Hunter Biden has pleaded guilty to all nine tax evasion charges, including three felonies after after finally agreeing to admit to the crimes at his federal trial in Los Angeles.
President Biden’s son, who is s already facing potential jail time after his June conviction on felony gun charges, will learn his fate on December 16 when he is sentenced on three felony and six misdemeanor charges. He faces up to 17 years in prison and $1.35 million in fines.
Lawyers had attempted to sidestep Hunter’s admission earlier on Thursday by entering an ‘Alford plea’. This would have allowed him to plea guilty while still maintaining his innocence, but following a fiery exchange between prosecutors and the defense, they abandoned their technical arguments and instead agreed to have him make a standard guilty plea.
The Mail Online reports: But after a fiery exchange between prosecutors and the defense, Hunter’s attorneys abandoned their technical arguments and instead agreed to have him make a standard guilty plea.
The charges he admitted include lying on his tax returns and deliberately not paying $1.4 million to the IRS between 2016 and 2019.
Lowell claimed the government was trying to ‘exact more than a pound of flesh but also a drop of blood’.
Prosecutor Leo Wise said the suggestion was ‘offensive’, saying ‘the truth matters’, as he asked that it be made clear Hunter was agreeing he did commit all the crimes he is charged with.
After dropping the ‘Alford plea’ attempt, Judge Mark Scarsi had Wise read out the indictment to put all of the allegations against Hunter on the record.
The more than 50 page document includes details of Hunter’s shady overseas deals with Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu who has been convicted of bribery, and with Chinese oil giant CEFC, which has been linked to a Chinese government influence operation.
It also described how Hunter paid prostitutes and drug dealers, and spent thousands on a lavish lifestyle, rather than paying his taxes.
He also lied in order to deduct some of those illicit expenses as business costs on his tax returns, which is a felony.
The judge asked Hunter whether he understood the charges, and whether he was aware of the consequences of pleading guilty. Hunter said he did.
Among the standard questions Hunter was asked by the judge: ‘Did anybody make any promises to you to get you to plead guilty?’
Hunter replied: ‘No’.
The answer would appear to mean Hunter is denying that his father President Joe Biden has promised to pardon him. Biden will still have seven weeks in the White House after his son is sentenced.
Wise was keen to make sure that by pleading guilty, Hunter agreed he was guilty of each of the elements in the indictment, without wiggle room.
