Hunter Biden pleads guilty to federal tax charges and judge accepts his plea

CNN

By Marshall Cohen, Paula Reid, Evan Perez, Casey Gannon and Emma Tucker, CNN

Los Angeles (CNN) — Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to all nine charges in his federal tax case Thursday, and District Judge Mark Scarsi in Los Angeles has accepted his plea.

Sentencing is scheduled for December 16, notably after November’s presidential election. The prosecution did not object to the date, which was proposed by the judge.

The president’s son has now officially pleaded guilty to one count of felony tax evasion, two counts of felony filing fraudulent tax returns, four misdemeanor counts of failing to pay taxes, and two misdemeanor counts of failing to file tax returns.

The guilty plea came in a convoluted all-day hearing on the same day that his trial was supposed to begin with jury selection in Los Angeles. About 120 prospective jurors waited in a sequestered assembly room throughout the day, while prosecutors and Biden’s lawyers haggled in court over how to move forward.

The plea also came hours after Biden offered an “Alford plea,” where he would’ve maintained his innocence, skipped a trial, and accepted any punishment at sentencing. But Biden’s team backed away from that plan after prosecutors raised forceful objections, and the judge said he’d want to study the matter and reconvene Friday morning.

The guilty plea was a unilateral move by Biden, called an “open plea” because it was done without a pre-arranged plea bargain with prosecutors.

It’s rare for a high-profile defendant to plead guilty to crimes without a leniency deal with prosecutors.

“We were as shocked as everyone else in the courtroom this morning,” prosecutor Leo Wise said.

But in a surprising turn Thursday afternoon, Biden’s team changed course and instead said Biden is prepared to enter an “open plea” and admit that his conduct satisfied the elements of the tax offenses with which he had been charged.

Biden said under oath in federal court in Los Angeles Thursday that nobody made him any promises, to convince him to plead guilty in his tax case. The president’s son also testified that nobody pressured him to plead guilty in any way.

After prosecutors read the full 56-page indictment during the plea proceeding, which took nearly 90 minutes, Scarsi asked Hunter Biden standard questions that are part of every pea deal.

“Do you agree that you committed every element of every crime?” Scarsi asked.

“Yes,” Biden responded.

Biden attorney Abbe Lowell had said earlier, “There has not been an agreement” between the parties – like a plea agreement – in which Biden would plead guilty to some charges in exchange for other charges being dropped. The only offer that Hunter’s team ever got from prosecutors, Lowell said, was for him to plead guilty to all nine counts.

The resolution of the tax case came on the brink of a trial in downtown Los Angeles. This would have been Biden’s second criminal trial this year, after he was convicted in June on three federal gun charges in Wilmington, Delaware.

Prosecutors alleged that Biden failed to pay $1.4 million in federal taxes and evaded taxes by filing tax returns with fraudulent business deductions. They also allege that Biden was using his money on luxury cars, extravagant hotels and sex workers, instead of paying taxes when they were due.

The president’s son eventually paid roughly $2 million in back taxes and penalties after learning of the investigation and getting sober, following a years-long struggle with drug addiction and alcoholism. In the weeks before the trial, the judge blocked Biden’s lawyers from telling jurors about the belated tax payment, or about the potential origins of his addiction – dealing a major blow to his defense strategy.

Scarsi had indicated that if he didn’t accept Biden’s attempt to promptly resolve the case that the trial would move forward with jury selection on Friday as planned.

Lowell blasted prosecutors for accusing Biden of seeking special treatment.

“I know it makes a headline,” but “it’s so wrong,” Lowell said.

He added, “Alford exists. The Supreme Court said it exists,” and “all over the United States, people do this.”

Biden’s wife Melissa Cohen was not allowed in the courtroom early in the hearing, drawing a complaint from Lowell. Nobody except the parties and their attorneys were let inside because all of the extra space in the courtroom pews were going to be used for potential jurors during jury selection, the judge said. She was allowed in the courtroom during the second part of the hearing.

Sitting with Biden’s family and allies was Kevin Morris, an attorney and longtime friend to the president’s son. It was Morris who provided the roughly $2 million for Biden to settle his federal tax debts in 2021 – the unpaid taxes that are at the heart of this criminal case.

The convoluted and drawn-out plea proceedings Thursday in Los Angeles were reminiscent of a similar hearing last summer in Delaware, where the parties attempted to get a judge’s approval for a joint plea agreement. That agreement stunningly unraveled in open court, with the parties disagreeing on its terms, and the judge eventually withholding her support over constitutional concerns.

”I’ve been through one of these plea hearings before,” Wise quipped, drawing a laugh from the judge as they all tried to figure out the way forward with Biden’s attempted Alford plea.

“Deja vu,” Scarsi replied.

Biden’s former business parter Tony Bobulinski attended the hearing, sitting with the public and press in the courtroom. A sharp critic of the Biden family, he testified in the House Republicans impeachment inquiry. His accusations that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Biden’s lucrative foreign business deals, have not been proven.

Lowell’s involvement was notable. He was the lead defense attorney for his client’s Delaware gun case, but he was absent from a key pretrial hearing two weeks ago in the California tax case. Instead, celebrity attorney Mark Geragos, who was retained earlier this summer, took the lead at that hearing.

President Joe Biden has continually said that he will not pardon his son in either of his cases. It is not clear if the president’s thinking has changed since dropping his reelection bid, but he still has the ability to pardon his son or commute his sentence.

In July, Biden added Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos to his legal team. Lowell, who handled Biden’s gun case in Delaware, was expected to take a back seat for his tax case with Geragos as the lead attorney. CNN previously reported that there were plea discussions earlier this summer that did not lead to a deal at that time.

This headline and story have been updated with additional reporting.

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