HUNTER INDICTED
A California grand jury has returned a nine-count indictment against Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, charging him with three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses.
This is Hunter Biden’s second criminal case as he faces separate charges in Delaware for illegal gun possession.
Special counsel David Weiss announced the indictment on Thursday night, which alleges Biden spent millions on a lavish lifestyle and drugs instead of fulfilling his tax obligations between 2016 and 2019—totaling at least $1.4 million.
Instead of paying his taxes, Biden “spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes,” reads the indictment.
According to Weiss, the charges include three counts of failure to pay taxes for the years 2016, 2017, and 2019, and three counts of failure to file tax returns for the years 2017 and 2018.
“The Defendant spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle at the same time he chose not to pay his taxes,” reads the indictment.
The indictment notes Biden’s spending during these years, including $1 million in 2016, $1.4 million in 2017, $1.8 million in 2018, and $600,000 in 2019.
Additionally, Biden faces charges of tax evasion, filing a false return, and filing a false return for his company, Owasco PC, for the tax year 2018.
Biden’s alleged actions involved a deliberate effort to avoid paying taxes, including subverting his own company’s payroll and tax withholding process by withdrawing millions outside of the established procedures, according to the indictment.
If convicted on all counts, the president’s son could face a maximum penalty of 17 years in prison.
The charges in this indictment are more serious than the misdemeanor tax charges that Biden had earlier pleaded guilty to in a deal that fell apart in July after a judge’s scrutiny.
The indictment came the same day House Republicans filed a resolution to formalize the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden. A vote is expected next week.
Hunter Biden is separately clashing with House Republicans on a subpoena issued to appear for a closed-door interview as part of the inquiry on Dec. 13. Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, responded to the subpoena saying that the president’s son would agree to a public hearing instead.
Top Republicans are now threatening to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress if he does not appear for the deposition next week.
—Caden Pearson
THE DEBATE SPIN DOCTORS HAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOU
The spin room is a 40-year-old fixture in presidential debates. It’s a place where campaign staffers try to influence public opinion about the debate.
Here’s a snapshot of the spin from Dec. 6’s GOP debate in Tuscaloosa.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a strong leader who is the only viable alternative to President Donald Trump, according to his surrogates.
DeSantis was “the only conservative on that stage,” according to Andrew Romeo, communications director for the DeSantis campaign.
“[Nikki Haley] was sending love letters to China. Ron DeSantis banned China from doing business in Florida,” Mr. Romeo said, trying very hard to cast his guy as the clear leader.
Her team wasn’t buying it. They said Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and governor of South Carolina, is the frontrunner. You can tell by the arrows in her back.
“The fact that DeSantis had to desperately come after her on his opening statement tells you everything you need to know about where this race is at,” Mark Harris of the SFA political action committee told The Epoch Times.
“She’s either tied or ahead right now,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told reporters. “That’s the reason [DeSantis] was aggressive tonight. What else is he gonna do?”
“When DeSantis gets out, if he does, I think Nikki stands a good chance to attract a lot of his supporters,” Norman added.
Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey, spoke for himself in the spin room, positioning himself as the only seasoned executive in the race.
“Nobody ever trained me for Hurricane Sandy,” he said of his handling of that natural disaster.
“What I showed people on that stage is that there was only one person up there who has the experience and the willingness to take the heat of the presidency,” Christie added.
Vivek Ramaswamy and his surrogates presented him as the only candidate willing to tell the truth.
“He mopped the floor,” said Tricia McLaughlin, communications director for the Ramaswamy campaign. “He was pulling no punches. He’s ready to take on anyone and just speak the truth.”
During the debate, Ramaswamy accused Haley of corruption for her involvement with defense contractors, a charge he defended in the spin room.
“Having two X chromosomes does not immunize you from criticism,” Ramaswamy said of Haley. “I don’t think that we should have anybody who’s immune from scrutiny.”
The next debate will be held Jan. 10, five days before the Iowa Caucuses.
