President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden attended a White House dinner on June 22, two days after he admitted to violating federal law.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee who heads the Department of Justice (DOJ), was also among the attendees at the dinner, held in honor of visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Garland’s wife Lynn Rosenman Garland and Hunter Biden’s wife Melissa Cohen Biden were also on hand.
Garland and Hunter Biden were not pictured speaking with each other during the event.
The dinner featured music from violinist Joshua Bell and the United States Marine Band Chamber Orchestra. Other attendees included Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.); Martin Luther King III, a son of the late Martin Luther King Jr.; and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to intentionally not paying more than $200,000 in taxes, DOJ prosecutors said in court filings on Wednesday. The taxes were owed on more than $3 million in income across two years, 2017 and 2018.
The president’s only surviving son also is entering pretrial diversion for illegally possessing a gun while using illegal drugs, prosecutors said. Hunter Biden faces up to two years in prison for the tax charges.
Hunter Biden has not spoken about the developments and his lawyer declined to comment. He said previously that he was confident a probe of his tax affairs would “demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.” He’s scheduled to appear in federal court in Delaware in July to ask a judge to approve the plea agreement. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee, was assigned to the case.
Whistleblowers from the IRS part of the investigation into Hunter Biden told members of Congress that Hunter Biden received “preferential treatment” from both the IRS and the DOJ.
Gary Shapley, one of the whistleblowers, said DOJ assistant U.S. attorney Lesley Wolf blocked investigators from accessing a laptop computer recovered from a Delaware store that was verified as belonging to the president’s son.
“This decision is unprecedented in my experience,” Shapley said. “Investigators assigned to this investigation were obstructed from seeing all the available evidence. It is unknown if all the evidence was reviewed by agents or by prosecutors.”
The DOJ declined to comment.
