Hunter Biden asks to change plea to guilty in federal tax case

Hunter Biden wants to plead guilty in his federal tax case, his defense attorney said in court Thursday.

President Biden’s son is accused of withholding at least $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019, in the heat of his addiction to cocaine. He faces nine charges, three of which are felonies, and has pleaded not guilty.

The trial was expected to begin Thursday with jury selection.

A judge must still accept Biden’s guilty plea. Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, suggested in court that the matter could be “resolved today.”

The arrangement proposed by Biden’s attorneys is called an “Alford plea,” according to multiple reports. Biden would acknowledge that special counsel David Weiss has enough evidence to convict him, and then he would accept U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi’s eventual sentence.

Biden’s tax trial follows a separate criminal trial on gun charges, which ended earlier this year in a conviction for lying about his use of illicit drugs on a federal gun purchase form. It marked the first criminal conviction of a sitting U.S. president’s child — and the tax trial threatened to lead to the second.

That conviction significantly heightened the stakes of the second trial, which could hold higher penalties for Biden if found guilty, since he no longer has the status of a first-time offender.

Biden’s sentencing in the gun case is scheduled for Nov. 13.