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      Joe Biden criticized by some supporters for pardoning son Hunter: ‘Selfish move’

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      Joe Biden has been criticised by some of his own supporters for issuing a pardon to his son Hunter that he had previously sworn not to give.The president’s volte face drew predictable fire from Republicans, led by the president-elect, Donald Trump, who used it to raise the case of the jailed ringleaders of the 6 January 2021 assault on the US Capitol, who he has suggested he will pardon when he returns to the White House.“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.Yet it was condemnation from fellow Democrats – some of whom said he had handed Trump justification for his own use of the presidential pardon power – that seemed likely to carry greater sting.Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, said Biden had risked his own reputation and legacy.“While as a father I certainly understand President @JoeBiden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country,” Polis posted on X.“This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.“When you become President, your role is Pater familias of the nation. Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not a President and not a President’s son.”Hunter Biden was convicted by a court in Delaware last June of lying on a gun licence application at a time when he was addicted to cocaine. He was later convicted of separate tax evasion charges in a court in California.He was scheduled to be sentenced for both convictions in hearings this month.Biden justified his pardon by insisting that Hunter’s prosecutions had been driven by “raw politics” and would not have been pressed had his father not been president.That interpretation was rejected by Greg Stanton, a Democratic House member for Arizona.“I respect President Biden, but I think he got this one wrong,” he posted on social media.“This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”There was further condemnation from Michael Bennet, a Democratic senator for Colorado, who was prominent among those calling for Biden to step aside as the party’s presidential nominee last summer following a bad debate performance.“President Biden’s decision put personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all,” he wrote on X.Peter Welch, a Democratic senator for Vermont, said the pardon was “as the action of a loving father, understandable – but as the action of our nation’s Chief Executive, unwise”.In similar vein, Greg Landsman, a Democratic congressman for Ohio, posted: “As a father, I get it. But as someone who wants people to believe in public service again, it’s a setback.”Joe Walsh, an anti-Trump former Republican congressman who endorsed Biden for president, called the pardon deflating because it enabled Trump to validate his own much-criticised pardons of friends and supporters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This just furthers the cynicism that people have about politics,” he told MSNBC. “That cynicism strengthens Trump because Trump can just say: ‘I’m not a unique threat. Everybody does this. If I do something for my kid, my son-in-law, look, Joe Biden does the same thing.’ I get it, but this was a selfish move by Biden which politically only strengthens Trump.”In the Atlantic magazine, Jonathan Chait argued that the president had undermined the democratic values that he had previously championed.“Principles become much harder to defend when their most famous defenders have compromised them flagrantly,” he wrote.“With the pardon decision, like his stubborn insistence on running for a second term he couldn’t win, Biden chose to prioritize his own feelings over the defense of his country.”Some Democrats leaped to Biden’s defence.“Hunter. Here’s the reality. No US [attorney] would have charged this case given the underlying facts,” Eric Holder, an attorney general under Barack Obama, wrote on X.“Had his name been Joe Smith the resolution would have been – fundamentally and more fairly – a declination. Pardon warranted.”Jasmine Crockett, a Texas member of the House of Representatives, went further, saying: “Let me be the first to congratulate the president.”“At the end of the day, we know that we have a 34-count convicted felon that is about to walk into the White House,” she told MSNBC, referring to Trump’s conviction by a New York court on document falsification charges relating to hush money paid to a porn actor.Alluding to allegations against several of Trump’s cabinet nominees, she added: “For anyone that wants to clutch their pearls now because [Biden] decided that he was going to pardon his son, I would say take a look in the mirror because we also know that … this cabinet has more people accused of sexual assault than any incoming cabinet probably in the history of America.”Sarah Longwell, another anti-Trump Republican strategist who endorsed Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, wrote: “‘Trump is worse’ is never a good argument to justify bad behavior.“Biden knows it’s wrong. That’s why he committed over and over to not doing it. It doesn’t make him the same as Trump. It doesn’t erase how singularly corrupt Trump’s current appointments are. It’s simply wrong and we should say so, lest we forget that right and wrong still exist and awareness of it matters in our President.” More

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      Trump uses Hunter Biden pardon to hint potential clemency for January 6 insurrectionists

