Hunter Biden’s Laptop Emails, Business Dealings Set to Feature Prominently at Upcoming Criminal Tax Trial

Dozens of emails from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop and documents related to his lucrative foreign business dealings are set to be featured at his upcoming criminal trial on nine federal tax charges.

Federal prosecutors submitted Wednesday a lengthy list of more than 250 exhibits the government will use to make its case that Biden failed to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes over four years while living an “extravagant lifestyle.”

The evidence includes a trove of emails, business contracts, divorce proceedings, text messages, lists of expenses, payroll details, his girlfriends’ tax returns, bank statements, wire payments, accountant billings, and his book contract.

It remains to be seen whether the prosecution will introduce each of the listed exhibits at trial, but the list as a whole provides a valuable snapshot into how the government will make its case against Biden.

The emails and business records will bring fresh scrutiny to Biden’s lucrative foreign business dealings, particularly those involving Ukrainian and Chinese entities. Payments from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings and business records from Hudson West III, Biden’s joint venture with Chinese infrastructure conglomerate CEFC, are featured on the exhibits list. Emails between former business associates such as Rob Walker, Tony Bobulinski, James Gilliar are also listed.

Further, documents from the bribery prosecution of Biden’s former Chinese business associate, CEFC executive Patrick Ho are on the list. Ho paid Biden a $1 million legal retainer after he was arrested for services Biden never performed, according to documents provided to congress by IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two agents who spent years on the Hunter Biden case.

House Republicans have investigated the scope of Biden’s business dealings with individuals and entities based in Ukraine, China, Romania, and other countries for the impeachment inquiry into his father, President Joe Biden. The investigation has uncovered roughly $24 million of payments from foreign business entities and associates to Biden and his business partners over a five year period last decade that overlapped with Joe Biden’s vice presidency.

Last year, a federal grand jury in California issued a bombshell indictment laying out the tax charges against Biden with detailed financial information about his foreign business dealings and lavish lifestyle that apparently took priority over his taxes. The payments Hunter Biden received from his various foreign business ventures will be central to the government’s effort to prove Biden had the necessary income to pay his taxes on time.

Bank records and the indictment show Burisma paid Biden $1 million per year from 2014 until 2017, when Burisma slashed his salary at the end of Joe Biden’s vice presidency. From 2017-2018, Hudson West III shelled out roughly $3 million to Hunter Biden and his uncle and business partner James Biden, bank records, business contracts, and the indictment reflect.

Prior to the Hudson West III deal, in early 2017, CEFC paid $3 million to Walker through its State Energy HK account, and Walker distributed roughly $1 million of the funds to Hunter and James Biden, bank records and the indictment show. The indictment estimates Biden hauled in more than $7 million of income, and received $1.2 million from friend and patron Kevin Morris to sustain his lifestyle during the relevant time period.

Moreover, the list of exhibits features court documents that could paint a vivid picture of Biden’s tumultuous divorce from ex-wife Kathleen Buhle and the lavish lifestyle he lived for the last decade, often characterized by severe drug addiction and unstable relationships with multiple women at a time. Tax forms and other documents from two of those girlfriends, Hallie Biden and Lunden Roberts, are on the exhibit list. Hallie Biden is the widow of Hunter’s deceased brother Beau, and Roberts is the mother of his love child.

Buhle, the mother of Biden’s three eldest daughters, and Hallie Biden each testified at Hunter’s criminal gun trial in June, and described the lasting trauma they suffered from his addiction to crack cocaine and erratic behavior. After she discovered a crack pipe on their porch in summer 2015, Buhle and Hunter Biden separated, and in 2017 their divorce was finalized.

Court filings reported by Axios show Biden failed to pay Buhle $1.7 million owed since the divorce. Biden and Buhle’s divorce agreement required him to pay her $37,000 per month alimony and half of his income over $875,000 annually.

Most of the emails the government lists are from conversations about his tax burdens, drawn-out divorce, bills to pay, and business dealings. Prosecutors will likely use the emails to show Biden had full awareness of his recurring tax problems and still refused to pay his taxes in a timely fashion.

The emails originate from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop archive, which first came to light ahead of the 2020 presidential election. It is not yet known whether Biden’s defense attorneys will dispute the authenticity of his abandoned laptop archive at the tax trial.

Throughout Biden’s various legal proceedings, his attorneys have claimed the laptop data was manipulated, a claim Justice Department prosecutors likened to a “conspiracy theory” in court papers leading up to Biden’s gun trial. Numerous media outlets have independently verified the contents contained on Biden’s laptop.

Before the 2020 election, 51 former intelligence officials claimed, without providing evidence, that the laptop story resembled Russian disinformation. Then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden used the letter during a presidential debate to dismiss the validity of the laptop story.

The since-discredited letter was prompted by the Biden campaign, namely senior Biden adviser Tony Blinken, according to congressional testimony from former CIA deputy director Michael Morell, the architect of the letter. One of the reasons for the letter, Morell said, was to give Joe Biden a talking point at the debate. Morell and other intelligence officials who testified before congress blamed the media and Joe Biden’s comments on the letter for the widespread criticism it continues to receive.

At Hunter Biden’s criminal gun trial, FBI special agent Erica Jensen testified for the prosecution about the validity of the data stored on Biden’s laptop. Jensen described how federal investigators cross-referenced the computer’s serial number to Biden’s Apple iCloud servers in late 2019, and extracted data from the computer. Her testimony on how the laptop was verified overlaps significantly with Shapley’s congressional testimony last year to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Special counsel David Weiss’s team of prosecutors won a conviction against Hunter Biden in June on three federal gun charges tied to a gun purchase he made in October 2018 while addicted to crack cocaine. Biden lied about his crack cocaine addiction on gun paperwork and subsequently possessed the firearm. His sentencing is set to take place later this year.

The government’s exhibit list indicates that the defense has not entirely agreed to the admissibility of some of the exhibits prosecutors plan on introducing at the trial next month. The defense will submit its own list of exhibits in due time before the trial starts. In the meantime, both sides have filed pre-trial motions over the scope of the trial’s arguments and evidence. National Review has reached out to Biden’s legal team for comment.

Hunter Biden is facing three felony and six misdemeanor charges for allegedly failing to pay over $1.4 million of taxes over a four year period, willfully failing to file tax returns in a timely manner, and filing false tax returns for 2018. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.