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ANALYSIS | Hunter Biden's soap opera is far from over

2022-03-31T09:48:16.816Z


The proximity to power of Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, helped him make millions, but his addiction cost him dearly.


The keys to understanding the Hunter Biden investigation 2:46

(CNN) --

These are some of the outlines of the sad and sordid soap opera of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, whose proximity to power helped him make millions, but whose addiction cost him dearly:

  • He used his father's name to make a lot of money, often from foreign companies.

  • He wasted money on drugs, alcohol and prostitution, according to his ex-wife.

  • He ruined his marriage and had an affair with his brother's widow.

  • He was discharged from the Naval Reserve for drugs.

  • He says he can't remember his affair with a woman that gave rise to a son, and that a court ordered him to pay child support after a DNA test.

  • It is related to a mysteriously missing laptop that was seized by the FBI, but which he claims may have been stolen by the Russians.

  • He has been the subject of a partisan investigation aimed at shaming his father ahead of the 2020 election.

  • It appears that he is now sober, remarried, published a memoir about his addiction, and embarked on a new career as an artist, though the sales of his art have raised their own questions about transparency and conflicts of interest.

But this story is not over.

A federal investigation into the president's son is gaining momentum, there are new details about his foreign dealings, and he is once again under Republican scrutiny.

We may know the broad outlines, but it's the details that could get Hunter Biden indicted, or not, perhaps on federal charges related to how he made all those millions from foreign sources at a time when he was out of control in the drugs

Federal investigation heats up

CNN's Evan Perez and Katelyn Polantz report that the investigation has gathered steam in recent months.

They describe "a flurry of witnesses providing testimony to federal investigators with more expected to provide interviews in the coming weeks, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter."

Read the full report.

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Trump reinstates himself (and Putin)

In a new interview with a right-wing media outlet published Tuesday, former President Donald Trump called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release any damaging information the Russians have about the Biden family.

New details on millions from China

The Washington Post reports on financial documents from the mysterious laptop linking Biden to a Chinese company (with ties to the Chinese government) that paid him and his uncle James, Joe Biden's brother, millions more.

Emails between Hunter Biden and Chinese businessmen are included in the newspaper report.

He also once told a property manager that he would share office space in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood with his father, but that doesn't appear to have happened.

Hunter Biden did not comment to the newspaper about the emails from the laptop.

Testimony before the grand jury

Federal investigators have interviewed a woman with whom he had an affair and the child he fathered, along with lobbyists and business associates.

One of those partners, Devon Archer, who sat with Biden on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, was questioned by a grand jury in Delaware last July, according to Pérez and Polantz.

That was before Archer went to jail for defrauding a Native American tribe.

What crimes could Hunter Biden have committed?

Potential charges for Biden and his associates could include tax evasion, money laundering or violation of foreign lobbying laws and even gun laws, as a firearm purchased by Biden was once disposed of in a Delaware dumpster. .

Biden has denied wrongdoing and said he used tax consultants to file taxes.

Return to Burisma

Hunter Biden made millions more on Burisma.

Recall that Trump used this connection to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to provide damaging information about the Bidens ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Democrats accused Trump earlier in 2020 of using his power as president to pressure a foreign government into American politics, but Senate Republicans kept Trump in office.

Federal investigators, according to highly detailed and deeply sourced reports from Perez and Polantz, have focused on Blue Star Strategies, a lobbying firm that Biden may have worked with to try to improve Burisma's reputation in the US.

Blue Star employees reached out to State Department officials after the US government criticized Burisma's founder.

That job was the subject of the 2020 investigation by Senate Republicans, which explicitly found no wrongdoing.

Taxes now apparently paid

Perez and Polantz report that Biden has told his associates that he paid outstanding tax bills.

Unpaid taxes in Washington were likely paid as well, as public records show more than $450,000 in state levies were lifted in 2020.

Instead of ending the investigation, however, the payments prompted investigators to examine the source of the funds to pay the tax bills, Perez and Polantz report.

Political enemies of Biden

Hunter Biden's business dealings have long been a political line of attack for Republicans, often spearheaded by Rudy Giuliani on Trump's behalf.

They tried to tarnish President Biden with the taint of his son's foreign business and personal problems.

President Biden, who is not implicated in the federal investigation into his son's activities, has denied having anything to do with his son's business dealings and praised his son's attempts to deal with his addiction.

Hunter Biden admitted that his last name gave him access to money, and argued that the same is true for Trump's children, saying he underestimated what his foreign business dealings would look like.

But that regret won't help much if the US Attorney in Delaware, which has been investigating Biden since 2018, with a 2020 silence period in honor of a longstanding custom of not influencing presidential elections, finds he broke the law.

None of these developments for Hunter Biden, even if they have nothing to do with his father, may be good news for the president, who is struggling with declining approval ratings.

Hunter Biden

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-03-31

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