Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to felony tax crimes Thursday, exposing himself to jail time while avoiding a criminal trial that could have unveiled incriminating evidence of his family's overseas business deals.
He entered the plea as jury selection began in what would have been a weeks-long trial for tax evasion on $1.4 million in foreign income. The scandal-plagued son of President Joe Biden framed his decision as an act of love to spare his family public embarrassment.
“I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment,” Hunter Biden said in an emailed statement. “For all I have put them through over the years, I can spare them this, and so I have decided to plead guilty.”
Biden was convicted in a separate gun trial in June that delved into his drug addiction and sexual exploits. His surprise plea Thursday spares his family from public scrutiny over his shadowy international business deals in countries like China and Ukraine.
"Hunter put his family first today, and it was a grave and loving thing for him to do," Hunter's attorney Abbe Lowell said.
Biden was accused of evading taxes on foreign income from 2016 to 2019, a time when he was earning millions from overseas deals involving virtually no work.
Prosecutors planned to introduce evidence that Hunter was a foreign lobbyist for Romania during his father's vice presidency. Hunter Biden was not charged under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which led critics to say he was getting a slap on the wrist.
After his plea, Biden is facing up to 17 years in prison and fines of $1.35 million.
The Justice Department had spent years slow walking an investigation of Biden's taxes before a thicket of legal troubles began to crowd around him last year. A notorious "sweetheart" plea deal blew up in court, leading Special Counsel David Weiss to file felony tax and gun charges.
Biden will be sentenced on December 16 for tax evasion, weeks after his sentencing in the gun case on November 13.
The guilty plea is likely to fuel speculation about a possible pardon from Joe Biden, who previously pledged to not pardon his son. That was before Biden ended his re-election bid in a shocking reversal.
Before entering his plea, Hunter had attempted to negotiate an "Alford" plea, which would have allowed him to plead guilty without acknowledging wrongdoing. It didn't fly with prosecutors, who said he is not entitled to "special" treatment, and his lawyers backed down.
