One of the most salacious allegations in transcripts already filled with sensational claims involves Hunter Biden’s alleged payments to prostitutes he flew around the country.
The allegation that President Joe Biden’s son wrote off the prostitution payments as business expenses, a violation of tax laws, is among many lesser-known claims made by two IRS whistleblowers who spoke to Congress in recent weeks about what they described as favorable treatment toward Hunter Biden by the Department of Justice.
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It’s one of several alleged crimes on which the Justice Department has thus far opted not to act, even though investigators have collected substantial amounts of evidence of misconduct.
Two IRS whistleblowers testified to the extent of evidence that Hunter Biden improperly logged payments to prostitutes — evidence, they said, in which the Justice Department was not interested.
“We found multiple people that he called his employees that were also prostitutes,” one of the IRS whistleblowers, who chose to remain anonymous, told the House Ways and Means Committee. The whistleblower — along with another, Gary Shapley, who has given several media interviews as well as testimony to Congress — alleged that Hunter Biden had numerous women on his payroll who were prostitutes or girlfriends and that he paid in some instances to transport prostitutes across state lines.
That’s a violation of the Mann Act, a 1910 law that bars the transport of women over state lines for prostitution. Although the offenses under the law are rarely prosecuted absent a more serious element, such as the involvement of a minor, it was part of the misconduct that, according to the whistleblowers, the Justice Department had begun to catalog before slow-walking the case.
But some of the allegations against Hunter Biden involve more serious financial offenses.
And some of former President Donald Trump’s associates faced years behind bars for remarkably similar alleged misconduct.
Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, and Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy, fought criminal charges during Trump’s presidency on the type of tax and lobbying offenses of which Hunter Biden has been accused.
Manafort and Gates “funneled millions of dollars in payments into foreign nominee companies and bank accounts, opened by them and their accomplices in nominee names and in various foreign countries,” according to the 2017 indictment of the two men.
That echoes what IRS and FBI whistleblowers have accused Hunter Biden of doing: taking millions of dollars he received from working in Ukraine and filtering them through companies run by his associates.
Shapley testified that IRS investigators had collected evidence that Hunter Biden “basically used a nominee organization, Rosemont Seneca Bohai, which a convicted felon was the partner of” to avoid paying taxes on his income from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Rosemont Seneca Bohai, run by Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer, was designated in Hunter Biden’s contract with Burisma as the recipient of the money Hunter Biden earned from Burisma. Rosemont Seneca Bohai then gave Hunter Biden the money, which he listed as a loan as part of what Shapley said was “a scheme to evade taxes for that year,” which was 2014.
Hunter Biden was earning $83,000 a month during that time.
Archer’s company, Rosemont Seneca Bohai, listed the payments to Hunter Biden as expenses, not loans, raising further questions about Hunter Biden’s finances.
Prosecutors said Manafort “spent millions of dollars on luxury goods and services for himself and his extended family through payments wired from offshore nominee accounts to United States vendors.”
Hunter Biden has been accused of comparable misconduct; the anonymous IRS whistleblower said he had reviewed bank reports that contained “evidence that Hunter Biden was living lavishly through his corporate bank account.”
“This is a typical thing that we look for in tax cases — criminal tax cases, I should say,” the anonymous whistleblower testified.
Manafort and Gates created 17 U.S. companies in the course of their financial schemes, according to their indictment.
Shapley, in testimony to Congress, identified 16 companies associated with Hunter Biden’s payments.
Justice Department officials allegedly stopped the IRS from digging deeper into the unusual arrangements Hunter Biden created to receive his payments.
Shapley testified that when IRS investigators raised the issue of Hunter Biden claiming his foreign consulting income as loans without evidence that, at any point, he intended to pay the money back, the Justice Department pushed back, claiming “this is not a typical case.”
Numerous Trump associates were charged with violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires Americans to register any lobbying work they do for foreign.
Manafort and Gates were charged with FARA violations related to their work in Ukraine; in the five decades before their indictment, the Justice Department had only sought to enforce the law seven times.
Tom Barrack, a friend and fundraiser of Trump’s, was charged and later acquitted of illegal foreign lobbying for the United Arab Emirates.
Hunter Biden did not register as a foreign agent for the work he did for Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company, or any other foreign national for whom he provided advocacy.
That’s despite years of scrutiny from criminal, civil, and congressional investigators over his work for Burisma.
Emails obtained by the FBI and, ultimately, numerous news organizations, including the Washington Examiner, from a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned in Delaware showed Hunter Biden repeatedly referencing his father in the course of his business dealings. Hunter Biden has not faced any penalties for working on behalf of the foreign companies without registering.
Hunter Biden’s lack of consequences for writing off payments to prostitutes also marks a departure from law enforcement’s treatment of Trump himself.
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Earlier this year, the Manhattan district attorney charged Trump with felonies related to what prosecutors alleged were improperly recorded payments to women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump. The former president has even acknowledged making the payments, saying he did so simply to spare his family from the embarrassment of having such claims aired in public.
Still, he has thus far faced far stiffer punishment than Hunter Biden’s alleged prostitution expensing.