Hunter Biden pleads guilty to federal tax charges, in surprise move on brink of trial

Los Angeles (CNN) — Hunter Biden pleaded guilty Thursday to all nine charges in his federal tax case, in a surprise move on the day that an agonizing weekslong trial was supposed to begin.

District Judge Mark Scarsi accepted the guilty plea after a dramatic and convoluted all-day hearing in Los Angeles that began with the routine jury selection process.

The judge, who is a Trump appointee, set a sentencing date for December 16. President Joe Biden’s son could now face up to 17 years in prison for his crimes, which include tax evasion, filing fraudulent tax returns and failing to pay taxes. The judge also said he could also impose a hefty fine, perhaps as much as $1.3 million.

But looming over the proceedings – as well as Hunter Biden’s convictions in a separate gun trial in June – is the possibility of a presidential pardon, or a commutation of sentence. President Joe Biden has repeatedly ruled this out, and a White House spokesperson reiterated that position on Thursday.

The guilty plea was a unilateral move by Hunter Biden, and was called an “open plea” because it was done without a pre-arranged leniency deal with prosecutors. Leo Wise, the hard-nosed prosecutor who led the case, told the judge, “We were as shocked as everyone else in the courtroom this morning” when Biden’s team tried to change his not guilty plea.

After the hearing, Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell told reporters that the president’s son “put his family first today, and it was a grave and loving thing to do,” instead of subjecting them to another public trial about his addiction and family dysfunction.

“After watching prosecutors who exploit his family’s grief during the Delaware trial and realizing they were planning to do it again in California, Hunter decided to enter his plea to protect those he loves from unnecessary hurt and cruel humiliation,” Lowell said. “This plea prevents that kind of show trial that would have not provided all the facts or served any real point in justice.”

This is a victory of sorts for special counsel David Weiss, who is the Trump-appointed US attorney for Delaware, and also successfully prosecuted the gun case. In a Thursday night statement, his team touted that Hunter Biden was “convicted” of the tax crimes – but this outcome means they didn’t get to put on the trial that they’ve been working on since 2018, when they started the investigation.

Attempted ‘Alford plea’

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.

When the proceedings kicked off Thursday morning, Lowell stunned the courtroom by saying Biden wanted to enter an “Alford plea,” where he would maintain his innocence but acknowledge that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict. Under this maneuver, Biden would have skipped a trial and accepted the judge’s 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.

“I want to make something crystal clear – the United States opposes an Alford plea,” Wise said. He added, “Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty. He is not permitted to plead guilty on special terms.”

After a break in the proceedings, Lowell said Biden was willing to move forward with an “open plea,” to unilaterally plead guilty to the offenses, because “enough is enough.”

Lowell said Biden was willing to proceed with the open plea because the special counsel was trying to “exact a pound of flesh” and a “drop of blood.” Pushing back, Wise said Biden was to blame for the situation.

“We’re not here because of what the government did. … He’s the one that triggered this set of events,” Wise said, calling it “offensive” for Lowell to paint Biden as a “victim” of this prosecution.

During the standard questioning as part of every federal plea, Biden said under oath that nobody made him any promises to convince him to plead guilty. The president’s son also testified that nobody pressured him in any way to plead guilty.

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

“Yes,” Biden responded.

Prosecutors also read the full 56-page indictment during the plea proceeding, which took nearly 90 minutes, and delved into the salacious details of Biden’s extravagant spending on strippers, escorts, luxury cars and fancy hotels, while not paying his taxes.

Biden’s wife Melissa Cohen left the courtroom soon after the reading began, which meant she missed the most explicit and embarrassing details in the indictment.

A tax trial would’ve have been Biden’s second criminal trial this year, after he was convicted in June on three federal gun charges in Wilmington, Delaware. That sentencing is scheduled for November 13, and he could face as many as 25 years in prison for those offenses.

The tax indictment alleged that Biden failed to pay $1.4 million in federal taxes and evaded taxes by filing tax returns with fraudulent business deductions.

The president’s son eventually paid roughly $2 million in back taxes and penalties after learning of the investigation and getting sober, following a yearslong 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.

Convoluted plea hearing brings ‘déjà vu’

The special counsel himself, Weiss, was sitting front row in the courtroom benches during the hearing, most of the time leaned over his knees and calmly tapping his feet as prosecutors laid bare the culmination of his six-year investigation into Biden’s finances and foreign deals.

Biden’s facial expression was stoic for the majority of the hearing. Just before the judge sat the courtroom after an initial recess, Biden stared blankly ahead of him for several moments. While Wise recited the indictment, Biden followed along closely with his own annotated copy.

Biden’s former business partner 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 that also scrutinized many of the same foreign deals that were part of the tax case. Claims from Bobulinski and GOP lawmakers that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Biden’s lucrative foreign business deals, have not been proven.

Lowell’s leading role in the plea hearing was notable. He was the lead defense attorney for Biden’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. Lowell did all the speaking for Biden on Thursday.

Asked by CNN after the hearing if there have been any contacts with President Joe Biden about a pardon, Geragos said, “The question you should be asking is, are you disappointed that you don’t get to try the case?”

The convoluted and drawn-out plea proceedings Thursday in Los Angeles were reminiscent of a similar hearing last summer in Delaware, where the same parties attempted to get a judge’s approval for a plea agreement that would’ve resolved the tax and gun cases in one fell swoop. 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.

“Deja vu,” Scarsi replied.

This headline and story have been updated with additional reporting.

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