US President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, on Thursday pleaded guilty in a tax evasion trial, without reaching the deal he had sought with prosecutors, in a case that has been an embarrassment for his father.
The 54-year-old admitted nine counts related to failing to pay US$1.4 million in taxes over the past decade, money that prosecutors said he splurged instead on luxury living, sex workers and a drug habit.
The pleas came on the day jury selection for a trial had been due to start, and hours after Hunter Biden had offered to plead guilty in the hope of striking a deal that might keep him out of prison, but no deal materialized and he made the pleas in open court.
Photo: AFP
US District Judge Mark Scarsi set sentencing for Dec. 16. Hunter Biden faces up to 17 years in prison and a fine in excess of US$1 million.
A trial had been expected to rehash sordid details of a life that the defendant and his family — including the US president — have long acknowledged had gone off the rails.
“I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment,” US media reported Hunter Biden as saying in a statement. “Prosecutors were focused not on justice, but on dehumanizing me for my actions during my addiction.”
Hunter Biden has already spent a chunk of this year in court, having been convicted in Delaware of lying about his drug use when he bought a gun — an act that is a felony.
He has yet to be sentenced for that crime and could face up to 25 years imprisonment.
Joe Biden has the power to pardon his son, but has said he would not do so.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday that his position had not changed.
“It is still very much a ‘no,’” she said.
Lawyers for Hunter Biden have said he was only being brought before the court because of who he is.
“They want to slime him because that is the whole purpose,” Hunter Biden’s attorney Mark Geragos reportedly said during a hearing last month in which he accused prosecutors of attempted character assassination.
Hunter Biden’s defense team has argued that the non-payment of taxes was an oversight in a life wrought chaotic by a spiraling drug addiction and the trauma of losing his older brother, Beau, to a brain tumor in 2015.
Hunter Biden has paid the back taxes, as well as penalties levied by authorities, and had previously reached a plea deal that would have kept him out of jail. That agreement fell apart at the last minute, and Hunter Biden is understood to have been trying to reach another since then.
That has been difficult for prosecutors, whose every move in this election year is being scrutinized by Republicans, who charge the defendant is being treated leniently because he is the president’s son.
Hunter Biden has for years been a foil for his father’s political opponents, who have sought — without producing evidence — to smear the family as a group of criminals who have gained wealth and power because of Joe Biden’s career.
Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race in favor of US Vice President Kamala Harris has taken much of the zeal out of the Republican drive to make an example out of his son. Nevertheless, prosecutors appear unwilling to cut him any slack.
In his statement, Hunter Biden, who lives in Malibu, said his drug addiction was “not an excuse, but it is an explanation for some of my failures at issue in this case.”
“I have been clean and sober for more than five years because I have had the love and support of my family,” he said. “I can never repay them for showing up for me and helping me through my worst moments, but I can protect them from being publicly humiliated for my failures.”
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
RSS