Hunter Biden accepted $3,101,258 from Romanian partner Gabriel Popoviciu to “influence U.S. government agencies” when President Joe Biden served as vice president, Special Counsel David Weiss said in a Wednesday court filing.
Weiss, who stopped short of accusing Hunter of having “improperly coordinated with the Obama administration,” failed to indict him on Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations in 2023, opting instead to indict the president’s son on alleged tax violations, potential wrongdoing that Republicans claim falls short of justice.
Weiss could still charge Hunter with violating FARA because his sweetheart plea deal, which was negotiated to give Hunter sweeping immunity, fell apart. The sweetheart deal crumbled under judicial scrutiny, and Weiss subsequently filed separate gun and tax charges in Delaware and California, respectively. The tax trial is scheduled for September.
The court filing states that the Department of Justice (DOJ), at trial, intends to introduce evidence not only related to Hunter’s Romanian business partner but to CEFC China Energy Co. and Burisma Holdings, two entities that paid Hunter millions both when his father was vice president and a private citizen.“This evidence will not include evidence that the defendant performed lobbying activity in exchange for this compensation,” the filing says.
“Rather, the evidence will show the defendant performed almost no work in exchange for the millions of dollars he received from these entities,” it adds.
One of Hunter’s biggest deals came when Biden family members accepted money from CEFC China Energy Co., an organization with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Popoviciu. The House Oversight Committee revealed in 2023 that CEFC controlled State Energy HK Limited, a company linked to $1.3 million collective payments to the Biden family members.
Through the Biden family’s suspicious activity reports (SARs), the committee also discovered a Biden associate, Rob Walker, received a $3 million wire transfer from CEFC. In turn, four Biden family members — Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unidentified “Biden” — received a collective $1.3 million cut from the $3 million wire transfer.
Hunter, who is a lawyer, also earned a $1 million legal retainer in 2017 from the CEFC’s chairman, Ye Jianming. In addition, Hunter received a large diamond, worth an estimated $80,000, from Ye in February 2017.
In April 2014, Hunter joined the board of Burisma, just two years before Joe Biden stated that he forced the firing of prosecutor Viktor Shokin investigating Burisma. Despite Hunter’s lack of experience in Ukraine or the energy sector, Burisma paid him $83,000 per month — or $1 million per year — just weeks after his father was announced as the “point person” on U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine.
In 2015, Burisma was under suspicion of money laundering and public corruption. Shokin investigated the case before his termination — which was due to pressure from then-Vice President Joe Biden, who threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid from Ukraine if the Ukrainian government did not fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma, Shokin.
Weiss indicted Hunter in December on nine tax charges, including three felonies: allegedly failing to file taxes, evading an assessment, and filing a fraudulent form.
The indictment alleges Hunter “willfully failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 taxes on time, despite having access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes” and instead “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle.”
Legal experts criticized Weiss’s scope of the indictment for three reasons:
- Weiss did not charge Hunter as an unregistered foreign agent.
- Limiting the indictment to tax evasion avoids influence-peddling (implicating Joe Biden).
- Weiss indicted Hunter on tax evasion that allegedly only occurred in recent years.
Hunter could face a maximum of 17 years in prison if convicted. In total, he faces 42 years in federal prison for nine tax and three gun-related convictions. Hunter’s gun case sentencing is set for November — after the presidential election.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
