Hunter Biden pleads guilty to tax fraud, avoids new trial

Photo: Jae C. Hong Associated Press Hunter Biden and his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, arrive at a Los Angeles courthouse on Thursday, Sept. 5.

Huw Griffith – Agence France-Presse in Los Angeles

Published and updated Sept. 5

• United States

Hunter Biden, the son of the president, formally pleaded guilty to tax evasion in a Los Angeles court on Thursday, a reversal that spares him a retrial after his conviction in June in a separate case.

“Guilty,” Hunter Biden, 54, replied when the judge listed the charges against him, the New York Timess reported.

The former lawyer and businessman, now a painter, faced one count of tax evasion and two counts of making false statements for failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes over the past decade.

The judge set sentencing for December 16. Hunter Biden faces up to 17 years in prison.

Even before the trial began Thursday morning in Los Angeles, his lawyer Abbe Lowell had told the judge that he was ready to plead guilty, but using a specific feature of American law that allows one to accept being convicted while proclaiming one’s innocence.

The prosecution, however, refused this procedure, preferring that the trial take place.

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Alas, Hunter Biden informed his lawyers that he had finally agreed to fully plead guilty, without an agreement with the prosecutors to reduce his sentence, but thus avoiding an embarrassing new trial.

Already convicted

Because Joe Biden’s youngest son has already been convicted this year for lying about his drug addiction when buying drugs. of a weapon — a felony in the Biden home state of Delaware. His sentence, which could carry up to 25 years in prison, has not yet been handed down.

During the hearings at this trial, Hunter Biden's luxurious lifestyle, his failing marriage and his cocaine addiction had already been publicly exposed.

It was apparently to avoid these infamous details being heard again that he finally decided to plead guilty on Thursday.

On the merits of the case, to justify this non-payment of taxes, his lawyers had until then pleaded negligence during a chaotic period for Hunter Biden due to the deterioration of his addiction and the death of his brother Beau from a brain tumor.

Hunter Biden, who claims to have not touched drugs since 2019, has already repaid the taxes owed, as well as the fines relating to the authorities.

He had previously reached a plea deal that would have spared him a prison sentence, but that deal ultimately fell apart and, according to the American press, the president's son has since been trying to reach a new one.

Hunter Biden has become over the years a favorite target of Republicans who seek to portray the Democratic president as the head of a corrupt family.

The withdrawal of Joe Biden from the presidential race at the end of July, in favor of Kamala Harris, has, however, caused the intensity of the opposition's attacks to drop.