While his name has largely dropped out of the headlines in the midst of all of the presidential campaign madness currently playing out, Hunter Biden's date with a court in Los Angeles on tax charges is fast approaching. The trial is slated to kick off on September 9, barely a month from now. Some of the charging documents being brought by David Weiss' office have already been making their way into the view of the public and there is plenty of interesting material in there to peruse. Weiss has nailed down a lot of the activities of Biden Inc. and the family's dealings with business entities in China, Romania, and Ukraine. This is all relevant because those were the sources of many of the millions of dollars that Hunter took in through his foreign influence peddling while paying almost no taxes. Weiss provides names, places, and dates when it clearly appears that Hunter was lobbying US officials on behalf of foreign actors. Curiously, however, Weiss says that his office will not be pressing FARA violation charges against Hunter in Los Angeles. That seems rather odd. (NY Post)

Hunter Biden tried to help a corrupt Romanian client by lobbying US officials during his father’s vice presidency, special counsel David Weiss’ office said Wednesday in a filing that nonetheless says those possible criminal infractions were “not relevant” to the first son’s tax-fraud trial next month.

Hunter, 54, is scheduled to stand trial in Los Angeles beginning Sept. 9 for allegedly failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019 on income from Chinese, Romanian and Ukrainian dealings.

Weiss’ filing says that Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu, convicted in his homeland of bribery in 2016, hired Hunter and his associates “to attempt to influence U.S. government agencies to investigate the Romanian criminal investigation of [Popoviciu], and thereby cause an end to the investigation.”

There is plenty more dirt that Weiss dug up in the linked report. While dealing with Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu, Hunter and two of his business partners drafted what turned out to be an obviously fake business agreement wherein they created a "Management Services Agreement." Under the agreement, Hunter and his partners would receive "compensation" for management advisement over real estate holdings in Romania. The partners were paid more than three million dollars to be split among them. But there was no such real estate management operation taking place. Hunter was lobbying the State Department to deflect attention away from Popoviciu's other activities. The "deal" was concocted entirely to avoid having to register as a foreign agent. That certainly fits the description of a FARA violation.

Yet despite having all of the evidence in hand, Weiss isn't pursuing FARA charges. He's only going after the unpaid taxes on the money that Hunter and his friends received from the Romanian businessman. Why would that be? Weiss wrote that the FARA allegations "are not relevant to the charges in this tax case." The summary from Weiss also delves into the money that Hunter received from sources in China and Ukraine. Apparently the FARA connections there were "not relevant" either, though Weiss concluded that Hunter Biden "performed almost no work" in exchange for the money he received. 

I suppose there are a couple of possible explanations for this. It's possible that Weiss' office is treating this as only a "tax evasion" case as it's being described. If so, it's conceivable that they could choose to pursue FARA charges at a later date. But I'm a suspicious person by nature and it certainly sounds as if more could be unfolding behind the scenes. There is no mention of the "ten percent for the big guy" in Weiss' documents, so if they confine the case to only the money that Hunter and his business partners banked and failed to pay taxes on, they don't wind up creating a direct link to Joe Biden. Are they still covering for him?

One other possibility is that Weiss and the other powerbrokers at the Justice Department simply don't care anymore. Now that Joe Biden is on his way out the door at the end of this year, Hunter has outlived his usefulness to them and the same will be true of Joe in a little more than five months. If Weiss throws Hunter to the wolves, he will be able to try to shoot down stories about the weaponization of the DoJ, saying, "See? We prosecuted a Biden as well as Trump. We're not partisan actors, we promise!" 

Perhaps we'll get to the truth behind all of this some day. But for now, we're left with a muddy picture and few clear answers. But something still stinks here and the wind is blowing from the direction of the Justice Department and the White House.