Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to tax charges in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday, after a day of legal wrangling and in a dramatic move that will avoid a potentially embarrassing trial for Joe Biden’s son.
Biden, 54, pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges on a day of courtroom twists and turns, after prosecutors earlier objected to his surprise intention to enter an “Alford” plea, an unusual legal maneuver where a defendant pleads guilty but does not acknowledge wrongdoing. Following prosecutors’ objections, lawyers said Biden was ready to change course and enter an “open” plea, where a defendant pleads guilty to the charges and leaves his sentencing fate in the hands of the judge.
In court on Thursday afternoon, Abbe Lowell, Biden’s attorney, told Judge Mark Scarsi: “Mr Biden will agree that the elements of each offense have been satisfied.”
Biden quickly responded “guilty” as the judge read out each of the nine counts. The charges carry up to 17 years in prison, but federal sentencing guidelines are likely to call for a much shorter sentence.
A sentencing hearing has been set for 16 December.
In an emailed statement after he entered his plea, Hunter 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.”
The president’s only surviving son had previously pleaded not guilty. The surprise back-and-forth unfolded on Thursday as Biden entered a Los Angeles courthouse for the start of his tax-avoidance trial.
After learning of Biden’s earlier plan to enter an Alford plea, US justice department prosecutors said that would not be acceptable. Alford pleas are usually negotiated in advance, because prosecutors must get high-level approval before agreeing to them.
“It’s not clear to us what they are trying to do,” one prosecutor told Scarsi.
“[Hunter Biden] is not entitled to plead guilty on special terms that apply only to him,” said prosecutor Leo Wise. “Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty.”
A trial, in the run-up to the November presidential election, could have aired embarrassing details of Hunter Biden’s life. Lowell told the judge that the evidence against his client was “overwhelming” and that Biden wanted to resolve the case.
The son of the president was accused of failing to pay his taxes on time from 2016 to 2019, as well as facing two felony counts of filing a false return and an additional felony count of tax evasion.
Hunter Biden walked into the courtroom for jury selection on Thursday morning 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 from 2016 to 2019, and his attorneys had indicated they would argue he did not act “willfully”, or with the intention to break the law, in part because of his well-documented struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. But all that changed on a whirlwind day in court.
A guilty plea will head off a weeks-long trial that would have marked the second time in three months that Hunter Biden sat in a federal courtroom to face a slew of criminal charges.
Hunter Biden was found guilty in Delaware on three felony counts relating to his purchase of a handgun in 2018 because he wrote on his gun-purchase form, falsely, that he was not a user of illicit drugs. The Los Angeles trial was set to take place in the city where Biden has lived for years and where, according to the prosecution, he spent extensively on “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes”.
The most serious charges related to his 2018 return on which, according to the prosecution, he sought to claim his children’s college tuition fees and more than $27,000 in online pornography as business expenses.
It has been a whirlwind of a summer for Joe Biden’s son, one in which he has been convicted of felonies, was rushed to Washington as pressure mounted on his father not to run for re-election, raised eyebrows by dropping into White House meetings – and, according to one report, acted as his father’s “gatekeeper” – then appeared on stage at the Democratic national convention to bask in his father’s reflected glory.
Now that Joe Biden has abandoned his re-election ambitions and thrown his support behind his vice-president, Kamala Harris, the political stakes of Hunter Biden’s latest legal woes are lower. Still, his troubles take some of the sting out of Donald Trump’s constant complaints that he is the target of a political witch-hunt and that Joe Biden has “weaponized” the justice system against him.
After Hunter Biden’s June conviction, Joe and Jill Biden issued a statement saying they would respect the judicial process and not consider a pardon. The first lady attended court in Delaware most days.
The White House reiterated on Thursday that the president has no intention of pardoning his son or commuting his sentence.
“No, it is still very much a no,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in response to a reporter’s question about a potential pardon.
Joe Biden has previously said that he is “extremely proud of my son Hunter”, but that he would respect the outcome of the judicial process. “He has overcome an addiction. He’s one of the brightest, most decent men I know. I said I’d abide by the jury decision,” the elder Biden said.