—Lawrence Wilson
FISA DEBATE CONTINUES AS STOPGAP DEAL REACHED
Are warrants warranted or unwarranted? That’s the question members of Congress quibbled over this week as they advanced two competing bills to reform and reauthorize a controversial federal spying program.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows for the warrantless surveillance of foreign nationals overseas. But the FBI’s repeated misuse of the program to spy on Americans has left a bad taste in the mouths of those now being asked to reauthorize it.
Congress has just over three weeks to reauthorize or temporarily extend the program before it expires on Dec. 31.
The House Judiciary Committee advanced a bipartisan bill on Dec. 6 that would reauthorize the program, but with key reforms—including requiring federal agencies to obtain a warrant to search the FISA database for Americans’ information.
But House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) says requiring a warrant isn’t necessary as the law already bars using FISA 702 to target U.S. citizens. His competing bill would restrict the FBI’s use of the tool in other ways, like limiting who can approve its use and imposing new audit and congressional notification protocols. That bill passed out of the Intelligence Committee on Dec. 7.
Debate on the matter is likely to go on for some time thanks to a temporary extension of Section 702’s authorization agreed to by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The extension was included in a draft deal for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and would authorize the tool’s use through April 19.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was quick to denounce the compromise as a “sell-out of conservative principles” on Dec. 6 via social media.
“Congratulations to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, you should all be excited to vote for this! I’m a hell no!” she wrote in an X post.
The compromise NDAA is riddled with Republican concessions, including the removal of provisions barring the Defense Department from using federal funds for drag shows, sex-reassignment procedures, and abortion travel for military service members.
But there were some wins for conservatives, including provisions to forbid department officials from flying unapproved flags, and a measure to instruct the Pentagon to consider reinstating service members who were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
Both chambers will need to approve the bill before it can head to Biden’s desk.
—Samantha Flom
TRUMP’S DEFENSE CONTINUES
It’s the end phase of the New York civil fraud trial of Donald Trump, and the gloves are off.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, speaking to me like that!” a defense witness yelled several times across the room at government lawyers who had raised objections during his testimony, complaining that the Trump side had hired him to make statements consistent with the case that the defense has been trying to build.
To recap, New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Trump for $250 million over alleged fraudulent property appraisals in loan applications. New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has already found Trump and co-defendants liable for fraud. The current trial is to determine how much Trump will need to pay in damages.
In a courtroom at 60 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan, lawyers for the defense questioned that witness, New York University Stern School of Business professor Eli Bartov, about the accounting and valuation methodology he teaches in his courses and has explicated in lectures to audiences around the world and as a consultant to Goldman Sachs and other prominent financial institutions.
But in spite of his many credentials and decades of experience in the field, a bulk of the testimony on Dec. 7 focused on establishing, to Justice Engoron’s satisfaction, that Bartov should be qualified as an expert witness on real estate accounting, valuation, and pricing.
Engoron, who has been openly contemptuous of the defense in the long-running trial, was a tough nut to crack. But even after the defense successfully prevailed on the judge to confer expert witness status on Bartov, the government lawyers acted as if Bartov was a pawn in a defense ruse.
Just before the hearing broke for lunch, Bartov became visibly upset and his voice rose. He rebuked the government lawyers for, in essence, ignoring what he had just spent more than two hours calmly explaining to the courtroom.
Bartov was indignant that the defense did not seem able to appreciate the gist of his testimony, which was that nothing in the statements of financial condition (SFOCs) that Trump and associates provided to Deutsche Bank in the hope of obtaining loans was out of order. Or in violation of any provisions of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP.
“I looked at the complaint, I identified the relevant GAAP provisions that relate to this complaint, I looked at the statements of financial condition, particularly—to my mind—the most important evidence, in the credit reports of Deutsche Bank. They really tell you the whole story. You can spin it any way you want but everything is there,” Bartov said.
“My main finding is, there is no evidence whatsoever of any accounting fraud,” he said.