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      Donald Trump seized on Hunter Biden’s pardon to drop one of his strongest hints yet that he intends to grant clemency to at least some of the instigators and participants of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a mob trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat.“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” the US president-elect posted on his Truth Social platform.It was the latest in a series of supportive comments by Trump on behalf of those convicted for their part in the onslaught, which resulted in the deaths of five people at the time. Additionally, four police officers involved in trying to beat back the rioters killed themselves in the days and months after the attack.Now the granting of a pardon by the sitting president, Joe Biden, to his son appears to have been taken by Trump as a fresh justification.The 2021 assault spawned one of the biggest criminal investigations in US history, resulting in federal charges being filed against nearly 1,500 people. About 1,000 have either been found guilty or pleaded guilty.The investigation is ongoing. The FBI said last month it was seeking nine people in connection with violent assaults on police officers on the day.Despite the seriousness of the offences, Trump has been publicly itching for months to act on behalf of those imprisoned, whom he has labelled “hostages” and “political prisoners”.In March, he wrote that one of his first acts in office, if re-elected, would be to “Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!”He has repeated the vow several times, including in an appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists in July, when asked if he would grant a pardon.“Oh, absolutely, I would. If they’re innocent, I would pardon them,” he said.But he has stopped short of promising a blanket pardon. “I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control,” he told CNN.Some of those convicted and given the longest sentences did not take part in the violence inside the Capitol but were convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges connected with organising the attack. They include Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, and Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, which has been described as a neo-fascist organisation that promotes political violence.Whatever distinctions Trump and his campaign team have in mind, there is little question that hopes are high among many of those in custody that a pardon could be forthcoming.Lawyers for Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys member given a 17-year prison sentence last year after being convicted of a spate of crimes including seditious conspiracy and intimidation or threats to prevent officers from discharging their duties, have said they would be requesting a pardon.Biggs claimed at his trial that he was following Trump’s orders.Lawyers for several of those convicted have unsuccessfully sought to delay sentencing hearings since Trump won last month’s presidential election, on the basis that clemency might be at hand.Among those incarcerated, at least one has little doubt about the prospects of imminent freedom.Jake Lang, who is charged with several offences, including charging police officers, posted in celebratory fashion on social media after Trump’s election win, the BBC reported.“COMING HOME!!!!,” he wrote. “THE JANUARY 6 POLITICAL PRISONERS ARE FINALLY COMING HOME!!!!” More

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      Biden pardons his son, Trump will absolve his criminal allies. America shouldn’t stand for this | Simon Jenkins

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      The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Yes, any father might do the same for a son. Yes, the boy is reformed, forgiven, on the mend. Only nasty people are out to jail him. Live and let live. Yet there is something monumental in the pardon granted by the outgoing US president, Joe Biden. Six months ago, he scored political points by denying he would pardon his son Hunter Biden. Now, with the election over, he has done so.The easy response is: what is new? President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon; Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother and other figures whose families had donated to the Democrats; Donald Trump pardoned his son-in-law’s father and dodgy aides galore. No one doubts that, as president, Trump will pardon a number of outrageous figures – perhaps even the Capitol Hill rioters of 2021. We wait to see if this includes trying to pardon himself from various pending prosecutions (though he cannot extend these powers to cases brought at state level).Biden can plead a measure of justice in that Hunter Biden’s relatively minor convictions – for tax evasion and lying about his drug use when buying a gun – were frantically pursued by his political foes. But then there was a similar grain of politics in the equally frantic prosecution of Trump’s business misdeeds by the Democratic authorities in New York. The front page of the New York Times went tabloid and gleefully shrieked: “GUILTY”.Cynics – or as they might say, realists – will reassure themselves that all this will be soon forgotten, as it was in the past. Across the landscape of US crime and punishment – aspects of which still border on frontier anarchy – these are peccadilloes. More important issues beckon from a new Trump presidency.But justice is a universal liberty, one that the US purports to champion around the world. That a nation’s executive claims the right – even constitutionally – to override justice must be wrong. The US constitution is built on explicit rights and freedoms, protected by a separation of powers. The ostensive purpose of article two, section two was to strengthen the president in handling the union’s army and state militias. It was not to condone crime. It has been grossly abused. During the election, the Democrats presented themselves as the guardians of morality, with Biden praising Kamala Harris for having the “moral compass of a saint”. In reneging on his promise, Biden has undermined this.The US constitution is a thing of wonder. It has held the union together – sometimes only just – for two and a half centuries, while global nations and empires have been upheaved and disintegrated. Its survival is rooted in two underlying principles. The first is respect for the rights of often very different states to order their local laws, such as on abortion and gun control. The second is a balanced separation of federal powers between the judiciary, executive and legislature. This separation, in what is today a deeply polarised American society, clearly needs strengthening.But how? The constitution’s final task was to make its own reform near impossible. Sometimes, just sometimes, such reforms have been achieved. Presidential pardon looks like a case for change.

