The tax investigation was launched in 2018, the year before the elder Biden announced his candidacy for president.

WASHINGTON: The Justice Department is investigating the finances of  US President-elect Joe Biden’s son, including scrutinizing some of his Chinese business dealings and other transactions, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The revelations put a renewed spotlight on questions about Hunter Biden’s financial history, which dogged his father’s successful White House campaign and were a frequent target of President Donald Trump and his allies. They also come at a politically delicate time for the president-elect, who is weighing his choice to lead an agency that is actively investigating his son.

The tax investigation was launched in 2018, the year before the elder Biden announced his candidacy for president. Hunter Biden confirmed the existence of the investigation on Wednesday, saying he learned about it for the first time the previous day.

“I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors,” he said in a statement.

It isn’t clear which entities or business dealings might be tied up in the probe, though the person with knowledge of the matter said at least some of focus was on his past work in China. Federal investigators served a round of subpoenas on Tuesday, including one for Hunter Biden, according to another person familiar with the investigation.

Investigators did not reach out until recently because of Justice Department practice against taking overt investigative actions in the run-up to an election, one of the people said. The people familiar with the investigation insisted on anonymity to discuss an ongoing probe.

Hunter Biden has a history of international affairs and business dealings in a number of countries. Trump and his allies have accused him of profiting off his political connections, and have also raised unsubstantiated charges of corruption related to his work in Ukraine at the time his father was vice president and leading the Obama administration’s dealings with the Eastern European nation.

Late Wednesday, Trump tweeted a quote from New York Post columnist Miranda Devine claiming, “10% of voters would have changed their vote if they knew about Hunter Biden.”

Biden is actively assembling his Cabinet, but is yet to name a nominee to lead the Justice Department. That person could ultimately have oversight of the investigation into the new president’s son if it is still ongoing when Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20.

The transition team said in a statement, “President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.”

The revelations could also add weight to Trump’s broad accusations that Biden was weak on China. Trump took a tough line on China during the campaign as he tried to deflect blame for the coronavirus. Biden has rejected the characterization that he was weak and said that, unlike Trump, he would rebuild global coalitions to check China’s power.

A New Yorker profile on Hunter Biden last year detailed some of his business work in China, including how he accompanied his father on a 2013 trip to Beijing, where he met with a business associate. He also acknowledged having received a diamond from a Chinese energy tycoon interested in liquified natural gas projects.

He downplayed the idea that the gift could have been intended to affect his father’s policy. He told the magazine he gave the diamond to an associate.

“What would they be bribing me for? My dad wasn’t in office,” he said.

Hunter Biden has been caught up in controversies before. While his father was vice president, Hunter joined the Naval Reserve and was discharged after testing positive for cocaine in his system, later revealing a yearslong struggle with addiction.

He also joined the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2014, sparking concerns about the perceptions of a conflict of interest given the elder Biden was deeply involved in U.S. policy toward Ukraine. An investigation by the Republican-led Senate did not identify any policies that were directly affected by Hunter Biden’s work.

In the weeks before the election, Trump supporters used the existence of a laptop they said was connected to Hunter Biden — and the emergence of someone who maintains he had business discussions with him — to raise questions about Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son’s activities in Ukraine and China. The president-elect has said he did not discuss his son’s international business dealings with him and has denied having ever taken money from a foreign country.

The laptop surfaced publicly in October when The New York Post reported on emails that it said had come from Hunter Biden’s laptop and that it said it received from Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer.

A third person familiar with the matter said the tax investigation does not have anything to do with the laptop.

In a CNN interview last week, President-elect Biden addressed the business dealings of his son Hunter and his brothers, pledging that they would avoid any perceived conflicts of interest during his time in office.

“My son, my family will not be involved in any business, any enterprise that is in conflict with or appears to be in conflict, where there’s appropriate distance from the presidency and government,” Biden said.

Biden said that he hoped the US Supreme Court rejects a plan by President Donald Trump’s administration to exclude from the census the immigrants living illegally in the country.

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday said the Census Bureau must ensure that every American is counted accurately in the ongoing nationwide population counts.

Biden said that he hoped the US Supreme Court rejects a plan by President Donald Trump’s administration to exclude from the census the immigrants living illegally in the country.

The apex court heard a case on Tuesday regarding the plan of the Trump administration to exclude illegal immigrants from once-in-a-decade census.

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States heard a case about whether everyone in America will be counted in the census for the purpose of apportionment of Congressional seats, as the Constitution plainly and clearly requires, Biden said.

“Or whether the partisan politics of intimidation and xenophobia will intentionally exclude specific groups of people from being counted.

It’s a case about whether we deny our ability to govern responsibly and undermine our fidelity to our laws and values as a government of, by, and for all people,” he said in a statement.

“In America, we make ourselves heard when we fill out the Census to be counted. It’s a critical way the power of the nation resides in the people. That’s America. We can’t keep rewriting history, scrambling norms, and ignoring the Constitution and the precedents we abide by,” Biden said.

“It is my hope the Supreme Court does the right thing. And, Congress must give the experts at the Census the time to make sure everyone gets counted accurately.

Let everyone be counted and let us begin the work to heal and unite our nation,” Biden said.

Noting that the census will determine the future of the country for the next decade, Biden said it helps decide where and how to invest in the health and safety of the nation — everything from whether children can attend a good school and eat a warm lunch, families can drink clean water and breath clean air, and people have access to basic health care and good jobs.

