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.”
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