Donald Trump is going to do everything he can to put Joe Biden in the position of having to pardon his son to save him from a Bill Barr/Rudy Giuliani-constructed frame job and a long prison stretch, because he wants the Bidens to suffer. He figures it'll be leverage to get Biden to force New York AG Tish James and Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance into dropping their investigations into the Trump Organization, too. After all, if they are going after Trump's kids, Trump will make sure Hunter Biden rots in jail.
A subpoena seeking documents from Hunter Biden asked for information related to more than two dozen entities, including Ukraine gas company Burisma, according to a person familiar with a Justice Department tax investigation of President-elect Joe Biden’s son.
The breadth of the subpoena, issued Tuesday, underscores the wide-angle lens prosecutors are taking as they examine the younger Biden’s finances and international business ventures.
Hunter Biden’s ties to Burisma in particular have long dogged the policy work and political aspirations of his father, Joe Biden, now the president-elect of the United States. It’s unclear whether Hunter Biden’s work at the Ukrainian company is a central part of the federal investigation or whether prosecutors are simply seeking information about all his sources of income in recent years.
The person was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
A lawyer for the younger Biden, George Mesires, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment for this story and a spokesman for the Biden transition team declined to comment.
Hunter Biden confirmed Wednesday that his taxes are under federal investigation. The revelation comes at a delicate time for the president-elect, who is building out his Cabinet and will soon decide on his nominee to run the Justice Department, the same department overseeing the investigation into his son.
In addition to the Burisma-related request, the subpoena issued last week also seeks information on Hunter Biden’s Chinese business dealings and other financial transactions.
The probe was launched in 2018, the year before his father announced his candidacy for president. At one point in the investigation, federal prosecutors were also examining potential money laundering offenses, two people familiar with the matter told the AP.
Hunter Biden said he only learned of the investigation on Tuesday.
The younger Biden joined the board of Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine. President Donald Trump and his allies have long argued, without evidence, that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine influenced the Obama administration’s policies toward the Eastern European nation.
Senate Republicans said in a report earlier this year that the appointment may have posed a conflict of interest but did not provide evidence that any policies were directly affected by Hunter Biden’s work.
Part of me wants to say that Biden should clean house at the DoJ, and definitely replace as many US Attorneys as he can, and get rid of any Special Counsels that Trump appoints. The problem is, he's actually bound by the rules, whereas Trump is not. Actually doing that would prompt howls of BOTH SIDES ARE CORRUPT by the Village, and Biden won't do it anyway.
But Trump thinks he will 1) succeed in convicting Hunter Biden and 2) force Biden into an agonizing choice that "proves" he's either corrupt or willing to "sacrifice his family for political gain" and he's counting on Biden to let Ivanka and Junior (maybe even Eric, maybe) skate as a result.
Anything they find to use against Joe Biden himself is gravy, frankly. That's how they work, you see.
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