Tucked deep within IRS criminal investigators’ testimony about Hunter Biden is the revelation that the Justice Department, in addition to probing tax and gun crimes, was also collecting data to charge the president’s son with transporting prostitutes across state lines.
According to the investigators, who testified as whistleblowers, Hunter Biden regularly flew prostitutes to meet him in California, Boston and the District of Columbia.
Sometimes he flew them in for just a night, and sometimes he paid first class for their trips. He wrote off the costs on his tax forms as business expense deductions.
Once the women crossed state lines, their paid travel became violations of the Mann Act, a 1910 law prohibiting the transport of people in interstate commerce for prostitution or any other sexual purpose that violates federal, state or local criminal law.
One of the whistleblowers, known in the committee documents as “Mr. X,” told the House Ways and Means Committee in testimony last month that the Justice Department had been keeping track of Hunter Biden’s violations.
“I know that they were compiling them together,” he told the Ways and Means Committee. “I don’t know what they ended up doing with them. I know there was an effort at some point to compile them, but I don’t know what ultimately happened with them.”
Hunter Biden has not been charged with Mann Act violations.
The charges publicly known from the plea agreement lodged in federal court in Delaware are two misdemeanor counts of failure to pay taxes in 2017 and 2018. Mr. Biden also would admit to a felony firearms violation for lying on his form to purchase a weapon.
The gun charge would be held in abeyance and would be nixed if he keeps a clean record under two years of probation for the tax charges. A judge must approve the deal.
Key members of Congress are keen to know what became of the Mann Act investigation and other alleged law violations.
“IRS whistleblower disclosures reveal Hunter Biden may have committed multiple felonies including tax evasion, fraud, not registering as a foreign agent and sex trafficking crimes,” said House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican. “This plea deal should be thrown in the trash. Congress is investigating this politicization and misconduct at the Justice Department and will hold bad actors accountable.”
A spokesperson for David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware who struck the plea deal with Mr. Biden, declined to comment for this report.
Hunter Biden’s attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In announcing the deal last month, Mr. Biden’s legal team said it “resolved” the long-running investigation into the president’s son. Mr. Weiss, though, called the investigation “ongoing.”
According to the whistleblowers’ testimony, Hunter Biden was engaged in a host of illegal activities that have not drawn charges.
They said he should have been charged with tax malfeasance for every year from 2014 through 2019, including several felony counts of tax evasion. Instead, he faces just two misdemeanor tax counts.
The IRS investigators said they were prevented from pursuing leads that could have implications for President Biden.
It was the prostitutes’ travel that first brought Hunter Biden to the IRS’ attention.
Mr. X said he was working on another investigation involving a social media company in 2018, and bank reports related to that probe showed Hunter Biden was “paying prostitutes related to a potential prostitution ring.”
The reports showed Hunter Biden was “living lavishly through his corporate bank account,” which the investigator said was a classic sign of criminal tax law violations.
Mr. X said they tracked down and interviewed the prostitutes, who said Hunter Biden would have them clean his hotel room, seemingly as a justification for writing off the costs as business expenses.
He labeled one woman as his “West Coast assistant,” but Mr. X said she “was essentially a prostitute.”
He wired the woman $18,000, with $8,000 identified as wages and $10,000 as a golf club membership deposit. The $8,000 was a payment to the prostitute, and the $10,000 went to a sex club, Mr. X said.
“We’ve talked to the person that owned the sex club, and they confirmed that he was there,” Mr. X said. “So that was deducted on the tax return.”
Charging Hunter Biden under the Mann Act would have been an aggressive move, said several legal experts who spoke with The Washington Times for this report but asked not to be identified.
The government regularly charges Mann Act violations, but they usually involve allegations of violence or trafficking of minors.
The benefit of a Mann Act case is that it’s easy to prove the elements of the offense without putting a reluctant victim on the witness stand. If authorities can show a person was moved across state lines and illegal sex took place, they can make the case.
The law was originally known as the White Slave Trade Act of 1910 and has a controversial history.
The act was used in 1913 against boxer Jack Johnson, who received a posthumous federal pardon from President Trump in 2018, and against singer Chuck Berry, who spent 20 months in prison after transporting a 14-year-old girl across state lines.
More recently, it was used against R. Kelly, the singer convicted of seeking out juvenile fans for sex, and against Ghislaine Maxwell, who helped Jeffrey Epstein recruit underage girls for sex.
In 2008, federal prosecutors in New York were reportedly considering Mann Act charges against onetime New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was caught on a federal wiretap paying for prostitutes.
Prosecutors decided not to bring federal charges after Mr. Spitzer resigned as governor. They found no indications he had used public money or campaign funds to pay for the encounters.
“In light of the policy of the Department of Justice with respect to prostitution offenses and the longstanding practice of this office, as well as Mr. Spitzer’s acceptance of responsibility for his conduct, we have concluded that the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges in this matter,” U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia said at the time.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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