Hunter Biden on Thursday pleaded guilty to nine tax evasion charges, including three felonies, after finally agreeing to admit to the crimes during extraordinary drama at his federal trial in Los Angeles.
The president’s son will learn his fate on December 16 when he is sentenced on three felony and six misdemeanor charges. He faces up to 15 years in prison and $1million in fines
The tax cheat First Son’s lawyers had initially attempted to sidestep the admission by entering an ‘Alford plea’, a gambit which would have allowed Hunter, 54, to plead guilty while still maintaining his innocence.
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.
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell claimed the government was trying to ‘exact more than a pound of flesh but also a drop of blood’.
The First Son is seen in a court sketch entering a federal courtroom for jury selection for his trial
Hunter Biden arrives at court with wife Melissa Cohen at his side as his tax evasion trial kicked off in Los Angeles Thursday
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 indictment 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 lifesstyle, 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.
In a stunning reversal ahead of jury selection, Hunter’s attorneys revealed he will now be pleading guilty to some of the charges
Hunter’s attorney Abbe Lowell, arrives at the First Street US Courthouse in LA Thursday, informed the judge of the shock plea reversal as jury selection was set to begin
Law enforcement officers and reporters gathered outside the US Courthouse as Hunter arrived at the LA courthouse
Judge Scarsi said that after conviction, the probation and pretrial services group would meet with the defense and put together a sentencing report with a recommendation of what punishment Hunter should receive for his crimes.
Scarsi added that the report would only be ‘advisory’, and that ‘the court can sentence you anywhere up to the maximum penalty’ of up to 15 years and an estimated fine of between $500,000 and $1million.
When agreeing to have Hunter enter a standard guilty plea, Lowell said that Hunter didn’t want to cause any more difficulty for his family.
‘Your honor has basically indicated that there’s a need to address the public interest,’ Lowell told Scarsi.
‘But Mr. Biden also has to address the private interest.
‘This has been a difficult time for him and his family,’ he added. ‘Enough is enough.’
The case against the first sitting president’s child to face felony charges was thrown off course from the get-go when the defense revealed he would be changing his plea to guilty in a stunning last-minute reversal in court Thursday morning.
Attorney Abbe Lowell announced the move in front of the judge, while 120 potential jurors waited in an adjoining room to be selected for the criminal trial.
The shocking U-turn was an apparent Hail Mary strategy by the defense to try to stop damaging and embarrassing evidence being presented to the jury.
Lowell cited legal cases and precedents suggesting that by pleading guilty, the judge would have to decide on the facts of the case rather than a jury, and the judge could only use material that has already been filed in the case.
He told Judge Scarsi that Hunter would be taking an ‘Alford plea’ – meaning he would accept a guilty verdict in a bid to get a lighter sentence – while maintaining his innocence.
The case marks the second high-profile criminal trial this year for Hunter, who faces multiple charges on evading $1.4million in taxes
The president’s son had switched lead counsels ahead of his trial, retaining prominent LA celebrity attorney Mark Geragos in July. He is seen arriving in federal court on Thursday morning
Criminal defense lawyer Mark Geragos represented singer Chris Brown when he was charged with assaulting then-girlfriend Rihanna. More recently he has been taken on by Jasveen Sangha, the so-called ‘Ketamine Queen’ who is facing charges in connection to the death of Matthew Perry
But the prosecutors said they were dead against Hunter entering a guilty plea while still maintaining his innocence.
‘I want to make something crystal clear: the United States opposes an Alford plea,’ DoJ attorney Leo Wise told Judge Scarsi.
‘Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty. He is not allowed special terms.’
Wise said allowing Hunter to plead guilty while maintaining his innocence would be ‘an injustice’ and ‘contrary to the rule of law’.
Lowell argued that under court rules, the judge has no choice but to accept Hunter’s guilty plea – even though he is maintaining his innocence at the same time.
But Scarsi disagreed, telling Hunter’s lawyer: ‘I don’t agree that the court must accept an Alford plea’.
The judge did suggest that prosecutors could file a ‘proffer’, which lists all the facts they would have proven at trial, then Hunter could plead guilty, without going into detail about which facts he agreed were true or not.
Lowell told the judge that all Hunter would be doing, by pleading guilty, is agreeing the prosecution has enough evidence to convince a jury of his guilt beyond reasonable doubt at trial – without agreeing to all the facts the government claims.
But Wise was unhappy with Lowell’s attempt to allow Hunter to maintain his innocence.
‘I don’t know how he could maintain he was innocent and at the same time admit the facts in the indictment are true,’ the DoJ lawyer said.
‘I don’t know how the defendant could say the facts about his state of mind are true and yet say he is innocent.’
He was flanked by supportive wife Melissa Cohen, who was also seen at her husband’s side throughout his gun trial earlier this year
The president’s scandal-hit son is set to stand his second criminal trial this year – the culmination of his legal trouble that saw the sordid details of his life thrust into the spotlight
Judge Scarsi said he needed to weigh up ‘public interest factors’ in not having a public trial,’ including the need to ‘seek truth in transparent proceedings’ and not ‘obfuscate the truth’ by cutting straight to a guilty plea.
But he added that this issue could be ‘mollified’ by the government filing a detailed brief laying out all their evidence against the First Son.
Lowell argued that an Alford Plea, where Hunter still maintains his innocence, was normal.
‘All over the US people do this,’ he said, adding that his client is merely asking to have the ‘same rights as everybody’.
But Wise disagreed. ‘It is not the case that Alford pleas go on all around the country,’ he said. ‘Alford pleas are rare, they occur under exceptional circumstances.’
Lowell tried to play down the difference between a normal guilty plea and an Alford plea.
‘You will tell Mr. Biden his plea is a plea of guilty, and that is what the headlines will say,’ Lowell told Judge Scarsi. ‘And the government will say if they went to trial this is what they will prove beyond reasonable doubt.
But he added that Hunter does not have to agree to all the facts the government allege, while still pleading guilty.
The court took a half hour break to allow Lowell to confer with Hunter and it was after that break that the defense decided on a straight guilty plea on all counts.
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