Hunter Biden pleads guilty to avoid tax trial months after his gun conviction
LOS ANGELES — Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to federal tax charges Thursday in a surprise move that spares his family another likely embarrassing and painful criminal trial.
Biden’s stunning decision to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges without the benefits of a deal with prosecutors came just as jury selection was supposed to begin in the case accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes.
He was already facing potential prison time after his June conviction on felony gun charges in a trial that aired unflattering and salacious details about his struggles with a crack cocaine addiction. The tax trial was expected to showcase more potentially lurid evidence as well as details about Biden’s foreign business dealings, which Republicans have seized on to try to paint the Biden family as corrupt.
Although President Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 election muted the potential political implications of his son’s tax case, the trial was expected to carry a heavy emotional toll for the president in the final months of his five-decade political career.
“Enough is enough,” defense attorney Abbe Lowell told the judge before the younger Biden entered his plea. “Mr. Biden is prepared, because of the public and private interest, to proceed today and finish this.”
Biden quickly responded “guilty” as the judge read out each of the nine counts. The charges carry up to 17 years behind bars, but federal sentencing guidelines are likely to call for a much shorter sentence. Sentencing is set for Dec. 16.
More than 100 potential jurors had been brought to the courthouse to begin the process of picking the panel that would decide whether he was guilty of misdemeanor and felony charges over what prosecutors say was a four-year scheme to avoid paying at least $1.4 million in taxes while pulling in millions of dollars from foreign business entities.
President Biden’s son sued over “The Trial of Hunter Biden,” which streamed on Fox Nation in 2022.
Prosecutors were caught off guard when Biden’s lawyer told the judge Thursday morning that his client wanted to enter what’s known as an Alford plea, under which a defendant maintains their innocence but acknowledges prosecutors have enough evidence to secure a conviction.
Prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi to reject the proposed plea, saying that Biden “is not entitled to plead guilty on special terms that apply only to him.”
“Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty,” prosecutor Leo Wise said.
Prosecutors and his defense team, led by Mark Geragos, argued about what jurors will — and will not — hear about Biden’s tumultuous, drug-fueled life.
Biden walked into the courtroom holding hands with his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and flanked by Secret Service agents. Initially, he pleaded not guilty to the charges related to his taxes for 2016 through 2019, and his attorneys had indicated they would argue he didn’t act “willfully,” or with the intention to break the law, in part because of his well-documented struggles with alcohol and drug addiction.
Biden had agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses last year in a deal with the Justice Department that would allow him to avoid prosecution in the gun case if he stayed out of trouble. But the agreement imploded after a judge questioned unusual aspects of it, and he was subsequently indicted in the two cases.
President Biden says he will not use presidential powers to lessen the sentence his son Hunter will receive for his federal felony conviction on gun crimes.
His decision to change his plea Thursday came after the judge issued some unfavorable pretrial rulings for the defense, including rejecting a proposed defense expert lined up to testify about addiction.
Scarsi, who was appointed to the bench by then-President Trump, also placed some restrictions on what jurors would be allowed to hear about the traumatic events that Biden’s family, friends and attorneys say led to his drug addiction.
The judge barred attorneys from connecting his substance abuse struggles to the 2015 death of his brother, Beau, due to cancer or the car accident that killed his mother and sister when he was a toddler.
The indictment alleged that Biden lived lavishly while flouting the tax law, spending his cash on things such as strippers and luxury hotels — “in short, everything but his taxes.”
Biden’s attorneys had asked Scarsi to also limit prosecutors from highlighting details of his expenses that they say amount to a “character assassination,” including payments to strippers or pornographic websites. The judge had said in court papers that he would maintain “strict control” over the presentation of potentially salacious evidence.
A fictional series on the streaming service Fox Nation showed the president’s son standing trial for charges he has not faced in real life.
Prosecutors had said they wanted to introduce evidence about Biden’s overseas dealings, which have been at the center of Republican investigations into the Biden family, often seeking — without evidence — to tie the president to an alleged influence-peddling scheme.
The special counsel’s team had planned to have a business associate of Hunter Biden’s testify about their work for a Romanian businessman, who prosecutors say sought to “influence U.S. government policy” while Joe Biden was vice president.
Sentencing in Hunter Biden’s firearm case — he was convicted in June in Delaware of three felony charges over a gun he bought in 2018 — is set for Nov. 13. He could face up to 25 years in prison, but as a first-time offender, he is likely to get far less time or avoid prison entirely.
Taxin, Bharath, Veiga and Lauer write for the Associated Press. Lauer reported from Philadelphia. AP writer Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
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