Quote:
Special counsel David Weiss has charged Hunter Biden with making false statements on an application to purchase a gun. (Mr. Biden has pleaded not guilty.) Now go collect the taxes.
After working on it for about three years, Internal Revenue Service criminal investigators submitted a lengthy “Special Agent Report” to the Justice Department’s Tax Division, recommending that prosecutors bring felony charges against Mr. Biden for 2014 and 2018 for willful attempt to evade or defeat taxes and willful filing of a false return. Both are felonies punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 and prison time, up to five years for the former offense, three for the latter. The report also recommended that Mr. Biden be charged with willful failure to file returns or pay taxes for each of five years, 2015-19. These are misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in prison or $25,000, or both. Special agent Joseph Ziegler testified that the Tax Division produced a 99-page memo authorizing these criminal charges.
The statute of limitations having expired on the felonies that could have been charged for 2014, Mr. Weiss then negotiated a deal under which Mr. Biden would plead guilty to, but pay no penalty for, two years of misdemeanors—while the 2018 felony and three years of misdemeanor charges would be dropped.
Two agreements were presented to Judge Maryellen Noreika on July 26, and there was a peculiar cross-reference. Buried deep in the gun-diversion agreement was a provision granting immunity for any crimes encompassed in an exhibit to the tax plea agreement. When the judge asked about this, prosecutors backed away from it, causing Mr. Biden to withdraw his guilty plea to the two tax misdemeanors. Mr. Weiss could refile the tax charges but hasn’t yet.
But have the statutes of limitations really expired on Mr. Biden’s tax violations? Not necessarily. Mr. Weiss might have botched the prosecution on the earlier years, but the IRS could nonetheless seek to collect any unpaid taxes.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has said he has reviewed Suspicious Activity Reports filed with the Treasury Department indicating that Hunter Biden received as much as $50 million from sources in China, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan and Romania between 2014 and 2019. That is vastly larger than the amounts whistleblowers have testified were shown on the federal income-tax returns he filed for those years. House committee members allege that he concealed his ownership of those funds by having them funneled into dozens of entities.
Ordinarily, the IRS must assess taxes and begin proceedings to collect them within three years of the date the return reporting them is filed. But when no return is filed, or when the return is false, fraudulent or otherwise represents a willful attempt to defeat or evade tax, the statute of limitations doesn’t start running.
The report the special agents submitted to the Tax Division claimed that Mr. Biden’s violations of tax law were willful. Can it be credibly argued that tax returns omitting millions of dollars of taxable income are not false or fraudulent?
Were Hunter Biden and others engaged in a conspiracy to conceal their income and its sources? Where are the bank accounts for the 20 or so entities the Oversight Committee believes Mr. Biden and his business partners established? The agents claim to have been thwarted in their efforts. If they hadn’t been, what might they have discovered?
As to possible criminal charges, note that the statute of limitations begins to run when the last affirmative act of concealment occurs. So if income is received in year one and not reported, and the last action undertaken to conceal it occurred in year five, it is in year five that the statute of limitations begins to run.
It would be an error to conclude that the statute of limitations on criminal charges has expired without considering whether acts of concealment prevented or delayed its start date. In fulfillment of its oversight obligation, Congress must continue its efforts to see that the laws it has passed are enforced.
