The son of President Joe Biden pleaded guilty on Friday to nine federal tax charges and acknowledged a long history with drugs and prostitutes, saying he was taking the plea deal in part to protect his family from further embarrassment by a trial.
In the statement released Thursday, he said he didn’t want his family to suffer any more.
“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. “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. For all I have put them through over the years, I can spare them this, and so I have decided to plead guilty,” he added.
“Like millions of Americans, I failed to file and pay my taxes on time. For that I am responsible. As I have stated, addiction is not an excuse, but it is an explanation for some of my failures at issue in this case. When I was addicted, I wasn’t thinking about my taxes, I was thinking about surviving,” Biden continued.
Biden also alluded to the fact that charges against me were eventually dropped and said, “But the jury would never have heard that or know that I had paid every penny of my back taxes including penalties.I have been clean and sober for more than five years now because I have had the love and support of my family. I can never repay them for showing up for me and helping me through my worst moments. But I can protect them from being publicly humiliated for my failures,” he said.
Hunter Biden, who has written extensively about his addiction battles in the new release of “Beautiful Things,” had words of encouragement for others as he expressed relief from lifelong pain: “For anyone now going through the scourge of addiction, please know there is a light at the end of that seemingly endless tunnel. I was where you are now. Don’t quit right before the miracle.”
His lawyer Abraham D. Lowell, Jr., delivered a statement calling the guilty plea an effort to prevent “sensationalist media” and saying whether he committed two federal felonies is still in dispute He said: “There is no doubt this case was an extreme and unusual one for the government to bring. Unlike millions of Americans, Hunter was charged with felonies for his failures that occurred during the depths of his addiction to drugs and alcohol, and which he has since rectified by paying his overdue taxes in full with interest and penalties years before he was charged. In fact, he actually overpaid his taxes in the year he is charged with tax evasion.”
Hunter Biden was charged by the U.S. Attorney General Dave Weiss on criminal counts consisting of three felonies and six misdemeanors pertaining to $1.4 million in back taxes (since paid) It accuses Biden of a four-year tax avoidance scheme that he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes and filed fraudulent 2020 returns, according to Weiss’s indictment.
