President Joe Biden’s son Hunter pleaded guilty to not paying his taxes on time in order to avoid a second humiliating trial this year.
The guilty plea came as a surprise Thursday and marked a stunning turnaround for the president’s son, whose legal team fought the tax charges as motivated by political pressure from Republicans.
Hunter Biden ’s defense attorneys initially said Thursday that their client would be willing to make an “Alford plea,” a special type of guilty plea in which the defendant maintains their innocence but accepts punishment for the alleged crime.
Prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi to reject the Alford plea in favor of a regular guilty plea.
“Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty,” prosecutor Leo Wise said, according to The Associated Press .
A grand jury indicted Hunter Biden last year on three felony and six misdemeanor charges related to his not paying more than $1 million in federal taxes on income he earned from foreign business deals from 2016 through 2019. The charges carry a maximum of 17 years in prison.
The younger Biden’s overseas moneymaking has been a major source of controversy for Joe Biden, whom Republicans accused of participating in his son’s work. Republicans struggled to substantiate the allegation, however, and gave up on an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden this year.
The Biden case is a strong counterpoint to Republican claims that President Biden has “weaponized” the Justice Department against Donald Trump, who faces federal charges in Washington, D.C., and Florida.
Hunter Biden had been under investigation for years when his father became president, and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland left Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, originally appointed by Trump, in charge of the case even as other Republican U.S. attorneys were replaced with Democrats.
Weiss initially reached a tentative plea deal with Biden on the tax charges as well as unrelated gun charges last year, but the deal fell apart amid a disagreement over Biden’s immunity from further prosecution ― and complaints from Republicans who said he was getting away with a slap on the wrist. Garland then elevated Weiss to special counsel status so he could prosecute Hunter Biden for the tax crimes in California and the gun crimes in Delaware.
In June, a jury found Hunter Biden guilty of three felonies related to his illegal purchase of a firearm in 2018, at a time in his life he has admitted he was addicted to drugs. His legal team tried to argue that their client was not necessarily high at the moment he bought the gun, but prosecutors played excerpts from the audiobook of his 2021 memoir, in which he described getting high on crack as often as every 15 minutes. The trial also featured testimony about his drug use from one of his daughters as well as a close examination of their text messages from the relevant time.
Thursday’s guilty plea came as the court geared up for jury selection ahead of what would likely have been another agonizing trial. Prosecutors in the tax case planned to use material from Hunter Biden’s memoir and other sources to argue he lived a lavish lifestyle while shirking his tax duties, and Scarsi ruled against letting jurors know that a third-party benefactor has actually paid off Hunter Biden’s tax debt or that Biden’s judgment had been hampered by drug addiction.
In a written statement, Biden said he didn’t realize how much his gun trial would anguish his family, and he didn’t want to do it again. “When it became clear to me that the same prosecutors were focused not on justice but on dehumanizing me for my actions during my addiction, there was only one path left for me,” Biden said. “I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment. For all I have put them through over the years, I can spare them this, and so I have decided to plead guilty.”
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