For the second time in three months, Joe Biden’s son Hunter was convicted of federal charges after he unexpectedly pleaded guilty to dodging $1.4 million in taxes on Thursday, in a case that has been an embarrassment for the U.S. president.. Biden changed his plea just as the before the start of his a tax evasion trial, without reaching the deal he had sought with prosecutors.
The 54-year-old admitted nine counts related to failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes over the past decade, money that prosecutors said he splurged instead on luxury living, strippers, and a drug habit.
“I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment,” Hunter Biden said in a statement. “For all I have put them through over the years, I can spare them this, and so I have decided to plead guilty.”
The pleas came on the day jury selection for a trial had been due to start, and hours after Biden had offered to plead guilty in the hope of striking a deal that might keep him out of prison. But no deal materialized and Biden made the pleas in open court.
U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi set the sentencing hearing for December 16. Biden faces up to 17 years in prison and a fine in excess of $1 million.
A trial had been expected to re-hash sordid details of a life that the defendant and his family—including the president—have long acknowledged had gone off the rails.
Biden has already spent a great deal of 2024 in court, having been convicted after a trial 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 on Thursday that his position had not changed. “It is still very much a ‘no’,” she said. Many right-wing pundits predict that President Biden will, in the end, pardon his son before he leaves office.