      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Joe Biden issues pardon for son Hunter as Trump rails against ‘miscarriage of justice’ – US politics live

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      President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to pardon those convicted after storming the US Capitol in Washington on January 2021 and took the opportunity to raise the issue.“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?“Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social social media platform.A loving act of mercy by a father who has already known much sorrow? Or a hypocritical political manoeuvre reminiscent of his great foe? Maybe both can be true.Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing in two criminal cases, is likely to have been the product of a Shakespearean struggle between head and heart.On the one hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making,” he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on Sunday. To undermine the separation of powers goes against every fibre of his political being.On the other hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with references to his parents. As a senator, he once took a train from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware, so he could blow out the candles on a birthday cake for his eight-year-old daughter, Ashley, at the station, then cross the platform and take the next train back to work.Biden was profoundly shaped by the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and 13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident and, much later, the death of his son Beau from brain cancer. In that context, Hunter’s status as the first child of a sitting president to face criminal charges will have pained his father in what Ernest Hemingway called “the broken places”.Read my full analysis below
      Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted. Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.
      The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.
      No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.
      For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.
      Hunter Biden issued a statement following his father’s announcement“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” Hunter Biden said in a statement on Sunday, adding he had remained sober for more than five years.“In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages … I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”Hello and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.On Sunday night, before boarding a plane to Angola, US president Joe Biden issued a pardon to his son Hunter – something he had repeatedly said he would not do.Biden said he hoped the American people would understand his decision to issue the pardons over convictions on federal gun and tax charges.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he said.Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on federal gun charges on 12 December.He was scheduled to be sentenced in the tax case four days later. Joe Biden is just weeks away from leaving office. More

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      With his pardon of son Hunter, Joe Biden delivers a heartfelt hypocrisy

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      A loving act of mercy by a father who has already known much sorrow? Or a hypocritical political manoeuvre reminiscent of his great foe? Maybe both can be true.Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing in two criminal cases, is likely to have been the product of a Shakespearean struggle between head and heart.On the one hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making,” he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on Sunday. To undermine the separation of powers goes against every fibre of his political being.On the other hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with references to his parents. As a senator, he once took a train from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware, so he could blow out the candles on a birthday cake for his eight-year-old daughter, Ashley, at the station, then cross the platform and take the next train back to work.Biden was profoundly shaped by the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and 13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident and, much later, the death of his son Beau from brain cancer. In that context, Hunter’s status as the first child of a sitting president to face criminal charges will have pained his father in what Ernest Hemingway called “the broken places”.Hunter was convicted this summer of lying about his drug use when he bought a gun. Joe Biden categorically ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling reporters: “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.” Hunter also pleaded guilty in a separate tax evasion trial and was due to be sentenced in both cases later this month.Biden reportedly spent months agonising over what to do. The scales were almost certainly tilted by Donald Trump’s victory in last month’s presidential election. The prospect of leaving Hunter to the tender mercies of Trump’s sure-to-be politicised, retribution-driven justice department was too much to bear. Biden typically takes advice from close family and is likely to have reached the decision after talking it over during what was an intimate Thanksgiving weekend.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” the president said in a statement, calling it “a miscarriage of justice”.He added: “There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”Joe Biden’s defenders will certainly contend that, if Hunter had been an ordinary citizen, the gun case would not have come this far, and his father was simply righting that wrong. Republicans spent years hyping investigations into Hunter that failed to produce a shred of evidence linking his father to corruption.Eric Holder, a former attorney general, wrote on social media that no US attorney “would have charged this case given the underlying facts. After a five-year investigation the facts as discovered only made that clear. Had his name been Joe Smith the resolution would have been – fundamentally and more fairly – a declination. Pardon warranted.”It was also noted that this is hardly the first time pardons have smacked of nepotism. Bill Clinton as president pardoned his half-brother for old cocaine charges, and Trump pardoned the father of Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, for tax evasion and retaliating against a cooperating witness, though in both cases those men had already served their prison terms. Trump also used the dog days of his first presidency to pardon the rogues’ gallery of Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.And yet for many Americans there will be something jarring about the double standard of a president pardoning a member of his own family ahead of numerous other worthy cases. Republicans in the House of Representatives naturally pounced with more hyperbole about the “Biden crime family”.But there were also more thoughtful objections. Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, wrote on social media: “While as a father I certainly understand President Joe Biden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country. This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.”Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman turned Trump critic, said on the MSNBC network: “Joe Biden repeatedly said he wouldn’t do this so he repeatedly lied. This just furthers cynicism that people have about politics and that cynicism strengthens Trump because Trump can say, ‘I’m not a unique threat. Everybody does this. If I do something for my kid, my son-in-law, whatever, look, Joe Biden does the same thing.’ I get it but this was a selfish move by Biden, which politically only strengthens Trump. It’s just deflating.”The Trump context is impossible to ignore in this moral maze. Next month he will become the first convicted criminal sworn in as president, though three cases against him have all but perished. He is already moving to appoint loyalists to the FBI and justice department.Michelle Obama once advised, when they go low, we go high. On Sunday Joe Biden, 82 and heading for the exit with little to lose, decided to go low. Perhaps it was what any parent would have done. More

