Hunter Biden surprisingly entered a plea on Thursday, 5 September 2024, before his trial on tax charges to avoid the hassle and cost of a painful public disclosure of his past misconduct.

Abbe Lowell, the attorney representing Mr. Biden in this case, made the unprecedented decision to file a so-called Alford plea, admitting there was sufficient evidence to convict him while maintaining his innocence about the same allegations, thirty minutes before jury selection started.

The move, which takes its name from a Supreme Court ruling, is commonly employed to jumpstart plea talks that have stopped, postpone a case, or bypass a trial entirely by going directly to the sentencing phase.

It is unclear if the case’s presiding judge, Mark C. Scarsi, a Trump nominee, will accept the plea bargain. While he promptly put the case on hold for two hours to allow the prosecution to comment, he also made it clear that he was still ready to move forward with questioning 120 jurors by the end of the week.

Attorneys for Joe Biden, the president’s youngest son, feel that special counsel David C. Weiss declined to enter into meaningful plea talks after coming under heavy fire for agreeing to a generous settlement with Biden on tax and gun charges that would have avoided jail time.

That arrangement broke down in July 2023 during a tumultuous hearing at the federal courthouse in Wilmington, and Mr. Weiss went on to indict Mr. Biden for lying on a firearms application in Delaware as well as several tax offenses in California, where he currently resides.

As soon as President Biden withdrew from the 2024 contest in July, Hunter Biden’s trial in Los Angeles on tax charges became a political footnote. However, his son’s stakes are higher than ever because he could end up in jail. He faces accusations of not paying taxes, submitting a fake or fraudulent tax return, and avoiding a tax assessment.

Leo J. Wise and Derek Hines, the two top Weiss deputies handling the case, might be applying more pressure to force a considerably worse plea deal than the previous one that ultimately collapsed. However, the defense is contradicted by the government’s tone in documents that appear to be a moral assessment of Mr. Biden’s behavior during his drug and alcohol addiction.

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