Is Joe Biden about to get Al Caponed?

The facts are a little different because Al Capone was nailed for evading taxes, but Biden’s tax returns suggest the possibility of serious corruption.

(This post originally appeared at American Thinker.)

Al Capone was one of the early 20th century’s most infamous gangsters but that wasn’t why he ended up in Alcatraz. Instead, what the feds finally got him on was tax evasion. In Joe Biden’s case, although the facts are a bit different because the problem isn’t one of tax evasion but one of mysteriously reported taxable income, it does appear that we may finally be getting proof that Joe was deeply involved in Hunter’s overseas dealings and may have been doing influence peddling from the White House.

It was a female Assistant Attorney General who, in the early 1920s, figured out that one way to capture wealthy criminals was to compare their lifestyles with the low incomes declared on their tax returns and then to accuse them of tax evasion. In 1927, in United States v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court put its imprimatur on this tactic, ruling that illegally earned income is subject to taxation.

So it was that, in 1931, Al Capone was formally charged with income tax evasion and, eventually, sentenced to 11 years in prison, plus fines, court costs, and back taxes. Capone, riddled with syphilis and gonorrhea, served only eight years. He was released early because he was suffering from tertiary syphilis. Ironically, the mass production of penicillin in 1942 allowed him to live until 1947 when a stroke and heart failure finally got him.

Fascinating, right? But why does Al Capone matter? Because sometimes it’s a person’s dealings with the IRS that reveal their sins.

In Biden’s case, it appears that he reported all his income to the IRS. The problem, as the Daily Mail discovered, is that the origin of $5.2 million of that income is completely mysterious:

[T]he president’s financial filings reveal that he declared almost $7 million more income on his tax returns than he did on his government transparency reports, an analysis by DailyMail.com of the president’s financial records shows.

Some of that difference can be accounted for with salaries earned by First Lady Jill Biden and other sums not required on his reports – but still leaves $5.2 million earned by Joe’s company and not listed on his transparency reports.

The ‘missing millions’ – combined with emails on Hunter’s abandoned laptop suggesting Joe would have a 10% share in Hunter’s blockbuster deal with the Chinese – raise a troubling question: did Joe Biden receive money from the foreign venture?

It’s very clear that Biden was rolling in dough—so much so that, as some of the documents show, he was able to pay Hunter’s legal bills in 2018, which totaled $737,130.61. Of that gigantic sum, $28,000 was attributed to “restructuring” Hunter’s joint venture with the Bank of China, owned by the Chinese government (aka the Chinese Communist Party).

If that $5.2 million was from pay-to-play schemes, Joe was being very greedy, because he and Jill were raking in the money—although he didn’t want the American people to know just how much it was. Again, from the Daily Mail:

While in office Joe had a relatively modest income, but he enjoyed a flood of millions of dollars soon after he left office, much of which came from his memoir book deal and eye-watering speaking fees.

Between 2017 and 2019 he and First Lady Jill Biden reported $16.5 million in gross income on their federal tax returns, released by the Biden campaign.

The vast majority came from their two companies, CelticCapri Corp and Giacoppa Corp, which they use for speaking and writing engagements.

But in Office of Government Ethics (OGE) fillings for the same period, Joe only reported $9.6 million in income for himself and his wife.

What’s also interesting is that another legal bill that Joe paid—an October 15, 2018, bill for $68,933.41 for a restructuring of another Chinese matter—was addressed to Eric D. Schwerin. If that name rings a bell, it’s because Scherwin was a very frequent White House visitor during Biden’s Veep run. Although reports originally said he’d been there 19 times during that era, new logs reveal another eight visits, all during 2016, when he met with Biden’s Chief of Staff, Steve Ricchetti (now Biden’s White House counselor).

In 2019, Joe Biden stated unequivocally that he knew nothing about his son’s business dealings: “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” That was a lie. He added, “Here’s what I know. Trump should be investigated.” That was also a lie, since every colonoscopic financial investigation of Trump has shown him to be clean as a whistle and Durham’s efforts are indicating that he was the victim of an attempted coup in 2016—and Biden surely knew this too.

Warren G. Harding (undeservedly, perhaps), has been recognized as America’s most corrupt president, but my bet is that he’s going to be a piker compared to Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.

Joe Biden image (edited) from a YouTube screen grab.