The tax fraud trial of the son of the American president was due to open this Thursday, September 5 in Los Angeles. His sentence will finally be pronounced on December 16.
Hunter Biden, the president’s son, pleaded guilty at the last minute to tax evasion, a reversal that spares him a trial that was set to begin Thursday in Los Angeles, a source of embarrassment for Joe Biden. Hunter Biden, 54, faces one count of tax evasion and two counts of making false statements for failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes over the past decade. Hunter Biden faces up to 17 years in prison.
But before his trial began Thursday morning in Los Angeles with jury selection, his lawyer Abbe Lowell told the federal judge that he was prepared to plead guilty, using a specific feature of American law that allows a person to accept a conviction while proclaiming his innocence.
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Already condemned
Joe Biden’s youngest son was already convicted this year of lying about his drug addiction when buying a gun – a crime in the Biden home state of Delaware. His sentence has not yet been handed down. During the hearings in this trial, Hunter Biden’s luxurious lifestyle, his failing marriage and his cocaine addiction had already been exposed in public. It was apparently to avoid these infamous details being heard again that the defense proposed pleading guilty on Thursday.
On the merits of the case, to justify this non-payment of taxes, the defense pleads negligence during a chaotic period for Hunter Biden due to the deterioration of his addiction and the death of his brother Beau from a brain tumor. Hunter Biden, who claims to have been drug-free since 2019, has already repaid the taxes owed, as well as the related fines to the authorities. And he had previously reached a plea agreement that would have avoided him a prison sentence. But this agreement ultimately collapsed and, according to the American press, the president’s son has since been trying to reach a new one.
This former lawyer and businessman, now a painter, has become over the years a favorite target of Republicans who seek to portray the Democratic president as the head of a corrupt family. However, Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race in favor of Kamala Harris at the end of July has caused the intensity of the opposition’s attacks to subside.
