Hunter Biden pleaded guilty Thursday to all nine federal tax charges he faced, staving off his second criminal trial this year just before it was set to begin, according to The Associated Press.
In a stunning and last-minute twist, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi accepted the plea change on the same day jury selection was scheduled to get underway in Los Angeles federal court. Biden admitted to withholding at least $1.4 million in taxes over four years in the throes of his addiction to cocaine, spending it instead on a lavish lifestyle.
Biden initially offered an arrangement called an “Alford plea,” — where he would formally admit guilt while still maintaining his innocence and accept the judge’s eventual sentence — but prosecutors forcefully objected, prompting the traditional guilty plea.
“Like millions of Americans, I failed to file and pay my taxes on time. For that I am responsible,” Biden said in a statement. “As I have stated, addiction is not an excuse, but it is an explanation for some of my failures at issue in this case. When I was addicted, I wasn’t thinking about my taxes, I was thinking about surviving.”
The guilty plea comes just months after Biden was convicted on gun charges 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.
About 120 Californians were summoned to the Los Angeles federal courthouse Thursday as prospective jurors in the case.
Before their questioning could begin, Biden attorney Abbe Lowell told the judge that the government had “overwhelming” evidence against his client, who wished to resolve the case ahead of trial with a rare Alford plea.
A prosecutor with special counsel David Weiss’s team contended that Biden is “not entitled to plead guilty on special terms that apply only to him” — a claim Biden’s attorneys disagreed with but ultimately conceded by entering a traditional guilty plea.
By pleading guilty to the three felony and six misdemeanor counts, Biden averted another potentially embarrassing trial that was expected to drag his addiction back into the spotlight.
Biden’s attorneys accused the government in court filings of attempting “character assassination” on the president’s son through salacious evidence, which prosecutors insisted spoke to his state of mind as he avoided paying taxes between 2016 and 2019.
Lowell said in a statement that Biden’s decision to plead guilty was hinged on his desire to protect his family, suggesting prosecutors sought to “exploit his family’s pain during the Delaware case and…were planning to do it again in California for this trial.”
During the gun trial, Biden’s family members including his ex-wife, his late brother’s widow and his daughter were forced to take to the stand to testify about his drug use. Other family members, including first lady Jill Biden, attended the trial daily.
In his statement, Biden said he went to trial in Delaware “not realizing the anguish” it would cause his family.
“I will not put them through it again,” Biden said, claiming that prosecutors were focused “not on justice but on dehumanizing me for my actions during my addiction.”
“I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment,” he continued. “For all I have put them through over the years, I can spare them this, and so I have decided to plead guilty.”
Ahead of the tax trial, Scarsi issued a series of rulings that complicated Biden’s defense. The judge said that Biden could not connect his addiction to his brother’s 2015 brain cancer death or the 1972 car accident that the brothers survived but his mother and infant sister did not. He also said a defense expert could not testify about addiction.
Biden also claimed in the statement that the jury would “never have heard” how his addiction played a role in his conduct, nor that he paid back “every penny” of his taxes, plus penalties.
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, but that fell apart after a federal judge based in Delaware questioned unusual aspects of the deal.
Biden already faces up to 25 years behind bars in the gun case and is set to be sentenced on Nov. 13.
His tax case sentencing was scheduled for Dec. 16. Those charges carry up to 17 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines will likely suggest a shorter sentence.
President Biden has repeatedly vowed not to pardon his son, promising after the gun conviction that he would “continue to respect the judicial process.”
Asked again Thursday by The Associated Press if the president would pardon his son, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “Still no.”
Updated 6:31 p.m. EDT