Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s only surviving son, will plead guilty in a federal tax avoidance trial that began in Los Angeles on Thursday, a last-minute maneuver that appeared to catch prosecutors by surprise.
Abbe Lowell, a defense attorney, told the judge in the case about Hunter Biden’s plans to change his previous plea of not guilty, but did not provide further details, the Associated Press reported.
Mark Geragos, another Hunter Biden lawyer, said in a text message the president’s son intended to enter what is referred to as an Alford plea, an unusual plea under which a defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges prosecutors have enough evidence to gain a conviction, the Associated Press reports.
“There is overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt,” Lowell told the judge. “This can be resolved today. It’s not a complicated issue.”
Jury selection in the trial is due to begin on Thursday in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles. The son of the 46th US president stands accused of failing to pay his taxes on time from 2016 to 2019, as well as two felony counts of filing a false return and an additional felony count of tax evasion.
Hunter Biden walked into the courtroom 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.
The defense’s announcement appeared to catch prosecutors and the judge off guard at the Los Angeles courthouse, where more than 100 potential jurors arrived for questioning on Thursday.
A last-minute plea would allow Hunter Biden to avoid a trial that was expected to put a spotlight on his foreign business dealings, which Republicans have spent years scrutinizing to accuse his father – without evidence – of corruption in connection with his son’s work overseas.
The trial would mark the second time in three months that the younger Biden sits in a federal courtroom as a jury of his peers is assembled to assess whether he is guilty of a slew of criminal charges.
Hunter Biden, 54, 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 new trial takes place in the city where Biden has lived for years and where, according to the prosecution, he spent lavishly 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 relate 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.
In pre-trial hearings, lawyers for Biden have done little to challenge the documentary evidence behind the prosecution’s case but have sought, rather, to argue that Biden’s drug use and his failure to file his taxes correctly year after year were the result of a life marked by trauma from a very young age.
Judge Mark Scarsi has indicated, however, that he would have little patience for evidence introduced to suggest a specific cause of Biden’s drug use and threatened Biden’s lead lawyer, Mark Geragos, with stiff financial penalties if he attempted to bring such evidence before the jury.
Both the tax charges and the gun charges carry maximum sentences of more than 20 years in prison, although legal experts say that, as a first-time offender, Biden is likely to be punished far less harshly.
It has been a whirlwind of a summer for Joe Biden’s troubled son, one in which he was convicted of felonies, 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, acting 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 trial will be lower. Still, his legal troubles will take some of the sting out of Donald Trump’s constant complaints that he is the target of a political witch-hunt and that the president 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 for their son. The first lady attended court in Delaware most days but it is not clear whether she will do the same in California.
Agencies contributed reporting
