Hunter Biden asks to change plea to guilty in federal tax case
Hunter Biden wants to plead guilty in his federal tax case, his defense attorney said in court Thursday, according to The Associated Press.
President Biden’s son is accused of withholding at least $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019, in the heat of his addiction to cocaine. He faces nine charges, three of which are felonies, and has pleaded not guilty.
The trial was expected to begin Thursday with jury selection.
A judge must still accept Biden’s guilty plea. Hunter Biden's attorney, Abbe Lowell, suggested in court that the matter could be “resolved today,” CNN reported.
The arrangement proposed by Biden’s attorneys is called an “Alford plea,” according to multiple reports. Biden would acknowledge that special counsel David Weiss has enough evidence to convict him, and then he would accept U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi’s eventual sentence.
Prosecutors from Weiss’s team said they would object to the plea and indicated no deal had been reached between the parties, according to CNN.
Biden’s tax trial follows a separate criminal trial on gun charges, which ended earlier this year in a conviction for lying about his use of illicit drugs on a federal gun purchase form. It marked the first criminal conviction of a sitting U.S. president’s child — and the tax trial threatened to lead to the second.
That conviction significantly heightened the stakes of the second trial, which could hold higher penalties for Biden if found guilty, since he no longer has the status of a first-time offender.
Biden’s sentencing in the gun case is scheduled for Nov. 13.
The Hill requested comment from Lowell and Mark Geragos, Biden’s attorneys.
Biden previously agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses last year in a deal with federal prosecutors that would have allowed him to avoid prosecution in the gun case.
However, a federal judge based in Delaware questioned unusual aspects of the deal, and the agreement subsequently imploded. Then, Biden was indicted in the two cases.
About 120 Californians were summoned to jury service at the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, where Biden’s trial was expected to begin with the questioning of prospective jurors Thursday morning.
The planned questions span taxation, addiction and politics, including whether potential jurors believe Biden's prosecution is a result of his father being the president.
“If you were eligible to vote in any election in which Joseph R. Biden was a candidate, would that fact prevent you from maintaining an open, impartial mind until all of the evidence is presented and the Court gives you instructions?” reads one question that could have been posed to jurors.
President Biden has repeatedly expressed that he would not pardon his son, promising after the gun conviction that he would “continue to respect the judicial process.” Still, Republicans criticized Hunter Biden's previous prosecution as a “distraction” and “illusion of equal justice,” insisting the Biden family’s powerful patriarch has shielded the family from scrutiny of its purported corruption.
Though the trial involves Hunter Biden’s taxes, his history of addiction was expected to play a significant role in the case.
Geragos previously accused federal prosecutors of attempting “character assassination” on the president’s son by seeking to show jurors salacious evidence and testimony, spanning from strip clubs and sex workers to alcohol and drug abuse.
But prosecutors insisted Biden’s personal spending choices lend insight into his state of mind during the time he allegedly failed to file and pay his taxes. They also said Biden’s playboy lifestyle was detailed at length in his memoir.
If the judge accepts Biden's guilty plea, he could avoid a trial that would hurl his addiction back into the spotlight.
Updated at 12:40 p.m. ET