Tax issues came to the attention of FBI agents after they opened the money laundering investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial affairs in late 2018, under the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, according to several people familiar with the matter. investigation.
What motivated the FBI investigation remains unclear. Former law enforcement officials said that while the aspect of the money laundering investigation appears to have disappeared, IRS investigators continued to examine Biden’s taxes.
In early 2017, Mr. Biden and his first wife, Kathleen, who were then separated, owed $ 313,970 in taxes and had “credit card debts” and “double mortgages on both properties they owned”, according with a filing that she filed in her divorce.
The following year, the IRS issued a guarantee against the couple, who was already divorced, for $ 112,805 in unpaid taxes in 2015. These taxes appear to have been paid by March of this year, when the guarantee was released.
Separately, the government of the city of Washington, DC, where Mr. Biden lived, issued guarantees against him in July, totaling almost $ 454,000 for unpaid taxes in 2017 and 2018. These guarantees were released less than a week later, from according to tax records.
Mr. Biden has been an intense target of Trump and his allies in a number of commercial ventures that he undertook around the world during his father’s time as vice president and beyond.
He received $ 50,000 a month or more to serve on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company owned by an oligarch who was widely seen as corrupt, advised a wealthy Romanian executive who faced corruption charges and invested in a private fund. equity linked to the Chinese government.