Hunter, Joe Biden’s son, pled guilty in a tax evasion trial on Thursday, but could not achieve the agreement he had wanted with prosecutors, in a case that has embarrassed the US president.
The 54-year-old committed nine counts of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes over the last decade, which prosecutors claimed he spent on luxury living, sex workers, and a drug habit.
The pleas came on the day jury selection for a trial was scheduled to begin, and hours after Biden offered to plead guilty in the hopes of reaching an agreement that would keep him out of prison.
However, no bargain was reached, and Biden made his pleas in open court.
US District Judge Mark Scarsi scheduled the sentencing for December 16. Biden faces up to 17 years in jail and a fine exceeding $1 million.
A trial was likely to rehash sordid facts of a life that the defendant and his family, including the president, had long admitted had gone awry.
“I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment,” US media reported Biden saying in a statement.
“Prosecutors were focused not on justice but on dehumanizing me for my actions during my addiction.”
Biden has already spent a chunk of 2024 in court, having been convicted in Delaware of lying about his drug use when he bought a gun — an act that is a felony.
He has yet to be sentenced for that crime, and could face up to 25 years imprisonment.
President Biden has the power to pardon his son, but has said he would not do so.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday that his position had not changed.
“It is still very much a ‘no’,” she said.
Political battle
Lawyers for Biden have said he was only being brought before the court because of who he is.
“They want to slime him because that is the whole purpose,” Biden’s attorney Mark Geragos reportedly said during an August hearing in which he accused prosecutors of attempted character assassination.
Biden’s defense team has argued that the failure to pay taxes was a mistake in a life torn apart by a spiraling drug addiction and the tragedy of losing his older brother, Beau, to a brain tumor in 2015.
Biden has paid the outstanding taxes and fines imposed by authorities, and he previously agreed to a plea deal that would keep him out of jail.
That arrangement fell through at the last minute, and Biden is said to have been attempting to make another since then.
That has made it tough for prosecutors, whose every action in this election year is scrutinized by Republicans, who claim the defendant is being treated leniently because he is the president’s son.
Hunter Biden has long served as a foil for his father’s political opponents, who have attempted to paint the family as a group of criminals who have benefited financially and politically from Joe Biden’s career without providing evidence.
The older Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential campaign in favor of Kamala Harris has dampened the Republican effort to make an example of his son.
Nonetheless, prosecutors were unwilling to give him any leeway.
Hunter Biden’s attempt on Thursday morning to make a so-called “Alford plea,” in which he would concede guilt due to a strong likelihood of conviction but maintain his innocence, was rejected.
“I want to make crystal clear: the US opposes an Alford plea,” prosecutor Leo Wise told the court. “Hunter Biden is not innocent, he is guilty.”
In his statement, Biden, who lives in Malibu, said his drug addiction was “not an excuse, but it is an explanation for some of my failures at issue in this case.”
“I have been clean and sober for more than five years because I have had the love and support of my family.
“I can never repay them for showing up for me and helping me through my worst moments.
“But I can protect them from being publicly humiliated for my failures.”