Hunter Biden pleads guilty to nine federal tax charges – live

Hunter Biden’s decision to plead guilty in the high-profile federal tax case against him will spare the president from a potentially embarrassing trial ahead of a crucial US election.

Hunter Biden has been open about his struggles with drugs and alcohol, and a trial was expected to dig into his life, including the millions he earned in consultancy work abroad, a crack cocaine addiction and the large sums he spent on online pornography. Republicans have long seized on his work with the Ukrainian industrial conglomerate Burisma and a Chinese private equity firm to criticize Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden faces up to 17 years in prison and $450,000 in penalties after pleading guilty to all nine counts against him in a federal tax case.

The president’s son was scheduled to stand trial in Los Angeles after he allegedly failed to pay $1.4m in taxes between 2016 and 2019. During that time, the 54-year-old, who has struggled with addiction, was reportedly spending lavishly on “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature”.

“In short, everything but his taxes”, prosecutors said.

His guilty plea will allow Biden to avoid a trial. Typically, defendants who plead guilty in criminal cases reach an agreement with prosecutors beforehand in order to obtain a shorter sentence, but that does not appear to have happened in this case.

Hunter Biden, the US president Joe Biden’s son, has pleaded guilty to federal tax charges.

The 54-year-old entered his plea at a Los Angeles courthouse on Thursday. Prosecutors say he failed to pay his taxes on time from 2016 to 2019, and Biden faced two felony counts of filing a false return and an additional felony count of tax evasion.

US investigators have indicted a prominent Russian state television personality and his wife for violating sanctions and for money laundering as the White House targets Kremlin influence operations before the US presidential election.

Dimitri Simes, a television presenter and producer for Russia’s state-owned Channel One, was charged with receiving more than $1m (£759,000) in compensation, a personal car and driver and a stipend for a flat in Moscow, despite the television station’s designation in 2022 by the US’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. He and his wife, Anastasia, were charged with money laundering to hide the proceeds of his work for Channel One.

Anastasia Simes, 55, was also charged with buying arts and antiquities for a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Aleksandr Udodov, and then storing the works in their home in Virginia before they were shipped onward to Russia. The works were bought from galleries and auction houses in the United States and Europe.

The couple faces 20 years in prison for each count if convicted. They left the US after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and are now believed to be in Russia, the justice department said.

Allan Lichtman, the historian dubbed the “Nostradamus” of US presidential elections, has predicted that Kamala Harris will win the White House in November’s poll.

Having previously warned the Democrats of the dangers of removing Joe Biden from the ticket, Lichtman nevertheless forecast that the vice-president, who became the party’s nominee after the president withdrew in July, would be elected in a video for the New York Times.

He said Harris was on course to beat Donald Trump even though the Democrats had effectively surrendered the valuable key of presidential incumbency, one of 13 he used to determine the likely outcome.

“Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States – at least that’s my prediction for the outcome of this race,” Lichtman, 77, says at the conclusion of the quirky seven-minute video, which features him running in a track athlete’s garb against other elderly competitors in a qualifying race for the 2025 national senior Olympics.

“But the outcome is up to you. So get out and vote,” he adds.

Lichtman’s predictions are based on a set of true/false propositions, and take no account of polling trends.

Hunter Biden’s attorney said Biden is offering to plead guilty to the federal tax charges he faces, without a deal with prosecutors, according to CNN.

Hunter Biden, 54, had earlier on Thursday offered to plead guilty to federal tax charges but avoid admitting any wrongdoing – an unusual, last-minute legal manoeuvre that federal prosecutors quickly opposed.

In a Los Angeles court earlier today, Hunter Biden sought to enter what is known as an “Alford plea”, an unusual type of guilty plea wherein a defendant does not admit to the allegations against them. US justice department prosecutors in the courtroom, however, said they would not accept that plea.

On Thursday afternoon, his lawyers took a surprising turn and said that Hunter Biden was prepared to admit that his conduct satisfied the elements of the tax offenses with which he has been charged, CNN reported.

The Harris-Walz campaign launched a new ad on Thursday focused on Project 2025 aimed at Black Americans in key battleground states, warning that a Donald Trump administration would “take Black America backwards”.

Trump’s “Project 2025 agenda will give him unchecked political power with no guardrails”, the Harris campaign’s new 30-second spot says:

Project 2025 would strip away our voting rights protections, and it eliminates the Department of Education. It would also require states to monitor women’s pregnancies. It bans abortion and would rip away health coverage for millions.

“Donald Trump’s Project 2025 makes one thing clear to Black America: He doesn’t give a damn about us,” said Quentin Fulks, the Harris-Walz principal deputy campaign manager, in a statement.

This campaign is going to make Trump defend his indefensible Project 2025 and ensure the key coalitions this campaign needs to win in November know exactly how his extreme agenda will take their communities backwards.

Black voters in the US are often lumped into one bloc, but a new national survey has found that they can be defined by specific clusters: legacy civil rights, secular progressives, next-gen traditionalist, rightfully cynical and race-neutral conservative.

Out of the 2,034 registered voters and 918 Black unregistered voters surveyed, 41% of respondents were found to be legacy civil rights voters who skewed older than 50 years old and had the highest voter turnout rates. Legacy civil rights voters were also the most likely group to believe that their vote has the power to drive change. On the other end, the rightfully cynical, 22% of respondents, were the youngest cohort and the least likely to vote. Based on their personal experiences of racism at work and with the police, this cluster was the least likely to believe that their vote matters.

Next-gen traditionalists, 18% of respondents, were the most religious and least educated cluster, mostly consisting of millennial and generation Z voters. They had a low voter turnout rate and a moderate belief in the power of their vote. The most progressive respondents fell within the secular progressives cluster, at 12%, of which the majority were educated women who were highly likely to vote.

Finally, the race-neutral conservatives, 7% of respondents, consisted mostly of men and were the second oldest cohort as well as the most conservative. Race-neutral conservatives had a moderate voter turnout rate and were likely to blame systemic barriers on individual choices.

Katrina Gamble, CEO of Sojourn Strategies, said during a press conference on Wednesday:

These clusters indicate that there are incredible differences within the Black community, in terms of how people think about democracy and their role in our democracy.

Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday that President Joe Biden would not pardon Hunter Biden or commute his sentence.

“No, it is still very much a no,” the White House press secretary said in response to a reporter asking her whether the president intended to pardon or commute his son’s sentence.

This comes as earlier this summer, the president said that he would not commute his son’s sentence, according to the New York Times, and has said over the last few months that he would not pardon his son.

“I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter,” the president said in June, per the Times. “He has overcome an addiction. He’s one of the brightest, most decent men I know. I am satisfied that, I’m not going to do anything. I said I’d abide by the jury decision. I will do that.”

After Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, offered to plead guilty on Thursday to federal tax charges but without admitting any wrongdoing, the US justice department prosecutors in the Los Angeles courtroom said they would not accept that plea, according to Reuters.

“It’s not clear to us what they are trying to do,” one prosecutor reportedly told the judge overseeing the case.

It was not clear whether the judge would accept the offer or go ahead with the trial. Jury selection is due to begin on Thursday.