Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, has pleaded guilty to federal tax charges.
This confession surprisingly avoids a potentially embarrassing trial just weeks before the presidential election.
Hunter Biden, 54, was due to stand trial on charges of failing to pay $1.4 million (£1.06 million) in taxes while spending vast sums on drugs, sex work and luxury items.
Instead, he pleaded guilty to all nine counts to spare his family “further pain, further invasion of privacy and unnecessary embarrassment.”
Judge Mark Scarsi told him he faces up to 17 years in prison and a fine of up to $450,000 (£341,000) – but the guidelines are likely to allow for a much shorter sentence.
He will be sentenced on December 16, more than a month after the November 5 election in which his father will not be on the ballot after the withdrawal.
Hunter Biden leaves the court in Los Angeles with his wife Melissa. Image: Reuters
The previous Thursday, he had offered to plead guilty without admitting any wrongdoing – an unusual legal move that prosecutors rejected.
“It is not clear to us what they are trying to do,” a prosecutor told the judge.
“I thought about survival”
In a statement issued after the trial, Hunter Biden referred to his drug problems and said it was clear that prosecutors “were not concerned with justice, but with dehumanizing me for my actions during my addiction.”
“Like millions of other Americans, I failed to file and pay my taxes on time. For that I am responsible. As I said, addiction is not an excuse, but it is an explanation for some of my failures, which are at issue in this case,” he added.
“When I was addicted, I wasn’t thinking about my taxes, I was thinking about survival. But the jury would never have heard that or known that I had paid every penny of my back taxes including the penalties.”
He also said that thanks to the “love and support” of his family, he has now been sober for more than five years – and that he wants to protect them from being “publicly humiliated” for his misdeeds.
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Conviction for use of firearms
In June, Hunter Biden was convicted of three weapons offenses in the first criminal case against the offspring of a sitting US president.
Prosecutors said he lied on a form when purchasing a gun in October 2018, stating he was neither a drug addict nor a substance abuser, even though he had a crack cocaine problem.
He has appealed the conviction, but the current ruling increases the likelihood that he will face a harsher sentence in the tax case, as he would be a repeat offender.
Hunter Biden was accused of failing to pay taxes from 2016 to 2019 while spending enormous sums of money “on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing and other items of a personal nature,” according to an indictment.
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The trial could also have put a spotlight on his work for the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma and other business dealings during his father’s tenure as vice president.
The indictment states that Hunter Biden “made good money” while serving as a board member of Burisma and a Chinese private equity fund.
Republicans, who oppose the president’s Democratic Party, claimed that his son’s activities were corrupt.
Hunter Biden has denied any improper business dealings, and the Republican-led investigations have not implicated the president in wrongdoing.