Washington: US President Donald Trump has fired a top Homeland Security official who last week said that the November 3 presidential election was the most secure one in America’s history.

Trump, who has launched a slew of lawsuits in key states, but has not provided any evidence to back his claims of fraud, announced on Twitter on Tuesday that he has fired Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the Department of Homeland Security.

The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud – including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to (President-elect Joe) Biden, late voting and many more, Trump said in a tweet, repeating unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.

Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, he said.

Trump said that the only thing secure about the election was that it was virtually impenetrable by foreign powers.

On that, the Trump administration takes great credit. Unfortunately, the Radical Left Democrats, Dominion, and others were perhaps more successful! he said.

The mainstream media has declared Biden as the winner of the presidential election after the 77-year-old former vice president crossed the mandatory 270 electoral votes out of the 538-member Electoral College.

Trump, however, has refused to concede the election, asserting that he has won.

Trump, who has 232 electoral college votes, has challenged the election results in various states including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona. He had demanded a recount in Wisconsin.

In his capacity as president-elect, Biden has been receiving congratulatory calls from the world leaders.

Media and state officials have said that they have not found any evidence of voter fraud as alleged by Trump.

In a statement issued on November 12, members of the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) including Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that the November 3 election was the most secure in American history.

Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double-checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result, it said.

When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised, the statement said.

Senator Mark Warner, the co-chair of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, condemned the firing of Krebs.

Chris Krebs is an extraordinary public servant and exactly the person Americans want protecting the security of our elections. It speaks volumes that the president chose to fire him simply for telling the truth, he said.

Congressman Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said that throughout this election, Krebs worked diligently to safeguard the elections, provide vital support to state and local election officials, and inform the American people about what was true and what was not.

In the best tradition of government service, they spoke truth to power and helped keep Americans and our institutions safe. Instead of rewarding this great service, President Trump is retaliating against Director Krebs and other officials who did their duty. It’s pathetic but sadly predictable that upholding and protecting our democratic processes would be cause for firing, he said.

In a joint statement, Congressman Bennie Thompson, Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, and Lauren Underwood, Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation, said that in firing Krebs for refusing to lend credibility to his baseless claims and conspiracy theories about voter fraud, Trump is telling officials throughout the administration to put his political interests ahead of their responsibilities to the American people.

That is not only disturbing, but it is also anti-democratic, the two lawmakers said.

The President’s unsubstantiated tweets this evening do nothing to defend our state and local governments and critical infrastructure against malicious cyber campaigns from Russia, China, and Iran. And they do nothing to improve the security of our elections, they said.

Our country finds itself without a smart and capable cyber chief in one of the most vulnerable times our nation has ever seen during a worsening pandemic and in the middle of a presidential transition. Once again, President Trump puts himself before our country. He does not care about the safety and wellbeing of the American people and that is why he lost this election,” said Congressman C A Dutch Ruppersberger.

Congressman Jim Langevin, a senior member of House Committee on Homeland Security, member of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus decried the removal of Krebs.

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Joe Biden has said that he looks forward to working closely with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on shared global challenges, including containing COVID-19, launching the global economic recovery and maintaining a secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific region, according to his transition.

This was the first interaction between the two leaders after Democrat Biden defeated incumbent Republican president Donald Trump in the November 3 US presidential election.

According to the Biden-Harris Transition, ‘the president-elect noted that he looks forward to working closely with the prime minister on shared global challenges, including containing COVID-19 and defending against future health crises, tackling the threat of climate change, launching the global economic recovery, strengthening democracy at home and abroad, and maintaining a secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific region’.

Biden thanked Modi for his congratulations and “expressed his desire to strengthen and expand the US-India strategic partnership alongside the first vice president of South Asian descent,” said a readout of the call.

Earlier on Tuesday, Modi said in a tweet that he “spoke to US President-elect Joe Biden on phone to congratulate him. We reiterated our firm commitment to the Indo-US strategic partnership and discussed our shared priorities and concerns — COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific Region”.

The prime minister also conveyed his congratulations to US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

“Her success is a matter of great pride and inspiration for members of the vibrant Indian-American community, who are a tremendous source of strength for Indo-US relations,” Modi said.

Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant from Chennai, has created history by becoming the first Black American woman to be elected as the country’s Vice President.

While Indian-origin politicians have been elected as heads of the state in various parts of the world in the last several decades, from Mauritius to Fiji, Harris, 56, as the vice president of the United States would be the most powerful politician ever.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), in a statement on Tuesday, said that Modi congratulated Biden on his election, describing it as a testament to the strength and resilience of democratic traditions in the United States.

The prime minister warmly recalled his earlier interactions with Biden, including during his official visits to the US in 2014 and 2016, it said.

Biden is known to be a strong proponent of closer India-US ties since his days as a senator in the 1970s and played a key role in getting the approval of the Senate for the bilateral civil nuclear deal in 2008.

In the midst of hectic negotiations between the two countries to conclude the civil nuclear deal, Biden was a critical ally of India in the Senate.

The deal had laid a strong foundation for the deepening of ties between the two leading democracies of the world.

The strategic and defence ties between India and the US witnessed major expansion during Barack Obama’s presidency and Biden, as the vice president, had played a key role in it.

In his campaign documents, Biden spoke about his vision for the US-India partnership as well as on standing with India in facing threats in the region.

Biden also had separate congratulatory calls with leaders in Chile, Israel and South Africa.