Hunter Biden’s plea deal with federal prosecutors is the latest in a long line of embarrassing escapades, eyebrow-raising foreign deals and legal headaches that have resulted in few consequences for the first son.
Hunter Biden agreed Tuesday to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax crimes and admit to illegal possession of a firearm in a deal with federal prosecutors that is expected to keep him out of jail.
Other incidents, including a drug possession charge and allegations of influence-peddling and bribery schemes, have left President Biden’s youngest son unscathed.
No evidence indicates that Mr. Biden has personally interceded on his son’s behalf, but the string of favorable outcomes has stoked suspicions that Hunter Biden is receiving preferential treatment.
“The everyday person wouldn’t be treated this way, but it’s the privileged class that escapes accountability for whatever they do,” said criminal defense attorney James Bopp. “The everyday person would be facing felonies and substantial jail time.
“The irony of the gun charge is that his dad’s administration is obsessed with gun control. He violated a gun control law, and he gets to walk,” Mr. Bopp said.
SEE ALSO: Hunter Biden to plead guilty in tax case, prosecutor says probe ‘ongoing’
Hunter Biden’s first brush with the law was in 1988 when he was charged at age 18 with drug possession in Stone Harbor, New Jersey.
“I was cited for possession of a controlled substance. There was a pretrial intervention and the record was expunged,” Hunter Biden wrote in a disclosure after he was nominated to serve on the Amtrak Reform Board in 2006.
The same year Hunter Biden was arrested, Mr. Biden, as a U.S. senator from Delaware, strongly advocated for stiffer sentences for drug users. Mr. Biden voted for the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which made crack cocaine the only drug with a mandatory penalty for possession. It is unclear whether Hunter Biden was cited for possession of crack.
Nearly two decades later, Hunter Biden was kicked out of the Navy Reserve because he tested positive for cocaine. Although Hunter Biden failed the drug test in 2013, he was not booted from the Navy until February 2014.
“I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge. I respect the Navy’s decision,” he said in a statement after he was discharged.
Hunter Biden has acknowledged that he spent four years addicted to crack and had six stints in rehabilitation. His crack habit never landed him a day in jail.
SEE ALSO: Bribery allegations hurt Biden with independent voters, but his base looks the other way
More recent headlines about Hunter Biden stem from his pocketing of millions of dollars from suspicious deals with foreign companies, often in countries where his father was involved in U.S. foreign policy.
House Republicans say they have evidence that Mr. Biden and Hunter Biden participated in a $10 million bribery scheme while Mr. Biden was vice president under President Obama.
One of the most serious allegations directly linking Mr. Biden to a bribe came to the FBI’s attention as early as 2017 but only recently emerged publicly.
An informant told the FBI that an executive of the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings paid Mr. Biden $5 million. Burisma executives made a separate $5 million payment to Hunter Biden, according to Republican lawmakers who viewed a document known as an FD-1023.
Mr. Biden has laughed off the allegations as “malarkey.”
House Republicans say Mr. Biden’s family members, including Hunter Biden, show a pattern of collecting millions of dollars from entities in countries such as China and Romania.
In the weeks leading up to Hunter Biden’s plea deal, an IRS whistleblower claimed political interference while the Justice Department was investigating the tax crimes.
Hunter Biden was deposed last week in a paternity case with an Arkansas woman with whom he fathered a daughter out of wedlock.
He has asked the court to reduce his $20,000-per-month child support payment for the girl, who is now 4, and opposed the mother’s desire to change the girl’s last name to Biden.
Hunter Biden’s legal team said a “substantial material change” in his financial circumstances warrants lowering child support payments by 75% to less than $5,000 per month. His attorneys have delayed disclosing all sources of his income, prompting a scolding from the judge in the case.
Hunter Biden isn’t the only Biden family member to score a favorable outcome after an arrest.
First daughter Ashley Biden was charged in New Orleans in 1999 with possession of marijuana. A conviction was not recorded. She was charged again in Chicago with attempting to obstruct a police officer during a bar fight, but the charge was dropped.
Mr. Biden’s niece Caroline Biden also racked up a rap sheet with little consequences. In 2013, she was charged with resisting arrest and harassment in New York. The case was dismissed. Four years later, she was charged with grand and petty larceny for spending more than $110,000 on a stolen credit card. She received two years of probation and was ordered to pay restitution.
Caroline Biden was charged again in 2019 with driving under the influence in Pennsylvania. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five months of probation, with 20 days of rehabilitation counting toward her sentence.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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