Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden’s corrupt family getting away with crimes is baked into the weaponized DoJ and needs to be corrected.