Hunter Biden indicted on nine tax charges, adding to gun charges in special counsel probe

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to News@lemmy.world – 111 points –
Hunter Biden indicted on nine tax charges, adding to gun charges in special counsel probe
apnews.com
46

That's it! I will never vote for Hunter Biden now.

Is he in a beaty contest or something?

Not sure if you misspelled "beauty" or if he is entering his huge hog into a beat-off contest....

I thought maybe he meant a Beatty contest, and I was going to give it to Ned, hands down.

Roger Stone failed to pay $2M in taxes: no indictment.

Rudy Giuliani CURRENTLY owes over $500K in back taxes and is also an "addict that lives an extravagant lifestyle". Where's his indictment?

It seems that it was more than just failure to pay:

The new charges against Hunter Biden include filing a false return and tax evasion felonies, as well as misdemeanor failure to file and failure to pay.

That said, the maximum sentence for tax evasion is five years, but I don’t know how multiple counts work in this situation.

You can get the max on each count. Usually that doesn't happen, unless they didn't get more counts or higher charges to stick.

Yeah, but like, they are charging him with the scheme of not failing to pay. OP pointed out others doing the same stuff.

If he did crimes, good that charges were filed. Seems a bit hypocritical but then what would really be really hypocritical is holding people to a different standard while saying everyone should have the same standard.

That's nice. But since he wasn't elected and isn't part of the presidental cabinet why should anyone care?

I think the right-wing talking point is that Joe assisted Hunter with what he did, thus Joe is also a criminal, blah blah blah

I mean that's certainly spicy speculation, but until there's any actual evidence of it, we all have way more important things to care about.

the President has done some... questionable things, possibly criminal, depending on your ideological bent

what his kids do though? eh

How can a crime vary by ideology? Criminal implies legalities. How can your ideological point of view change whether or not a law was broken?

I mean. There's an entire Supreme Court dedicated to interpretting the USA's original "law", the Constitution. They recently reevaluated the meaning of Roe vs Wade. And each judge applies their own interpretation to laws in criminal cases, mostly bounded by prior rulings on the matter only to maintain consistency. Some times laws aren't so cut and dry.

So still no evidence against Joe? Cause frankly I could care less about whatever shenanigans his offspring get into.

4 more...

The charges are centered on at least $1.4 million in taxes Hunter Biden owed during between 2016 and 2019, a period where he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. The back taxes have since been paid.

So the taxes are paid? Fine him for being a fuck up and move on.

Wait so bro was a junkie all was fine. Now that he's trying to get his act back together, which is incredibly hard and painful to do. They are jumping on him, shit I wish we could all start seeing addiction as it is, not a crime but a disease.

I'm not saying that being addicted should make you immune to crimes, or that you shouldn't deal with the consequences of your own actions.

But come on... It's a disgrace, letting people with real mental problems go about without proper treatment. It's repeating the cycle. This whole persecution campaign from the republicans makes 0 sense.

He got his shit back together, wich is more then most people who ever had an addiction....it is low key impressive

It makes perfect sense.

Republicans want to throw anyone not considered normal in prison.

And if that not-normal person is a politically advantageous target, then it's twice as sensible.

Do they at least have copies of his tax returns, or are the Republicans unable to find that evidence, either

So a small fine.

He tried to plea down to a misdemeanor charge, but the judge did not like the deal. If found guilty, he could spend years in prison, but most likely you're correct. If this were your average tax cheat, he'd be facing a small fine.

Maybe this opens the door to more rich tax cheats facing prosecution. Hunter goes to jail, why not the next one? Why not all of them? Republicans keep dancing around like they knocked down the champ, but they have abandoned the pretense that it's just not possible to prosecute the big tax cheats because they have the means to hire expensive lawyers and the connections to avoid jail time.

He tried to plea down to a misdemeanor charge, but the judge did not like the deal.

I don't think this is the correct framing. The judge questioned the parties (required during a deal) and found that the parties disagreed on the interpretation of the deal and exposure to additional charges (highly unusual - these agreements are typically watertight). Since there was a disagreement there was no meeting of the minds and the deal fell apart. The judges feelings have nothing to do with it.

Thanks, all I remember reading was that the judge rejected the deal, but that sounds a lot more plausible than what I said.

With tax crimes you rarely see anyone have more than a fine, especially when they have already paid what they owe. More than likely he will be charged with a misdemeanor, be fined $25,000, and released.

If convicted, Hunter Biden could face up to 17 years in prison. The special counsel probe remains open, Weiss said.

"if"... "could"

Oh no! That means it's... probably going to happen, right? Everyone get ready for exactly that to go down!

That is extremely unlikely to actually occur. For that figure he would have to be convicted of every count, given the maximum sentence for every count, and sentenced to serve it consecutively.

Consecutive sentencing is pretty much guaranteed not to happen. So you can immediately reduce the high end to whatever the most serious count is. Then since it's federal, the judge will have sentencing guidelines that will add up a whole bunch of aggravating and mitigating factors to arrive at the final sentence.

That is extremely unlikely to actually occur

As is just paying a small fine..

I thought I wouldn't need to explain that to be people, but man, I've just really been overestimating Lemmy lately

Did we federate with some new instance where you all just see single comments in a vacuum with zero context?

You notice how they don't talk about that Hunter Biden laptop full of cp that Rudy Giuliani said he had and kept showing people.

I know this shouldn't affect Joe Biden presidential run in theory, but... In a normal country and at a time before Trump, if your rival is an incompetent lier, you'd afford to send a different person to run.

too bad Republican traitors don't care about going after their rich friends who are huge tax dodgers.. just desperate to throw mud anywhere near Joe because he's clean, and they're all covered in shit from birth..