The Hunter Biden charges are a ‘devastating indictment’: Sol Wisenberg
Former Whitewater Deputy Counsel Sol Wisenberg reacts to the latest indictment of Hunter Biden and discusses former President Trump’s legal battles.
Hunter Biden's indictment in California this week on nine tax-related charges shines an awkward light on his father's repeated promises about forcing the wealthy to pay their "fair share" of taxes.
The younger Biden allegedly carried out a multiyear scheme to evade paying $1.4 million in federal taxes while leading a hedonistic lifestyle that included spending exorbitant sums on escorts and illegal drugs.
President Biden has repeatedly called on the rich to pay their fair share in taxes and pledged to go after "tax cheats" despite his son Hunter allegedly evading his own income taxes for several years. (Fox News)
According to Special Counsel David Weiss, the president's son "engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019, from in or about January 2017 through in or about October 15, 2020, and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns in or about February 2020," which was in the middle of his dad's presidential campaign.
Weiss said that, in "furtherance of that scheme," Hunter "subverted the payroll and tax withholding process of his own company, Owasco, PC by withdrawing millions" from the company "outside of the payroll and tax withholding process that it was designed to perform."
Hunter allegedly "spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills," and that in 2018, he "stopped paying his outstanding and overdue taxes for tax year 2015." If convicted, the president's son faces up to 17 years in prison.
President Biden has repeatedly called on the rich to pay their fair share in taxes and pledged to go after "tax cheats" despite his son allegedly evading his own income taxes for several years.
Hunter Biden walks with family members in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on Nov. 24. (Tom Brenner)
Throughout the 2020 campaign — when Hunter allegedly avoided his taxes — Biden routinely called on the rich and corporations to pay their fair share.
"Corporations need to pay their fair share in taxes," Biden posted on social media in November 2019. "I'll reverse Trump’s giveaway to the super-wealthy and corporations because it’s time we reward work, not just wealth."
"As president, I’ll make sure giant corporations and the super-wealthy pay their fair share in taxes — and then invest that money in growing a stronger, more inclusive middle class," he wrote weeks later in December 2019.
Biden continued the call throughout the 2020 campaign and his presidency.
During his first re-election campaign rally this year, he targeted the wealthy and called for them to cough up more money. And before that, he proposed doubling the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to target tax cheats.
In May 2021, Biden called for hiring 87,000 new IRS workers over the next decade as part of an effort to beef up the agency's budget by $80 billion, Politico reported at the time.
"The president's compliance proposals are designed to ameliorate existing inequities by focusing on high-end evasion," the Treasury Department wrote in a report.
"These unpaid taxes come at a cost to American households and compliant taxpayers as policymakers choose rising deficits, lower spending on necessary priorities, or further tax increases to compensate for the lost revenue."
President Biden speaks during the annual Tribal Nations Summit at the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Biden has also said paying higher taxes is "patriotic" and has regularly singled out the rich.
"For too long we've had an economy that gives every break in the world to the folks who need it the least. It's time to grow the economy from the bottom up," Biden said months after entering office and calling on the rich to pay their "fair share" in taxes, a line he's repeatedly said during his presidency.
"I'm a capitalist, but just pay your fair share," Biden said at his State of the Union address this year.
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Biden also targeted former President Trump over taxes in October 2020 in a Facebook post that included a video titled, "Americans compare their taxes to Trump's taxes."
"I paid my taxes. These folks paid theirs. So why didn't Trump pay his?" Biden wrote.
The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
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