Hunter Biden pleads guilty in tax case

WASHINGTON — Hunter Biden on Thursday pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles, after telling his legal team that he refused to subject his family to another round of anguish and humiliation after a gut-wrenching gun trial in Delaware two months ago.

The dramatic development signaled the final stages of a fraught five-year-plus investigation into the period when Biden was bankrolling his uncontrollable drug and alcohol addiction by leveraging his famous last name into lucrative overseas consulting contracts — while not paying his taxes.

The guilty plea was a unilateral decision by defense lawyers who were persuaded they could not prevail in the trial. It was not part of a plea deal in exchange for reduced punishment.

Biden, speaking in a low and clipped voice as he sat at the defense table, repeated the word “guilty” nine times as Judge Mark Scarsi ticked off each charge.

He will remain free on bond until his sentencing hearing in mid-December.

The guilty plea now exposes President Joe Biden’s son to an outcome that seemed unthinkable last year, when his lawyers were on the cusp of a no-prison plea agreement: significant time behind bars. He now faces a maximum prison sentence of up to 17 years or a fine of up to $1.3 million, on top of the possible sentence of 25 years after being convicted of lying on a firearms application in Delaware in June.

It does not appear, at least for now, that he is banking on executive parental reprieve. As Hunter Biden’s team appeared in court, listening intently while every word of his 56-page criminal indictment was read back to him, the White House press secretary told reporters, “It’s still very much a no,” when asked if the president planned to pardon his son.

The guilty plea came a few hours after Biden, 54, made a more conditional offer — a so-called Alford plea — in which he acknowledged there was enough evidence to convict him even as he professed innocence toward the same charges. But that did not work.

His team changed course after prosecutors said they would oppose any plea in which Biden did not accept unconditional guilt, and Scarsi suggested he was inclined to move forward with the case.

“Enough is enough,” Abbe Lowell, one of Biden’s lawyers, said by midafternoon.

Lowell said Biden had decided to plead guilty “so he and his family don’t have to spend one more day focusing on something that happened when he was a man addicted to drugs.” Lowell added: “It’s time to move on.”

Biden believes that David Weiss, the special counsel in the case, had refused to engage in serious plea negotiations after being sharply criticized for signing a generous agreement with Biden on gun and tax charges that would have resulted in no prison time.

That agreement imploded during a chaotic hearing at the federal courthouse in Wilmington in July 2023, and Weiss subsequently indicted Biden on charges of lying on a firearms application in Delaware and on a range of tax violations in California, where he now lives.

The atmosphere in the courtroom in sunny Los Angeles was tense, clamorous and chaotic.

Leo Wise, the hard-driving Weiss deputy overseeing the government’s case, said he was stunned when the Biden team interrupted the first day of jury selection with an offer to end the trial on their terms. And he took offense when Lowell suggested that the government had subjected his client to an unfair prosecution influenced by external political pressures.

“This idea that he’s a victim of this process, it’s offensive,” Wise said. “We have not exacted a pound of flesh or a drop of blood. We have afforded him the same right as any American.”

Yet, much of the courtroom drama had already been drained of its national significance. Biden’s trial on tax charges went from a central election-year saga to a political afterthought the moment the president withdrew from the 2024 race in July.

Paradoxically, the personal stakes have never been higher for his son — a first-time offender who will probably make the case for the lightest permissible sentence, probation instead of prison time, after pleading guilty to evading a tax assessment, failing to file and pay taxes, and filing a false or fraudulent tax return.

In doing so, Biden’s legal team will argue that he has been clean and sober for years, paid all of his back taxes and penalties, and has expressed contrition to his family and associates for his drug-fueled behavior.

People close to Biden say he has been desperately seeking a way out of the tax trial for weeks in hopes of avoiding a reprise of the weeklong gun case, which included testimony from his ex-romantic partners, including the widow of his brother, Beau.

Wise had signaled his intention to call many of the same witnesses in Los Angeles in court filings — and Biden was particularly concerned about the possibility that his daughters Naomi and Maisy would be called to testify, they added.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.