Bartov said that the Fixed Asset Valuation Approach that those who prepared Trump’s SFOCs followed was so common and uncontroversial that the defense’s attempts to find fraud in that approach, and the valuations it produced, was “absurd.”
Trump attended the hearing on Thursday, sitting at the defense table as an observer
During a break, Trump told reporters that this case “should never have been brought.”
“This is weaponization of justice, and this is something nobody has ever seen to this extent,“ he said, adding that he’s now sitting in a courthouse instead of campaigning in Iowa along with his political rivals, calling it ”election interference.“ He clarified that he was not required to be in court for the trial, but that he wanted ”to make sure that you get the true story.”
Bartov’s analysis came on the heels of other testimony highly damaging to the government’s case, including statements from a Florida real estate agent, Lawrence Moens. According to Moens, not only did Trump not fraudulently inflate the value of his assets, he actually undervalued his Mar-a-Lago estate, which Moens himself in 2021 valued at more than $1.2 billion.
Moens’s testimony built on earlier statements from defense witnesses, including the former president himself, which made Trump out to be someone with a net worth so high that he had no need to lie to a potential lender.
Trump is expected to take the stand again on Dec. 11.
—Michael Washburn
WHAT’S HAPPENING
- Biden attends a campaign reception and delivers remarks in Las Vegas after the federal government pledged $6 billion for two high-speed rail projects in the region.
- Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with leaders of the 22-member League of Arab States.
- Surrogates for Trump, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy speak at a four-day event in Myrtle Beach organized by the South Carolina Republican Party.
BOOKMARKS
Far from Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, a conflict over borders is about to play out much closer to home—and could involve the United States once again.
In September, the Biden administration permitted half a million migrants from Venezuela to flood the United States with temporary protected status. Now, just months later, the socialist dictatorship in South America is threatening to annex an oil-rich territory in neighboring Guyana.
Barrons reports that the United States is undertaking a joint military operation with Guyana on Dec. 7, with Guyana’s American embassy describing it as “routine engagement” between the two countries. Reuters provides additional background on the dispute.
In October, The Epoch Times’ Katabella Roberts outlined another crucial development—namely, the Biden administration’s decision to suspend oil and gas sanctions on Venezuela.
Speaking of overlooked conflicts, PunchNG reports on the aftermath of an accidental bombing of a Muslim festival by Nigeria’s army. Victims allege they were struck twice.
Earlier this year, The Epoch Times’ Masara Kim told the remarkable story of William Murray. Murray, the son of one of America’s most famous 20th century Marxist atheists, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, converted to Christianity in 1980. Today, he is a missionary in Nigeria, assisting the Christian victims of Muslim terrorist attacks.
The possibility of a second Trump presidency has many Washington insiders rattled—including Robert Kagan, a neoconservative scholar and the husband of a key force behind the United States’ conflicts with Russia over Ukraine, Victoria Nuland.
In a widely circulated Washington Post opinion piece, Kagan wrote that “a Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable.”
“Re-reading Kagan’s WAPO editorial and, depending on your viewpoint, it actually reads like an unintended advertisement for Trump,” Jeff Carlson, a frequent contributor to The Epoch Times, wrote on X.
Axios reports that President Trump’s second-term cabinet could include the likes of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Kari Lake, and, at the instigation of Melania Trump, journalist Tucker Carlson. Others named in the article include Steve Bannon, Kash Patel, and even Jamie Dimon.
At ongoing United Nations climate talks in Dubai, U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry said America wants to “largely” eliminate the use of oil, coal, and natural gas over time, as reported by the New York Times.
The Epoch Times’ Darlene McCormick Sanchez reveals that religious leaders have been caught up in the battle over climate change.
At American Greatness, Matt Boose analyzes the fourth Republican debate. His conclusion: “The basic dynamics of the race remain unchanged. Donald Trump will be the nominee, and sooner or later, his challengers will all be kissing the ring.”
The Epoch Times’ John Haughey and Nathan Worcester broke down some of the debate’s most notable moments.
