WASHINGTON (CN) — President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter said Wednesday his taxes are under investigation by federal prosecutors in Delaware, but details of the probe were not made available.
The investigation was made public just days before the former vice president’s victory over President Donald Trump is set to be formally certified by the Electoral College.
“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 Biden said in a statement issued by the Biden-Harris White House transition team.
He added, “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisers.”
Neither the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office nor the Justice Department have released any information on the case publicly, and prosecutors did not immediately return a request for comment.
Reports citing anonymous sources briefed on the tax investigation said it could be related to business deals the younger Biden had overseas, namely in China. CNN reported Wednesday afternoon that two people familiar with the probe said it began in 2018 and could involve “counterintelligence concerns.”
In early October, Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani – recently diagnosed with Covid-19 after traveling across the nation maskless to challenge the 2020 election results – made headlines by pedaling fake intelligence stories on Hunter Biden insinuating nefarious business or diplomatic ties to China.
The New York Post was first to run a story that month reporting Giuliani received a hard drive, said to belong to Hunter Biden, that was obtained by a computer repair shop owner in Wilmington, Delaware.
But by late October, an investigation by NBC reporters Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins debunked a purported intelligence document making the rounds online that supposedly revealed ties between the incoming president’s son and the Chinese Communist Party. The document’s author, the report found, was not even a real person but an amalgam of manipulated artificial intelligence.
Hunter Biden was also at the center of Trump’s impeachment in the House of Representatives after Democrats launched an inquiry into the president’s infamous call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump pressured his foreign counterpart into announcing an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden.
Senate Republicans are still hanging on to their accusations against the former vice president’s son. They released a report this fall claiming the Obama White House ignored what they called his problematic role on the board for Ukraine’s natural gas outfit, Burisma. The Delaware prosecutor’s probe is believed to only be connected to China.
Last month, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told reporters he believed the FBI was “possibly starting an investigation” into Hunter Biden.
“We had a hard enough time getting what evidence we got to even write a report and then all of the sudden, our report opened up this logjam,” Johnson said at the time.
The Biden-Harris transition team said in a brief statement Wednesday that the president-elect is “is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.”
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