President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, pleaded guilty Thursday to tax evasion charges, dodging a trial that would have dredged up sordid details about his past spending on strippers and drugs as his father serves out his remaining months in the White House in the midst of the presidential election.
The president’s son entered the plea as potential jurors for his trial assembled in a federal courthouse in Los Angeles. Earlier in the day, prosecutors initially rejected a surprise attempt by his lawyers to secure a so-called Alford plea, which would have allowed him to enter a guilty plea while maintaining his innocence.
Hunter Biden, 54, then decided later in the afternoon to enter a standard guilty plea. He now faces sentencing on Dec. 16 on a litany of tax evasion and tax fraud charges that carry a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million.
Defense lawyer Abbe Lowell told reporters outside the courthouse that Hunter Biden bravely entered the guilty plea to spare his family the humiliation of a prosecution that he said was beyond the normal realm of tax-related cases.
“Like millions of Americans, Hunter was late in filing and paying his taxes,” Mr. Lowell said. “Unlike those millions of Americans, he was charged criminally for his failures that occurred during the depths of his addiction to drugs and alcohol, and which he has rectified by paying his overdue taxes in full with interest and penalties, years before he was ever charged.”
Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on Hunter Biden’s guilty plea, though said the president still does not plan to pardon his son or commute any sentence.
PHOTOS: Hunter Biden enters surprise guilty plea to avoid tax trial months after his gun conviction
Mr. Biden, 81, said he would not take action to spare his son from a conviction or prison sentence, but that was before he dropped out of the presidential race.
“It’s no, it’s still no,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark Scarsi accepted Biden’s plea to nine charges, including three felonies, related to prosecutors’ evidence that he failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes even as he lived an extravagant lifestyle that included sports cars, prostitutes and drugs.
Prosecutors, armed with a mountain of evidence against him, rejected his effort at an Alford plea.
“I want to make something crystal clear — the United States opposes an Alford plea,” said prosecutor Leo Wise, a member of special counsel David Weiss’s team. “Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty. He is not permitted to plead guilty on special terms.”
By entering the last-minute plea, Hunter Biden avoided his second criminal trial in just months.
He was convicted in June in Delaware of three felony charges over a gun he bought in 2018, and faces sentencing on that conviction in November.
The tax trial was expected to put a spotlight on his lucrative foreign business deals, which Republicans say were made possible thanks to the involvement of his father during his time as vice president and after he left office in 2017. They accuse his father of helping Hunter Biden and his business associates, as well as other Biden family members rake in more than $20 million in deals with China, Russia, Ukraine and other countries.
Mr. Biden denied doing business with his son but repeatedly expressed support for him and concern for his well-being, at times casting Hunter Biden’s problems as a fight with addiction that is all too familiar to other families.
The sordid details of Hunter Biden’s troubles muddied Mr. Biden’s reelection bid. House Republicans, who conducted an impeachment investigation into Mr. Biden related to the deals, issued a report in August that concluded Mr. Biden had acted corruptly by helping his family profit through his powerful position as vice president.
Hunter Biden’s guilty plea came after the judge issued some unfavorable pre-trial rulings for the defense, including rejecting a proposed defense expert lined up to testify about addiction.
Judge Scarsi, who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump, also placed some restrictions on what jurors would be allowed to hear about the traumatic events that Hunter 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 Biden from cancer, or the car accident that killed his mother and sister when he was a toddler.
The indictment alleged that Hunter Biden lived lavishly while flouting his tax obligations, spending his cash on things like strippers and luxury hotels — “in short, everything but his taxes.”
Biden’s attorneys had asked Judge Scarsi to also limit prosecutors from highlighting details of his expenses that they say amount to a “character assassination,” including payments made to strippers or pornographic websites. The judge has said in court papers that he will maintain “strict control” over the presentation of potentially salacious evidence.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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