Bill Barr has known about investigations involving Joe Biden‘s son Hunter since at least the spring, according to a report, and did his best to stop the information leaking out before the election.
In news which angered his boss Donald Trump, the attorney general – whose job is already said to be hanging in the balance – acted to stop the investigation being made public, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Justice Department guidelines advise investigators against taking overt actions in a run-up to an election so as not to be seen as affecting the outcome.
‘Why didn’t the Fake News Media, the FBI and the DOJ report the Biden matter BEFORE the Election,’ Trump tweeted on Thursday night.
‘Oh well, it’s OK, we won the Election anyway – 75,000,000 VOTES!!!’
Twitter marked his tweet as disinformation.
Hunter Biden announced on Wednesday that his taxes were under investigation
Bill Barr, attorney general, has known about the investigations since the spring, the WSJ said
Barr’s actions are the reversal of those of former FBI director James Comey, who felt that he needed to make public news that Hillary Clinton’s emails were being investigated. He announced before the election that the investigation was over, but the damage was done.
The Biden-Harris transition team put out a statement Wednesday from Hunter Biden and President-elect Joe Biden, in which Hunter Biden revealed he was under federal investigation for his taxes
Comey said he knew he was damned if he announced the investigation, and damned if he didn’t.
Hunter revealed on Wednesday that he is under federal investigation over his taxes.
‘I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,’ Hunter said.
The statement was put out by President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ transition office.
The Associated Press reported that the Justice Department is scrutinizing some of Hunter Biden’s Chinese business deals and not the contents of his laptop, shared in the weeks before the election by Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
While the investigation started in 2018, a new round of subpoenas went out on Tuesday, including to Hunter Biden, the Associated Press said.
Trump and his fellow Republicans have for months urged Barr to pursue Hunter – with their calls getting louder as Joe Biden’s electoral chances grew.
A source told the WSJ that Barr has staved off pressure from Republicans in Congress for information into the investigations.
Hunter Biden has long raised suspicion with his business dealings in places such as Ukraine
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had also been looking at Hunter’s business and financial dealings, as part of a broader criminal investigation that two people familiar with the matter told the WSJ was an international financial investigation that had been going on for at least a year.
Hunter is implicated in that investigation but was never a specific target for criminal prosecution, the people said.
Fox News reported that Hunter is a ‘subject/target’ of the grand jury investigation. A target means there’s a ‘high probability that person committed a crime’ and a subject is someone you ‘don’t know for sure’ has committed a crime.
Fox’s sources said transactions from ‘China and other foreign nations’ triggered Suspicious Activity Reports, prompting the probe.
Fox said the probe began in 2018, meaning it predated Barr taking over the top post at the Justice Department.
Hunter, pictured with his father celebrating his win on November 7, has tried to lay low
Barr has said publicly that the the president-elect isn’t under investigation and two sources told CNN that the probe doesn’t allege any wrongdoing on Joe Biden’s part.
Neither the tax investigation nor the Manhattan financial inquiry implicate the president-elect, the paper reported.
The Biden transition team has declined to say when Joe Biden learned of the investigation.
A statement circulated by that team on Wednesday said President-elect Mr. Biden is ‘proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.’
Barr was under intense pressure to formally declare that he was investigating Hunter and his father.
Jim Jordan, a Republican congressman representing Ohio who is the ranking member of the House Judiciary panel, wrote to Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray asking what steps the FBI had taken to investigate the information in the ‘explosive report.’
An FBI spokeswoman said the bureau responded to the letter and declined to comment further.
On October 19, Republicans in Congress urged Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden and his father, and demanded that Barr respond within five days.
A day later, asked on Fox News whether he supported tapping a special prosecutor, Trump said: ‘We’ve got to get the attorney general to act. He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election.’
The tax investigation into Hunter Biden was sparked in part by reports of suspicious activity filed by a bank that handled foreign transactions related to him, a source said.
Hunter, a lawyer, has worked for numerous international companies.
For around five years, until April 2019, he sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, where he was paid roughly $50,000 a month for his work.
Laptops belonging to Hunter with photos and emails were obtained by the New York Post. They included a revealing peak into Hunter’s life and pictures of himself
Hunter also did advisory work for China CEFC Energy Co., as the company pursued deals in Europe and the Middle East.
Around the time CEFC was trying to break into the U.S., its activity became a focus of a corruption case brought by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which resulted in the 2018 conviction of a former Hong Kong official on charges that he bribed African officials to secure business benefits for CEFC.
The company, which is now effectively defunct, wasn’t charged in the U.S. corruption case.
One item of interest to investigators could be a 2.8-carat diamond gifted to Hunter Biden in 2017 from the founder and former chairman of CEFC China Energy, Ye Jianming, after a Miami business meeting, CNN said.
The diamond was part of the original inquiry, but it’s unclear if it’s still a focus, the network reported.
Hunter Biden described receiving the diamond during his July 2019 interview with The New Yorker, saying that after meeting Ye and offering to use his contacts to help the Chinese businessman identify liquified natural gas projects in the U.S., the diamond was sent to his hotel room.
Hunter Biden said he didn’t interpret as a bribe. ‘What would they be bribing me for?’ he asked. ‘My dad wasn’t in office.’
But he decided not to keep the gem anyway.
‘I knew it wasn’t a good idea to take it. I just felt like it was weird,’ he said.
Hunter Biden said he gave the diamond to one of his associates and he didn’t know what happened to it.
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