Prosecutors call Hunter Biden a conspiracy theorist who cheated on taxes after sobriety

Federal prosecutors who charged Hunter Biden with tax evasion are mounting their strongest counterattack yet on the president’s son and his criticism of the case, suggesting that he has engaged in conspiracy theories in court and clearly cheated on taxes even after achieving sobriety.

The federal court filing that Special Counsel David Weiss and his deputy Leo Wise filed late Friday made clear they don’t intend to yield to Hunter Biden or his lawyers on the narrative in the court of public opinion or their version of facts in a case that threatens to send the first son to prison for as many as 17 years, if convicted. 

In recent weeks, Biden‘s defense team has suggested that Weiss’ prosecution was prompted by pressure from congressional Republicans and ex-President Trump, and on that basis, filed a series of motions to dismiss the charges. "This case follows a nearly six-year record of [the Justice Department] changing its charging decisions and upping the ante on Mr. Biden in direct response to political pressure and its own self-interests," Hunter Biden's lawyers argued last month.

The defense has also suggested the charges and a related impeachment inquiry in Congress seek to punish him for a time when Hunter Biden was under the throes of drug addiction.

The prosecutors fired back on both claims, filing an opposition to Biden's motion, providing evidence that Hunter Biden‘s tax evasion persisted even after he achieved sobriety and alleging it included many willful acts during a four-year scheme. In the filings, the prosecutors told the court that assertions made by Biden's lawyers were "offering non-realities as 'facts' to the Court."  

“To further this scheme, the defendant subverted the payroll and tax withholding process of his own company, he spent millions of dollars on his extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills, and, in 2018, he stopped paying his outstanding and overdue taxes for tax year 2015,” the prosecutors argued.

You can read the full filing here.

Hunter Biden has said he got clean from drugs and alcohol around the time he married his current wife Melissa Cohen in 2019 and moved to California. Prosecutors noted Biden continued to fail to pay overdue taxes after that, even as Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris began providing him millions of dollars in loans and painting purchases. That assistance began in February 2020, records show.

In their court filings opposing Biden's motion to dismiss the charges, prosecutors essentially said that Biden and his attorneys are ignoring facts to shape their own reality: "The defendant’s motion is written as though he has been criminally charged only for his conduct during the 2019 tax year and that he has not been charged with willfully committing multiple tax crimes during the three years that immediately preceded the 2019 tax year." 

“The defendant willfully failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 taxes, despite having access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes,” the prosecutors wrote. “Even well after the defendant had regained his sobriety, he chose not to pay his tax liabilities in 2020. 

“Despite receiving $1.2 million in financial support from a friend to maintain his lifestyle, the defendant did not make payments towards his tax obligations.  Instead, he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on personal expenses, including renting a lavish house on a canal in Venice Beach, California, his Porsche, and media relations services,” the filing added.

Prosecutors also turned a favorite term of Hunter Biden and his defenders, conspiracy, theories, into a weapon against him in the court filing. 

Since 2019, President Biden's defenders in the media and Hunter Biden‘s advocates have suggested any questions about the families overseas dealings with China, Russia, Ukraine, and others were conspiracy theories, and that those who wrote factual stories about the evidence, including this reporter, were conspiracy theorists. The New York Times' "disinformation" reporter went as far as to say that these were "false or misleading rumors"..."circulating again in far-right corners of the internet."  

Weiss and Wise, however, said it is in fact Hunter, Biden who is a conspiracy theorist by arguing that the prosecution was somehow prompted by Republican political forces.

“The defendant concocts a conspiracy theory that the prosecution has 'upped the ante' to appease politicians who have absolutely nothing to do with the prosecution and are not even members of the current Executive Branch,” they wrote. “The defendant’s conspiratorial “upped the ante” claim is nothing more than a house of cards.”

“The defendant fails to explain how President Biden or the Attorney General, to whom the Special Counsel reports, or the Special Counsel himself, or his team of prosecutors, are acting at the direction of former President Trump or Congressional Republicans, or how this current Executive Branch approved allegedly discriminatory charges against the President’s son at the direction of former President Trump and Congressional Republicans,” the filing said. “The defendant’s fictitious narrative cannot overcome these two inescapable facts.”