Hunter Biden deducted tens of thousands of dollars in payments he made to a prostitute and a sex club from his taxes, IRS whistleblowers told Congress.
One whistleblower, an IRS criminal investigator whose identity remains a mystery but who worked on the Biden tax probe, told members of the House Ways and Means Committee in a June 1 interview that Biden improperly deducted those expenses from his 2018 taxes.
That's one of the years covered under Biden's plea deal with federal prosecutors, which critics are deriding as a sweetheart deal. Another whistleblower, IRS criminal supervisory special agent Gary Shapley, told lawmakers that the Justice Department's tax division and the prosecutors handling the Biden probe viewed the deductions as "a slam dunk case" of tax fraud. The whistleblowers' testimony fills in many of the gaps on how exactly Biden evaded paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.
Payments like the ones described, doled out to prostitutes and sex clubs, were not just unlawful tax deductions but also may have been violations of federal sex trafficking laws, the whistleblower alleged, if the prostitutes crossed state lines. And the IRS had indeed located records showing that Biden flew prostitutes across state lines, "paying for their travel, paying for their hotels."
According to the IRS investigator, a self-described Democrat, Biden underreported his total income in 2018 by $267,000, resulting in an underpayment of $106,000 in taxes. "That includes deductions for personal wages and salaries paid, personal travel expenses paid, personal children expenses that he paid, and personal other expenses that he paid," the investigator said, according to a transcript of the interview released Thursday.
The investigator told Congress that Biden made deductions for payments to "no-show employees," including a woman Biden called his "West Coast assistant."
"But she was essentially a prostitute," said the investigator.
Biden also made $18,000 in wire payments to another woman, using coded language to conceal the purpose of the transaction. Another payment of $10,000, labeled as a "golf club member deposit," was actually for a sex club membership.
"We've talked to the person that owned that sex club, and they confirmed that he was there," the investigator said. Biden went on to deduct that $10,000 expense from his tax return.
The embattled first son, who carried on an affair with his late brother's wife following his own divorce, has admitted to his frequent use of prostitutes and is known as a regular at strip clubs. Though the sex club in question is not identified, Shapley told lawmakers that Biden’s payment was for a membership in Los Angeles. The owner of the Los Angeles club Snctm recently revealed that Biden was a client.
In an ironic twist, the investigation into Biden, who was given the FBI code name "Sportsman," was an offshoot of an FBI probe into a foreign online amateur pornography site that started in November 2018, the whistleblowers said. Shapley said the FBI agent who opened that case found Biden's name on a list of some sort, but did not provide additional detail.
Update June 23, 9:20 a.m.: This piece has been updated with additional context.