What are the allegations against Hunter Biden?
Editor’s note (December 13th 2023): This story was updated after Hunter Biden was indicted on tax charges in California. Meanwhile the House of Representatives signalled that it would vote to formalise its impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
IN OCTOBER 2020, less than a month before America’s presidential election, the New York Post introduced the world to the contents of a MacBook Pro. The laptop belonged to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. The Post alleged that an email on its hard drive indicated that in 2015 Hunter had introduced a Ukrainian energy executive to Mr Biden, then vice-president. That, the paper claimed, suggested that Hunter’s business dealings had improperly influenced American policy.
Right-wing media seized on the story. The mainstream press, unable to confirm that the hard drive came from Hunter’s laptop, gave it less coverage. Journalists worried that the emails could be a Russian fabrication. Twitter and Facebook rushed to limit the story’s spread on their platforms, offering flimsy justifications. This provoked the spread of unfounded theories of collusion between the Bidens and the media.
Now Hunter is back in the spotlight. On December 7th he was indicted on tax charges in California. His business dealings remain the focus of the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry into the president—a probe the House is set to formally authorise as soon as December 13th. (House Republicans say that passing such a resolution will strengthen their hand in enforcing subpoenas.) Hunter has also pleaded not guilty to lying on a federal firearms form and owning a gun illegally: on December 11th his lawyer moved to have the charges dismissed. What are the allegations against Hunter? And how big a problem might they pose to the Biden administration?
As recently as July, Hunter’s legal case was expected to end in a plea deal. But the arrangement collapsed in court: prosecutors and Hunter’s lawyers disagreed on whether the deal would shield the president’s son from future charges. In August David Weiss, the federal prosecutor who had been overseeing the investigation since it began in 2018, was appointed special counsel. That gave him greater independence within the Department of Justice (whose boss is nominated by the president). Mr Weiss filed court papers seeking to dismiss the tax charges in Delaware, which were part of the original plea deal, in order to move them to a different jurisdiction, so that they could be brought to trial. On December 7th new tax charges—alleging that Hunter failed to pay some $1.4m in federal taxes between 2016 and 2019—were unveiled in California. His lawyer suggested they were politically motivated.
These indictments—and the prospect of a trial—have been catnip to Republicans in the House, whose impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden began in September. They claim that Hunter’s foreign business dealings enriched his father, and have issued the president’s son a subpoena. Hunter has refused to give a deposition to the House Oversight Committee behind closed doors, but has offered to participate in a public hearing.
The House’s scope, stemming from activities that date back nearly a decade, has been much broader than that of the federal investigation. Between 2014 and 2019 Hunter was a paid board member of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural-gas company. The firm’s owner was investigated for corruption by Ukraine’s top prosecutor, who was later fired. Mr Biden, then vice-president, had been overseeing an American effort to help Ukraine crack down on corruption, and had called for the prosecutor to be removed because he was ineffective. There is no evidence that Mr Biden’s stance was linked to the Burisma investigation.
Allegations that Mr Biden had intervened in Ukrainian affairs to help his son surfaced in 2018 and led indirectly to the first impeachment of Donald Trump. In 2019 Mr Trump ordered that military aid be withheld from Ukraine as a way of pressing its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Burisma. Mr Trump apparently hoped to uncover information that would compromise Mr Biden, then a potential Democratic presidential candidate. The House impeached Mr Trump for abusing his power to boost his chances of re-election, but the Senate acquitted him.
Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine were investigated by the Senate in 2020. But lawmakers found no evidence that he had improperly influenced American policy through his father. The Post’s story purported to offer new evidence. It suggested that in 2015 Hunter had arranged a meeting between Mr Biden and a Burisma adviser. The president’s aides and Hunter’s lawyers deny that any such meeting took place. There is no record of it on Mr Biden’s schedule.
The impeachment inquiry will probably focus on another set of business deals. Between 2017 and 2018 CEFC, a Chinese oil-and-gas conglomerate, paid Hunter and his uncle, James Biden (to whom the House has also issued a subpoena), nearly $5m. One of Hunter’s jobs was to negotiate a liquefied-natural-gas project in America (which was never built). Some observers claim that emails from Hunter’s laptop suggest he was planning a separate venture between several associates, including James Biden and CEFC. One email from the firm said that a 10% stake would go to “the big guy”. James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, claims that “Joe Biden is the ‘big guy’.” Separately, Mr Comer told The Economist in 2022 that he believed that Hunter had “compromised” the president. Joe Biden’s representatives deny any involvement.
Mr Comer’s claim is a big one, and Republicans have yet to back it up. Hunter may have exploited his family connections to get cushy jobs, but there is no hard evidence that his father was aware of his work with CEFC—in short, no evidence that Hunter’s clients influenced American policy. Yet no presidential candidate can relish the prospect of defending allegations against a family member on the campaign trail—particularly when more than 60% of Americans, according to a poll published in September, are convinced that Joe Biden was somehow mixed up in Hunter’s seemingly unseemly affairs. ■