 "Why has US president’s son Hunter Biden pleaded guilty in tax case? Will he go to jail?")
United States President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, pleaded guilty on Thursday (Septmeber 5) to all nine federal tax evasion charges. This has saved him from a second criminal trial.
The last-minute guilty plea was announced before jury selection was about to begin at a Los Angeles court. The development comes three months after a jury found Hunter Biden guilty in a separate case related to gun possession and drug use. He will be sentenced for three gun felonies in November after the presidential election.
What is the tax case and why did Hunter Biden plead guilty? What next for him? Let’s understand.
Hunter Biden’s ‘tax crimes’
Biden, 54, is accused of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes on time for 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. It is also alleged he did not file tax returns on time in 2017 and 2018.
Prosecutors claim the younger Biden showed money he paid sex workers as business expenses on his tax forms. Some other personal expenses allegedly disguised as business expenses included $43,693 for a stay at the popular Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, $30,000 for his daughter’s Columbia Law School tuition, $3,947 at a strip club and $1,727 for a Lamborghini rental, reported CNN.
All of this allegedly happened during the period Biden was battling a drug addiction. As per The Washington Post, he has said he underwent addiction treatment and has been sober for five years.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsProsecutors have accused Biden of spending nearly $5 million on “everything but his taxes”. He was charged with three felony tax offences and six misdemeanour offences in December.
The indictment also mentioned how Biden earned more than $7 million between 2016 and 2020 from his foreign business dealings, as per the BBC report.
“In each year in which he failed to pay his taxes, the defendant had sufficient funds available to him to pay some or all of his outstanding taxes when they were due. But he chose not to pay them,” the indictment reportedly said.
In Delaware last year, Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanour tax offences for failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time, reported CNN. However, the deal fell apart after scrutiny from a judge.
Why has Hunter Biden pleaded guilty?
Biden was set to go on trial on Thursday but in a surprising turn of events, he pleaded guilty. His guilty plea came hours after his lawyers proposed an Alford plea to give up trial.
The Alford plea is named after a 1970 US Supreme Court case involving one Henry Alford, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder to avoid the death penalty while claiming he was innocent, as per the Associated Press (AP) report.
As per the US Justice Department, an Alford plea is when someone “maintains his or her innocence with respect to the charge to which he or she offers to plead guilty.”
But prosecutors rejected the deal. “I want to make crystal clear: The US opposes an Alford plea. … Hunter Biden is not innocent, he is guilty,” Leo Wise, an attorney with the special counsel, told the LA court judge. “We came to court to try this case.”
As per The Washington Post, Biden later consulted with his lawyers and entered a guilty plea.
US District Judge Mark Scarsi asked Biden, “Do you agree you committed every element of every crime?” He replied, “Yes”.
In a statement on Thursday, the younger Biden said, “I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment” and that “prosecutors were focused not on justice but on dehumanising me for my actions during my addiction.”
According to Abbe Lowell, one of Biden’s attorneys, his client wanted to avoid a trial so “his family doesn’t have to spend one more day talking about what happened when he was a man addicted to drugs,” reported The Washington Post.
Biden will remain free on bond until his sentence is announced in mid-December. He and his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, walked out of the courthouse, hand in hand, shortly after he entered a guilty plea, as per New York Times (NYT) report.
What happens next?
If convicted on all nine charges in the tax indictment, Biden could face up to 17 years in prison and fines of up to $1.3 million.
This is in addition to the possible sentence of 25 years imprisonment after conviction in the gun case in Delaware in June.
Biden’s sentence hearing in the tax case is scheduled for December 16, over a month after the presidential election and a month before his father leaves the White House.
As per The Washington Post report, defendants in tax cases usually get a less severe sentence than suggested by federal guidelines. Last year’s US Sentencing Commission report found that the average tax case sentence was 16 months in prison, much below the recommended 28 months.
Biden paid all his tax debts after becoming sober in 2019. This could soften his sentence but Judge Scarsi will also keep in mind his Delaware conviction.
Even if he is sentenced to a prison sentence, the US president could pardon him before leaving office. However, Joe Biden has ruled this out. After his son’s gun conviction, he had said, “I’m not going to do anything. I said I’d abide by the jury decision. I will do that. And I will not pardon him”.
His aides maintain the president would not pardon his son. As per NYT, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeated on Thursday when asked about a possible pardon, “It’s still very much a no”.
However, the US president is “famously protective of his son”, noted CNN. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told the American broadcaster, “If Hunter Biden is found guilty, I can’t imagine his father will want him in prison. He lost Beau to cancer. His other son going to prison would be a very inglorious way to end his presidency, filled with a lot of sorrow, pain and hurt. Most fathers would lean into the pardon, if they had that power.”
And if Joe Biden pardons his son, he would not be the first US president to do it for a family member.
With inputs from agencies
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