President Joe Biden\u2019s son will head back to court on Thursday for arraignment in Los Angeles on federal tax charges filed after the collapse of a plea deal that could have spared him the spectacle of a criminal trial during the 2024 campaign. Hunter Biden is expected to plead not guilty to nine felony and misdemeanour tax offences. The charges stem from what federal prosecutors say was a four-year scheme to skip out on paying the USD 1.4 million he owed to the IRS and instead use the money to fund an extravagant lifestyle that by his admission included drugs and alcohol.<\/p>\n
The court appearance will also include a discussion over future court dates and filing deadlines. Meanwhile, Hunter Biden has also been charged in Delaware with lying in October 2018 on a federal form for gun purchasers when he swore he wasn\u2019t using or addicted to illegal drugs. He was addicted to crack cocaine at the time. He\u2019s also accused of possessing the gun illegally and has pleaded not guilty in that case.<\/p>\n
The accusations all come from a years-long federal investigation into Hunter Biden\u2019s tax and business dealings that had been expected to wind down over the summer with a plea deal in which he would have gotten two years\u2019 probation after pleading guilty to misdemeanor tax charges. He also would have avoided prosecution on the gun charge if he stayed out of trouble. The deal unravelled when a federal judge who had been expected to approve the deal instead began to question it.<\/p>\n
Now, the tax and gun cases are moving ahead as part of an unprecedented confluence of political and legal drama: As the 2024 election draws closer, the Justice Department is actively prosecuting both the president\u2019s son and Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner. Hunter Biden\u2019s original proposed plea deal with prosecutors had been pilloried as a \u201csweetheart deal\u201d by Republicans, including Trump.<\/p>\n
The former president is facing his own criminal problems \u2013 91 charges across four separate cases, including that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden, a Democrat. Hunter Biden\u2019s criminal proceedings are also happening in parallel to so far unsuccessful efforts by congressional Republicans to link his business dealings to his father. Republicans are pursuing an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, claiming he was engaged in an influence-peddling scheme with his son.<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden defied a congressional subpoena to appear for closed-door testimony, insisting he wanted to testify in public. He made a surprise appearance at a congressional hearing on Wednesday as House Republicans took steps to file contempt of Congress charges. No evidence has emerged so far to prove that Joe Biden, in his current or previous office, abused his role or accepted bribes, though questions have arisen about the ethics surrounding the Biden family\u2019s international business dealings.<\/p>\n
If convicted of the tax charges, Hunter Biden, 53, could receive a maximum of 17 years in prison. Following the collapse of the plea deal, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to handle the matter. A special counsel is tapped to handle cases in which the Justice Department perceives itself as having a conflict or where it\u2019s deemed to be in the public interest to have someone outside the government step in.<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden\u2019s defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, has accused special counsel David Weiss of \u201cbowing to Republican pressure.\u201d \u201cBased on the facts and the law, if Hunter\u2019s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought,\u201d Lowell has said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Joe Biden\u2019s son will head back to court on Thursday for arraignment in Los Angeles on federal tax charges\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":24677,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7989,2390,299,168,7988,1336,358,5722,298,3672,3530,469],"class_list":["post-24674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-attorney-general-merrick-garland","tag-delaware","tag-democrats","tag-donald-trump","tag-federal-tax-charges","tag-hunter-biden","tag-irs","tag-not-guilty","tag-republicans","tag-testifying","tag-us-2024-presidential-elections","tag-us-president-joe-biden"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}