policy
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hunter Biden made a surprise guilty plea Thursday to federal tax law violations, sparing President Joe Biden's family from one other likely embarrassing and painful criminal trial against the president's son.
His surprise decision to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges without moving into a plea agreement with prosecutors got here just hours after jury selection was set to start within the case during which he was accused of failing to pay at the least $1.4 million in taxes.
The president's son was already facing prison after being found guilty in June in a trial that exposed unflattering and offensive details of his struggle with crack cocaine addiction.
While President Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential election mitigated the potential political impact of the tax case, the trial was expected to put a heavy emotional burden on the president in the ultimate months of his five-decade political profession.
More than 100 potential jurors were dropped at court to start choosing the panel that will resolve whether he was guilty of a misdemeanor or a felony. The indictment says he attempted to avoid at the least $1.4 million in taxes over a four-year period while collecting thousands and thousands of dollars from foreign corporations.
But defense attorney Abbe Lowell told the judge that the evidence against Hunter Biden was “overwhelming” and that the president's son desired to resolve the case with a so-called Alford Plea. In this plea, the defendant asserts his innocence but admits that the prosecution has enough evidence for a conviction.
A prosecutor asked U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi to reject the proposed confession, arguing that Hunter Biden “is not entitled to plead guilty under special conditions that apply only to him.”
“Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty,” said prosecutor Leo Wise.
Wise said it was not enough for Biden to acknowledge that the federal government had sufficient evidence of his guilt and for him to simply accept the reality of the facts presented within the indictment.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she “cannot comment” on Hunter Biden's plans to vary his confession. President Joe Biden has said he is not going to pardon his son or commute his sentence. Asked again Thursday whether the president would pardon Hunter, Jean-Pierre said, “Still not.”
A final-minute confession would allow Hunter Biden to avoid a second criminal trial in a matter of months. He was found guilty in Delaware in June of three serious felonies related to a gun he bought in 2018.
The tax trial was intended to make clear his foreign business dealings, which Republicans have been scrutinizing for years in an try and accuse his father – without evidence – of corruption in connection together with his son's work abroad.
The potential political impact of the trial just weeks before the presidential election can have faded somewhat since President Biden's decision in July to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. But the president is deeply concerned about his son's well-being, so a trial would likely weigh heavily on him in the ultimate months of his five-decade political profession.
Hunter Biden entered the courtroom holding the hand of his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and accompanied by Secret Service agents. He initially pleaded not guilty to charges related to his 2016-2019 taxes, and his lawyers had indicated they’d argue he didn’t act “willfully” or with the intent to interrupt the law, partly due to his well-documented problems with alcohol and drug addiction.
Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to minor tax offenses last 12 months as a part of a cope with the Justice Department that will have allowed him to avoid prosecution within the gun case if he stayed out of trouble. But the deal fell through after a judge questioned unusual points, and he was subsequently charged in each cases.
His decision to vary his plea on Thursday got here after the judge made a lot of decisions within the run-up to the trial that were unfavorable to the defense, including rejecting a proposed defense expert witness to testify with regards to addiction.
Scarsi, who was appointed judge by former President Donald Trump, also placed some restrictions on what jurors could hear concerning the traumatic events that Hunter Biden's family, friends and lawyers say led to his drug addiction.
The judge barred lawyers from linking his struggle with drug addiction to the 2015 cancer death of his brother Beau Biden or the automotive accident that killed his mother and sister when he was a toddler.
The indictment alleges that Hunter Biden lived a lavish life while violating tax law by spending his money on things like strippers and luxury hotels – “in short, everything except his taxes.”
Hunter Biden's lawyers had asked Scarsi to also prevent prosecutors from highlighting details of his spending that they said amounted to a “character assassination campaign,” including payments to strippers or pornographic web sites. The judge has said in court documents that he’ll “strictly control” the presentation of doubtless offensive evidence.
Prosecutors had said they desired to present evidence about Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings, which were at the center of Republican investigations into the Biden family, which frequently tried – without evidence – to link the president to an alleged influence scheme.
The special counsel's team had planned to have certainly one of Hunter Biden's business associates testify about her work for a Romanian businessman who, in line with prosecutors, tried to “influence U.S. government policy” when Joe Biden was vp.
Sentencing within the Hunter Biden case in Delaware is scheduled for November 13. He faces as much as 25 years in prison, but as a first-time offender he’ll likely receive a much shorter sentence or avoid prison altogether.
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