Hunter Biden was being actively investigated by Delaware’s United States attorney, David Weiss, for being an unregistered foreign agent, which is a felony, as recently as 2023, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation and documents reviewed by The New York Sun.

Mr. Weiss, who was elevated to special counsel last year to investigate the first son, declined to comment to the Sun on whether the investigation is still under way. In December, when he charged Biden with felony failure to pay his taxes, his office said the overall probe into the president’s son was “ongoing.” 

For years, Biden made money overseas as a consultant for business entities in Ukraine, Communist China, Russia, Romania, and other countries. Americans can be in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act if they don’t register with the government as a foreign agent prior to engaging in consulting or lobbying work for foreign entities.

While the statute traditionally has rarely been prosecuted, in recent years the Department of Justice has charged multiple people, some of them prominent. Recent prosecutions involving FARA include Senator Mendendez, whose trial is ongoing, two advisers to President Trump, Paul Manafort and Thomas Barrack, and President Obama’s White House counsel, Gregory Craig, who took his case to court and won.

Often these prosecutions, including those of Mr. Craig and Manafort, have involved Ukraine, whose natural resource wealth combined with political turmoil made it a fertile field for consultants prior to Russia’s invasion.

Mr. Weiss has been investigating Biden for a number of potential criminal violations since 2018, when he became Delaware’s top federal prosecutor under Trump. The money trail to Biden from foreign entities eventually led to Mr. Weiss charging Biden with several counts of failing to file and failing to pay more than $1.4 million in taxes, but charges for acting as an unregistered foreign agent never materialized. 

A source with knowledge of the investigation tells the Sun that Mr. Weiss’s independence as special counsel was much needed after the probe was slow-walked by officials at the justice department, including other United States attorneys in other jurisdictions, who — in an unusual move — declined to aid Mr. Weiss in bringing charges against the first son.

The source, who is no longer involved in the investigation, says Mr. Weiss’s special counsel prosecution team — led by an assistant United States attorney from Pennsylvania, Derek Hines, and a federal prosecutor from Delaware, Leo Wise — should take a look at all potential criminal conduct by anyone involved and bring the necessary charges, including allegations that Biden lied to Congress about his work for foreign entities. 

“What my hope would be is that these new prosecutors — fresh set of eyes — that they’re going back in and review the evidence and they’re trying to make sure that every piece of criminal conduct related to the investigation is charged,” the source, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, tells the Sun. 

House Republicans recently referred Biden and his uncle, James Biden, to the justice department for prosecution for lying to Congress. While the current justice department is unlikely to prosecute the Bidens, that could change should Trump return to power in January.

Mr. Weiss’s office declined to comment for this article. Biden’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.  

Biden’s work as a lobbyist and consultant was incredibly lucrative, earning him millions of dollars over the course of just a few years. According to the indictment for tax violations handed up by a jury in California, Biden spent more than $4.9 million between 2016 and 2019 alone. 

Those expenditures included more than $1.6 million in ATM cash withdrawals, nearly $700,000 in payments to “various women,” and nearly $200,000 in “adult entertainment,” among other things. 

Much of the cash from withdrawals went to buy crack, Biden acknowledged in his addiction memoir, “Beautiful Things.” He also took a tax deduction on tuition to the prestigious Columbia Law School for his eldest daughter, Naomi. 

Republicans in Congress have spent 18 months investigating Biden, his associates, and members of his family for alleged involvement in an “influence-peddling scheme” by using the family name to make millions of dollars overseas.

Biden’s uncle and the president’s younger brother, James Biden, who never graduated from college, spent decades working as a lobbyist for healthcare companies and other corporations in the nation’s capital, making millions of dollars by invoking his brother’s name and position when he was a U.S. senator. 

The younger Biden sat for a deposition with the impeachment inquiry panel — consisting of members of the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees — in February. According to the transcript of that deposition, Biden said he was never engaged in such a scheme and denied that he improperly did favors for foreign nationals in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. 

Both congressional Republicans and the source with knowledge of the investigation into the first son say that is a lie. On May 22, the Ways and Means Committee voted in a private meeting along party lines to release documents from its investigation purportedly showing that Biden had lied to Congress during his deposition, which would be a felony offense. 

In one instance of allegedly lying, Biden told Congress that he would “never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa.” The committee determined that the chief executive of Burisma, Nikolay Zlochevsky, was trying to use Biden to get a visa for himself in 2015 so that he could travel to Mexico because there were concerns that his revoked visa to America would affect his ability to travel to meet with Mexico’s foreign minister and officials from the state-owned petroleum company, Pemex. 

In an email to a Burisma executive, Biden’s business partner and then close friend, Devon Archer, said the Biden scion was working to get a visa for “Kola,” which is Mr. Zlochevky’s nickname. 

“Hunter is checking … to see if he can provide cover to Kola on the visa,” Archer wrote on February 5, 2015, when Biden’s father was serving as vice president. “Considering we are having dinner with the Foreign Minister Thursday night we think we have a good shot at smoothing things out.”

“Please send Hunter an email with all [of] Kola’s passport and visa documents,” Archer wrote. 

The source says Biden lied to Congress in order to protect himself from some damning accusations of being engaged in illicit foreign dealings. “If you really look at, ‘Why was he lying there?’ it’s really lying to protect his own image and the administration,” the source tells the Sun.