Thanks to the presidential pardon from his father, Hunter Biden will no longer have to worry about the federal charges he was facing for failure to pay federal income tax on millions of dollars in earnings. President Joe Biden’s December 1 pardon does not, however, immunize his son from prosecution for failure to pay state income tax. Whether or not Hunter Biden fulfilled his state tax obligations to California is a question now being pursued by a public whistleblower.

Hunter Biden was a resident of California, home to the highest top marginal income tax rate in the country at 13.3%, during the years for which he has pled guilty to federal tax evasion. While media coverage has focused on unmet obligations to the IRS, the prospect of unpaid state tax liabilities is a topic that has never received much attention. In early December, James Lacy, president of the United States Justice Foundation, filed a public complaint (Case Number 12024-14638) with the California State Auditor calling for an investigation of the California Franchise Tax Board in order to determine whether Hunter Biden filed and paid state taxes for the years he has pled guilty to federal tax evasion.

Given the amount of income on which Hunter Biden failed to pay federal taxes, it’s a potentially large sum of money that he also might have neglected to pay to the government of California, a Democrat-run state where taxpayers are on the hook for an estimated trillion dollars-worth of unfunded public pension liabilities and where employers were recently hit with a payroll tax hike triggered by Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D-Calif.) decision to not repay unemployment insurance loans taken out from the federal government during the pandemic.

“Californians who file their tax returns and timely pay their taxes deserve to know whether or not Hunter Biden has received any special treatment from the Franchise Tax Board regarding his tax liability,” said Lacy. “I am hoping my Whistleblower Complaint will draw attention to this issue and bring some transparency to whether our state tax system has acted fairly.”

“If Hunter Biden failed to pay federal taxes, it’s reasonable to suspect he also failed to pay applicable state income taxes for those years,” says Ryan Ellis, an IRS-enrolled agent. Lacy also called on the Governor to act, saying “Newsom should also reveal to California taxpayers whether or not Hunter Biden was secretly ‘pardoned’ from state tax liability and enforcement as well.”

California Combines High Tax Rates With Muscular Collection

Aside from the nation’s highest state income tax rate, California has long been considered the most aggressive state in the nation when it comes to taxing foreign-sourced income. “Unfortunately for the President’s son, not only did he face the highest state income tax rate, he was also dealing with a state whose tax law has the longest and most aggressive arm,” Ellis said. “Comparatively speaking, California is the most litigious state I have seen in terms of chasing people down for money. Only New York rivals them.”

“It doesn’t matter if the income was coming from the former Mayor of Moscow, a Chinese private equity firm, or a Ukrainian gas company, California tax obligations are global and would’ve applied for the years in which Hunter Biden was a Golden State resident,” added Ellis, who runs his own tax preparation business and is president of the Center for a Free Economy.

The Department of Justice noted in a September 5 press release that “Hunter Biden engaged in a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019 and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns.” While Hunter Biden won’t face repercussions for skipping out on those federal tax obligations thanks to the pardon from his father, that doesn’t shield him from state level prosecution for failure to pay taxes to California.

Why would a person pay state taxes on income for which it’s known they did not pay federal taxes owed? That question and the desire to answer it is behind the complaint recently filed with the State Auditor. Fortunately for Hunter Biden, California tax authorities and the California press corps have thus far demonstrated little interest in answering that question.

Hunter Biden also doesn’t have to worry about the most recent state wealth tax proposal introduced Sacramento. That’s because Governor Newsom confirmed earlier this year that he opposes the latest wealth tax bill introduced by California legislators. That should be welcomed news for Hunter Biden, who purchased a $142,000 sports car with funds provided by a Kazakh businessman, and who received a 3.16 carat diamond from a Chinese businessman, both of which would be prime targets of the sort of wealth tax sought by some California lawmakers.

In his 2023 State of the Union Address, President Biden promoted his effort to make “the wealthiest and the biggest corporations begin to pay their fair share. That message was echoed throughout 2024 by Vice President Kamala Harris (D), Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and other prominent Democrats. Any politician who wants to continue calling for stricter gun control and higher tax burdens on the rich, however, will have a hard time doing so in the future if they declined to comment when the President’s son was let off the hook for failing to pay taxes on millions in income and violating of gun laws.

A California man was detained by the FBI and ordered to have his guns temporarily seized after he allegedly communicated with the 15-year-old shooter who killed two people at her Wisconsin school, documents show.

The gun violence emergency protective order was served to a 20-year-old in Carlsbad in San Diego County on Tuesday, according to the order, which was obtained by NBC San Diego.

The narrative of the order says the California man had communicated with Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, who police say opened fire Monday at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, which she attended, killing two people before she killed herself.

The FBI detained the man “after he was discovered plotting a mass shooting with the Madison Wisconsin shooter,” a Carlsbad police officer wrote in the gun order.

