LOS ANGELES — President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden entered a not-guilty plea to 9 felony and misdemeanor tax charges at his initial appearance in a Los Angeles courtroom on Thursday.
The plea was entered by Hunter Biden himself during an arraignment in federal court.
The younger Biden is appearing before Judge Mark Scarsi at the Edward R. Roybal courthouse to be arraigned on 9 tax-related charges accusing him of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes from 2016 to 2019.
The court appearance in downtown L.A. comes a day after Hunter walked into a House committee hearing on Capitol Hill on whether to hold him in contempt for defying a congressional subpoena. He sat in the front row with his lawyer for a few minutes before leaving.
Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, accompanied by attorney Abbe Lowell, talk to reporters as they leave a House Oversight Committee hearing in Washington on Wednesday.
Thursday’s 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’t using or addicted to illegal drugs. He was addicted to crack cocaine at the time. He’s also accused of possessing the gun illegally and has pleaded not guilty in that case.
The accusations all come from a yearslong federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s 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’ 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 unraveled when a federal judge who had been expected to approve the deal instead began to question it. 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’s son and Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner.
Hunter Biden’s original proposed plea deal with prosecutors had been pilloried as a “sweetheart deal” by Republicans, including Trump. The former president is facing his own criminal problems – 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.
If convicted of the tax charges, Hunter Biden, 53, could receive a maximum of 17 years in prison.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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