Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, has agreed to a plea deal on relatively minor tax and gun charges, bringing to an end a five-year investigation that was sparked by frequent Republican claims that serious crimes were being kept up.
According to authorities, Hunter Biden, 53, has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of failing to pay federal income tax and has acknowledged illegally possessing a gun despite abusing drugs.
A federal judge must approve the plea deal that Hunter Biden and the US Attorney’s Office in his home state of Delaware reached.
It’s unlikely that the president’s son will serve any jail time. The Washington Post reports that probation will be sought in relation to the tax and firearms allegations.
At an appearance in California on Tuesday, President Biden, 80, responded to questions about the plea agreement by saying he was “very proud of my son.”
Hunter Biden consented to enter a guilty plea to “two counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax,” according to US Attorney David Weiss, a Trump appointment.
The accusations include that Hunter Biden, a Yale-educated lawyer and lobbyist, neglected to submit his tax returns on time for 2017 and 2018, despite earning more than $1.5 million.
He owes more than $100,000 in taxes on those earnings in each of those years.
Each charge carries a potential sentence of 12 months in jail and a maximum fine of $100,000, or twice what he stood to gain from breaching the law.
Weiss said Hunter Biden was also facing one count of “possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.”