The man “admitted to the FBI agents that he told Rupnow that he would arm himself with explosives and a gun and that he would target a government building,” the Carlsbad officer wrote.

The FBI saw messages between him and Rupnow, the order says. It does not go into further detail about the communication or the alleged plans.

The order was approved by a San Diego County judge and served at the Carlsbad home just before 9 p.m. Tuesday, it shows. A court hearing about the order is set for Jan. 3, the document reads.

The order says guns were reported and searched for, but it does not say police seized any. The order requires someone to turn over firearms and not to possess any guns while it is in effect.

A spokesperson for the FBI’s San Diego field office declined to comment Wednesday evening.

Carlsbad police said the investigation is being led by Madison police. A Madison police spokesperson referred questions to the FBI.

It’s not clear whether there are any criminal charges in the matter. None of the agencies mentioned criminal charges, and a spokesperson for the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

No cases with the man’s name appeared in an online search of criminal cases in the county Wednesday night.  

A phone number for the man or his family could not immediately be found in public records Wednesday.

“There is no threat to the Carlsbad community at this time,” Carlsbad police said in a statement.

Investigators in Madison are working to determine a motive in the shooting Monday morning.

Rupnow, a freshman, opened fire at a study hall that had mixed grades, Madison police said.

A staff member, Erin West, 42, and a student, Rubi Vergara, 14, were killed, the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office said, and other people were injured.

Rubi was in the ninth grade, and “her gentle, loving, and kind heart was reflected in her smile,” the school said in a statement Wednesday after their names were released. “Often seen with a book in hand, she had a gift for art and music,” it said.

West was a substitute teacher who became a full-time staff member. “ALCS is a better school for the work of Erin West,” the school said.

Two students sustained life-threatening injuries, and they remained hospitalized Wednesday, police said. Four other people with minor injuries have been discharged.

Two guns were found at the school, only one of which was used in the shooting, police said in a statement Wednesday. Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes has said the gun that was used was a handgun.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has completed its data trace of the guns, but police said more information about the weapons was not being released Wednesday.

Police are looking at Rupnow’s social media accounts as part of the investigation, the police department said.

“Our team is looking to connect to anyone who may have interacted with Natalie Rupnow in the days and weeks leading up to the shooting,” Madison police said in Wednesday’s statement.

The U.S. reported its first severe human case of bird flu on Wednesday in a Louisiana resident who is hospitalized in critical condition after suspected contact with an infected backyard flock.

California, the most populous state, declared an emergency over the H5N1 virus as it spread more widely in dairy herds and after it has infected dozens of farm workers this year.

Federal and state officials have failed to control the nation’s outbreak, which infected dairy cattle for the first time in 2024, as some farmers resist testing and containment measures.

Severe respiratory illness in the Louisiana patient shows increased health risks for people from the virus that previously caused eye redness, or conjunctivitis, in infected dairy workers.

Bird flu still represents a low risk to the general public, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

CDC has confirmed 61 human cases nationally since April, mostly in workers on dairy farms where the virus infected cattle.

Workers culling infected poultry also have tested positive.

The patient in Louisiana is suffering severe respiratory illness, the Louisiana Department of Health said in a statement.

The person is reported to have underlying medical conditions and is over the age of 65, the department said, putting the patient at higher risk.

The case is the first to be linked to backyard, non-commercial poultry, said Demetre Daskalakis, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, on a call with reporters.

The CDC said a sporadic case of severe illness in a person with H5N1 bird flu is not unexpected as such cases have occurred in other countries in 2024 and prior years, including cases that led to death.

“The mild cases that we’ve seen in the United States largely reflect that many of the individuals are getting infected by dairy cows and that’s very different than getting infected with infected birds,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

“If you look at the genotype of this patient in Louisiana, it wasn’t the cattle strain. It was a wild bird strain.”

CDC said partial viral genome data from the infected patient shows that the virus belongs to the D1.1 genotype, recently detected in wild birds and poultry in the United States and in recent human cases in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington state.

This genotype of the virus is different from the B3.13 genotype detected in dairy cows, human cases in multiple states, and some poultry outbreaks in the country, CDC said.

Bird flu has infected more than 860 dairy herds in 16 states since March and killed 123 million poultry since the outbreak began in 2022.

In California, the top U.S. milk-producing state, 649 herds have tested positive since late August, roughly 60% of its herds, according to U.S. data.

Four southern California dairies tested positive on Dec. 12, “necessitating a shift from regional containment to statewide monitoring and response,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in his emergency declaration.

Earlier cases had been centered in the Central Valley in the middle of the state.

The declaration aims to streamline and expedite California’s response by allowing more flexibility for staffing, contracting and other rules, Newsom said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it has enrolled 13 states in a newly launched national bulk milk bird flu testing plan, representing nearly half of the nation’s milk supply.