Posted by 
LOS ANGELES — Hunter Biden pleaded guilty Thursday to tax evasion and other tax crimes in an 11th-hour about-face that surprised prosecutors as a trial was about to begin.
The plea avoided a second trial for the president’s son, who has been under federal investigation for six years. That sprawling probe scrutinized his lucrative business deals with foreign companies and his lengthy struggles with drug addiction, and earlier this summer in Delaware, it resulted in Biden being found guilty on gun-related charges.
The tax trial could have given the public a detailed look at Biden’s work for Burisma, a scandal-plagued Ukrainian energy firm, and a now-bankrupt Chinese conglomerate. Republicans have seized on those deals to criticize President Joe Biden and his family, and the trial once threatened to create a political firestorm in the heat of the 2024 campaign. But the political stakes diminished after the president left the race.
The only remaining question now is how much prison time, if any, Biden will face. Shortly after Biden entered his guilty plea, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi scheduled his sentencing on the tax charges for Dec. 16. Biden is scheduled to be sentenced in the gun case in November.
Biden faces up to 17 years in prison for the tax charges, though experts say lighter sentences in similar cases are more common. Scarsi will consider Biden’s admission of guilt when he sentences him.
The president said in June that he will not pardon his son or use his commutation power to reduce a prison sentence. The White House reiterated that promise on Thursday.
Prosecutors led by special counsel David Weiss accused the younger Biden of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes for the tax years 2016 through 2019 and scheming to illegally lower his tax responsibilities. Biden pleaded guilty to all nine counts in the indictment.
The plea was not part of a plea deal, meaning prosecutors did not promise to recommend a reduced prison sentence.
But the plea forestalled a trial that threatened to embarrass the Biden family by dredging up unflattering details from the younger Biden’s past. The plea also allowed Biden, who has struggled to pay his mounting legal bills, to avoid the expense of another trial.
“I went to trial in Delaware not realizing the anguish it would cause my family, and I will not put them through it again,” Biden said in a statement. “When it became clear to me that the same prosecutors were focused not on justice but on dehumanizing me for my actions during my addiction, there was only one path left for me. I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment.”
The tax trial in Los Angeles had been scheduled to begin Thursday with jury selection. But at the start of the proceedings, Biden’s lawyers told Scarsi that Biden wanted to enter an unusual plea known as an Alford plea, in which a defendant maintains innocence but concedes that prosecutors have enough evidence to obtain a conviction.
Prosecutors vociferously opposed that proposal.
“Hunter Biden is not innocent,” prosecutor Leo Wise said. “Hunter Biden is guilty. He is not entitled to plead guilty on special terms that apply only to him.”
After Scarsi questioned the Alford arrangement and signaled he might seek further legal arguments on whether he should accept it, Biden conferred with his lawyers and entered a straightforward guilty plea.
As Scarsi questioned Biden about the plea in open court, the judge stressed that he still had the authority to hand down a hefty sentence.
“With regard to sentencing, there’s no guarantees. You understand that?” Scarsi, an appointee of Donald Trump, asked.
“I understand,” Biden answered matter-of-factly. Wearing a dark suit and black thick-rimmed glasses, Biden remained stone-faced as the prosecution read the entire indictment — including details of his profligate drug-fueled spending — into the record.
At one point, Scarsi asked Biden if he had “committed every element of every crime” that prosecutors charged in the tax indictment.
Biden answered yes.
Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware who has overseen the probe of the president’s son for years, brought two criminal cases. In the first case, in Delaware, Biden was convicted in June of owning a gun while being a drug user and lying about his drug use on a gun-purchase form. The trial in that case was an emotionally harrowing affair attended by first lady Jill Biden and other members of the Biden family.
Biden is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 13 in the gun case, where federal sentencing guidelines recommend up to 21 months in prison, though Biden could receive much less or even no prison time at all.
In the tax case, prosecutors alleged that Biden earned more than $7 million during the years in question and later plotted to fraudulently lower the taxes he owed on that income by falsely labeling trips and other luxury purchases as business expenses. They said he used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle filled with drugs, strippers and sports cars.
The trial also would have aired sordid details from Biden’s years of addiction to drugs and alcohol. The mother of one of his children — whom he initially denied fathering — was slated to testify as a witness for the prosecution.
His brother’s widow, Hallie Biden, was also expected to testify. She testified against Biden earlier this summer in the gun case, saying he introduced her to crack cocaine after her husband died.
Biden says he has been sober since 2019. His lawyers have emphasized that he eventually paid all of his overdue taxes — but in a crucial pretrial ruling, Scarsi blocked them from telling jurors that Biden belatedly paid.
Swan reported from Washington. Mason reported from Los Angeles.
