President Biden’s son Hunter was charged Tuesday with federal tax and firearms violations but will likely avoid jail time under a plea bargain that sparked criticism of a “sweetheart deal” and raised questions whether accusations of foreign influence peddling by him will escape Justice Department scrutiny.
U.S. Attorney David Weiss filed a notice in U.S. District Court in Delaware revealing that Hunter Biden, 53, will plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of failing to pay federal income tax.
As part of the agreement, the president’s son won’t be prosecuted for felony gun possession as a drug user if he honors the terms of what is expected to be a sentence of two years on probation.
Mr. Weiss and lawyers for Hunter Biden asked the court to schedule a hearing date for the first family member to surrender and enter his plea.
After leading the investigation for five years, Mr. Weiss said the probe isn’t over yet.
“The investigation is ongoing,” he said in a statement.
Hunter Biden continues to face accusations from members of Congress about lucrative influence-peddling schemes in China, Ukraine and other countries while his father was vice president, including an alleged $10 million bribe split between father and son.
But Chris Clark, an attorney representing Hunter Biden, said he believes the pending guilty plea in Delaware to two misdemeanor charges of failing to pay federal taxes will end the Justice Department’s investigation.
“It is my understanding that the five-year investigation into Hunter is resolved,” Mr. Clark said.
Politico, citing a source close to the negotiations, reported that the deal is intended to be a comprehensive resolution of Hunter Biden’s potential legal liability in all matters investigated by federal authorities.
The plea deal averts a trial that would have generated days or weeks or headlines just as President Biden is gearing up his reelection campaign for 2024. Mr. Biden held his first campaign rally last weekend, and was fundraising in California on Tuesday when the plea deal was announced.
“The president and First Lady love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life. We will have no further comment,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said.
Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said Tuesday that Mr. Biden is using the Justice Department to interfere in their possible rematch next year.
He called the plea deal “full scale election interference,” saying the president’s son had received “a mere traffic ticket.”
“Joe is all cleaned up & ready to go into the 2024 presidential election,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media in his all-capital-letters style.
Congressional Republicans also called the development a slap on the wrist and proof of a two-tiered justice system that gives favorable treatment to the president, his family and other Democrats while throwing the book at Mr. Trump over his handling of classified documents and other matters.
They said the Justice Department settlement will not deter their probes of the Biden family’s financial dealings.
“If you are the president’s leading political opponent, the DOJ tries to literally put you in jail and give you prison time,” said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, California Republican. “If you are the president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal.”
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said his committee “will not rest until the full extent of President Biden’s involvement in the family’s schemes are revealed.”
“Hunter Biden is getting away with a slap on the wrist when growing evidence uncovered by the House Oversight Committee reveals the Bidens engaged in a pattern of corruption, influence-peddling, and possibly bribery,” Mr. Comer said.
“These charges against Hunter Biden and sweetheart plea deal have no impact on the Oversight Committee’s investigation,” he stated.
Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican, said Hunter Biden’s plea deal “cannot be the final word, given the significant body of evidence that the FBI and Justice Department have at their disposal. It certainly won’t be for me.”
“Since the FBI’s investigation into Hunter Biden began nearly five years ago, I and my colleagues in Congress have uncovered extensive government and bank records indicative of money laundering as well as foreign business schemes that, in any other circumstance, would raise serious criminal and counterintelligence concerns,” Mr. Grassley said.
“Hunter’s laptop, which the FBI has had since 2019, contains records corroborating much of this evidence, as well as evidence of other serious criminal violations,” he said.
He also noted that whistleblowers at the Justice Department and IRS “have warned that the FBI and Justice Department have sat on additional verifiable information about criminal conduct that involves other Biden family members, and have failed to follow normal investigative procedures to run that information to ground. All of this information has been provided to the Department.”
Sen. Steve Daines, Montana Republican, said Congress “must exercise maximum oversight and subpoena all materials on every aspect of Hunter Biden’s business deals.”
Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University law school, said it’s not clear what mandate Mr. Weiss was given by his superiors at the Justice Department to investigate Hunter Biden.
“Weiss is a respected and serious prosecutor,” Mr. Turley tweeted. “The question is whether the influence peddling allegations were part of his mandate and whether there is any ongoing investigation into those matters.”
He said Congress will need to “confirm what steps were taken to [investigate] the alleged influence peddling by the Biden family.”
In court documents, Mr. Weiss said Hunter Biden received taxable income of more than $1.5 million annually in 2017 and 2018 and owed more than $100,000 in federal taxes for each year, but “he did not pay the income tax due for either year.”
The back taxes have since been paid.
The prosecutor also said Hunter Biden possessed a Colt Cobra “38 Special” revolver in October 2018 “despite knowing he was an unlawful user of and addicted to a controlled substance.”
Hunter Biden has acknowledged struggling with addiction following the 2015 death of his older brother Beau Biden and numerous photos on his laptop corroborate his drug use.
The maximum penalty on each of the tax charges is 12 months in prison, and the federal firearms offense can carry up to 10 years in prison.
“Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties,” Mr. Weiss said. “A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after taking into account the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.”
Mr. Weiss said Hunter Biden “has agreed to enter a Pretrial Diversion Agreement with respect to the firearm Information.”
The resolution indicates Hunter Biden will not be prosecuted for the gun charge if he honors the terms of the agreement, such as staying off drugs.
A Trump appointee, Mr. Weiss has agreed to recommend probation for Hunter Biden at sentencing.
Mr. Trump was indicted this month by the Justice Department on dozens of counts of mishandling classified documents, with a trial date tentatively set for August.
It is somewhat unusual to resolve a federal criminal case at the same time the charges are filed in court, though it is not unprecedented.
Mr. Clark, the attorney for Hunter Biden, said in a statement: “Hunter will take responsibility for two instances of misdemeanor failure to file tax payments when due pursuant to a plea agreement. A firearm charge, which will be subject to a pretrial diversion agreement and will not be the subject of the plea agreement, will also be filed by the government. I know Hunter believes it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life. He looks forward to continuing his recovery and moving forward.”
Sen. Chris Coons, Delaware Democrat and one of President Biden’s closest allies in the Senate, expressed approval of the deal.
“A five-year-long thorough investigation by a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney has reportedly concluded with Hunter Biden pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and entering pretrial diversion on a gun-related charge,” Mr. Coons said in a statement Tuesday.
“From press accounts, I am encouraged that Hunter is taking responsibility for his actions, paying the taxes that he owes, and preparing to move on with his life,” Mr. Coons said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who was campaigning with the president on Tuesday, expressed confidence that the plea deal won’t hurt Mr. Biden’s reelection bid.
“Hunter changes nothing,” Mr. Newsom told the Associated Press.
Mr. Biden told reporters at that same event, “I’m very proud of my son.”
The Justice Department’s investigation into the president’s son burst into public view in December 2020, one month after the election, when Hunter Biden revealed that he had received a subpoena as part of the department’s scrutiny of his taxes.
The subpoena sought information on the younger Mr. Biden’s business dealings with a number of entities, including Burisma, a Ukraine gas company on whose board he sat.
Hunter Biden said in a statement at the time that he was “confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisers.”
Since then, a federal grand jury in Delaware has heard testimony related to his taxes and foreign business transactions.
The younger Mr. Biden joined the board of Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then Barack Obama’s vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine.
In October 2020, The New York Post reported that it had received a copy of a hard drive of a laptop that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved.
It was later revealed that the FBI had obtained the laptop in 2019. Nevertheless, more than 50 former top U.S. intelligence figures signed a public letter saying the laptop looked like a Russian disinformation operation.
The elder Mr. Biden cited those officials, some from the FBI, in flatly declaring during a presidential debate that it was that.
— This article is based in part on wire-service reports.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.