Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, has reportedly reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors that will keep the First Kid from serving time and deal him little more than a slap on the wrist in the form of "diversion" programming and probation.
According to The Washington Post's reporting on court papers filed Tuesday morning, Hunter Biden has reached a "tentative agreement" to "plead guilty to two minor tax crimes and admit to the facts of a gun charge under terms that would likely keep him out of jail."
This sweetheart deal for Hunter Biden would still require validation by a federal judge at such time Hunter appears in court to enter his plea.
Filed this morning in Federal court in Delaware: US v. Robert Hunter Biden, change of plea already in the works, stories to follow pic.twitter.com/3NnglSviP0
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) June 20, 2023
More on the case and tentative plea agreement via WaPo:
The court papers indicate the younger Biden has tentatively agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges of failure to pay in 2017 and 2018. The combined tax liability is roughly $1.2 million over those years, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe details of the agreement that are not yet public. Prosecutors plan to recommend a sentence of probation for those counts, these people said. Biden’s representatives have said he previously paid back the IRS what he owed.
Additionally, Biden plans to admit to illegally possessing a weapon following his 2018 purchase of a handgun. As part of that admission, he expects to be entered in a diversion program, a less punitive form of sentence typically applied to people with substance abuse problems. In all, prosecutors would recommend two years of probation and diversion conditions. If Biden successfully meets the conditions of the diversion program, the gun charge would be removed from his record at the end of that period, the people said.
The gun purchase that led to the criminal charge happened in late 2018, at a time when, by his own telling in his autobiography, Hunter Biden was regularly abusing crack cocaine. When he filled out paperwork to buy the gun, however, he denied using drugs or having a drug problem, exposing him to a potential charge of making a false statement on the document, as well as illegal gun possession once he acquired the weapon. Biden owned the gun for less than two weeks, because his then-girlfriend threw it away, according to public accounts of that time period.
"My son has done nothing wrong," President Joe Biden said of Hunter on May 5, 2023 when asked about the federal probe of Hunter's actions. "I trust him," the elder Biden continued. "I have faith in him and it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him."
President Joe Biden has spent the better part of the last half-century demanding that Americans pay higher taxes — their "fair share" — and more recently called for a significant increase in the number of IRS investigators even as his son who "has done nothing wrong" failed to pay a tax bill of more than $1 million.
The president has also sought to make firearm laws more restrictive, even after his son who the president says he trusts lied on a federal background check form in order to illegally purchase a gun that was subsequently tossed in the trash.
Hunter Biden gets off easy after committing a felony by lying on his firearm background check form while his father, Joe Biden, brags about making millions of Americans felons by banning a piece of plastic known as a pistol brace.
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) June 20, 2023
Democrats loudly proclaim their passionate commitment to “gun safety” & “tax fairness.” After an investigation that (inexplicably) dragged on for years, the Biden DOJ has handed a no-jail deal to a repeat tax cheat who also lied on a gun purchase form—whose last name is Biden.
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) June 20, 2023
For his crimes — violations that Hunter Biden is apparently set to cop to — the First Kid will do zero jail time. He'll get a "diversion program" and some probation. A textbook slap-on-the-wrist for crimes that, if committed by most other Americans, would earn more than "diversion."
Last summer, legal scholar Jonathan Turley wrote in a column that this sort of deal for Hunter Biden would amount to "controlled demolition: the implosion of a scandal to limit any blast effect on nearby structures or individuals. Like those buildings dropped between other structures, it takes precision and, most importantly, cooperation to pull off," Turley explained. "Specifically, this controlled demolition will require the perfect timing of the media, Democratic politicians, and most importantly, the Justice Department."
This is a developing story and may be updated.