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      Joe Biden issues ‘full and unconditional’ pardon to son Hunter

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      Joe Biden has issued “a full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter Biden covering convictions on federal gun and tax charges, the US president said in a statement released by the White House on Sunday.The decision marks a reversal for the president, who had repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his sentence.Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on federal gun charges on 12 December. He was scheduled to be sentenced in the tax case four days later.In the statement, Joe Biden said that he had long maintained that he would “not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted”.But, he argued, “it is clear that Hunter was treated differently”, adding that the charges in the case “came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election”.Hunter Biden was found guilty in Delaware in June on three felony counts relating to his purchase of a handgun in 2018. He had written on his gun-purchase form, falsely, that he was not a user of illicit drugs.He pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles in September, opting for an “open” plea, where a defendant pleads guilty to the charges and leaves his sentencing fate in the hands of the judge.The tax charges carried up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges were punishable by up to 25 years, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible the president’s son would have avoided prison time entirely.The pardon covers all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted”.Joe Biden said on Sunday evening that his son had been prosecuted when “without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form”.He noted in the statement that “those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions”.Biden accused his political opponents of singling out his 54-year-old son.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he said.“There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”Biden departed for Angola later on Sunday evening for what may be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office.Speculation had been mounting that the president would issue a pardon since Hunter was seen with his father in Nantucket over the Thanksgiving break.Donald Trump had said in October that he would not be surprised if Hunter Biden were to receive a pardon.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I wouldn’t take it off the books,” Trump said. “See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously … And Hunter’s a bad boy.”On Sunday, Trump reacted with outrage, writing on his social network: “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Just one day earlier, though, Trump had reminded Americans that he himself had previously used the pardon power to wipe away convictions of those close to him. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. On Saturday, Trump announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the US ambassador to France.Republicans have long zeroed in on Hunter Biden’s difficulties – questions around lucrative foreign consultancies, broken relationships and a crack cocaine addiction – in an effort to politically damage his father.A laptop Hunter Biden left in a Delaware repair shop that made its way into Republican hands formed a scandal in the closing days of the 2020 election. Republicans claimed that the so-called “laptop from hell”, which featured images of Hunter posing with guns, sex workers and crack cocaine, was suppressed by media favorable to Democrats.Hunter Biden later published a book, Beautiful Things: a Memoir, that detailed his struggles as a drug addict. The Biden family denied more serious accusations that Hunter’s profitable financial arrangements with businesspeople in Ukraine and China amounted to graft using the family name.James Comer, one of the Republicans leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, denounced the pardon. “The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people,” Comer wrote on X. “It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.”“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” Hunter Biden said in a statement on Sunday, adding he had remained sober for more than five years.“In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages … I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”Hunter Biden’s legal team filed Sunday night in both Los Angeles and Delaware asking the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.In the statement announcing the pardon, Joe Biden said that for his “entire career” he had followed a simple principle: to tell the truth to the American people.“Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.”Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. More

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      Hunter Biden pleads guilty to nine federal tax charges – live

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      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.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. More

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      Hunter Biden pleads guilty in tax case after day of back and forth

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      Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to tax charges in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday, after a day of legal wrangling and in a dramatic move that will avoid a potentially embarrassing trial for Joe Biden’s son.Biden, 54, pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges on a day of courtroom twists and turns, after prosecutors earlier objected to his surprise intention to enter an “Alford” plea, an unusual legal maneuver where a defendant pleads guilty but does not acknowledge wrongdoing. Following prosecutors’ objections, lawyers said Biden was ready to change course and enter an “open” plea, where a defendant pleads guilty to the charges and leaves his sentencing fate in the hands of the judge.In court on Thursday afternoon, Abbe Lowell, Biden’s attorney, told Judge Mark Scarsi: “Mr Biden will agree that the elements of each offense have been satisfied.”Biden quickly responded “guilty” as the judge read out each of the nine counts. The charges carry up to 17 years in prison, but federal sentencing guidelines are likely to call for a much shorter sentence.A sentencing hearing has been set for 16 December.The president’s only surviving son had previously pleaded not guilty. The surprise back-and-forth unfolded on Thursday morning as Biden entered a Los Angeles courthouse for the start of his tax-avoidance trial.After learning of Biden’s earlier plan to enter an Alford plea, US justice department prosecutors said that would not be acceptable. Alford pleas are usually negotiated in advance, because prosecutors must get high-level approval before agreeing to them.“It’s not clear to us what they are trying to do,” one prosecutor told Scarsi, the judge overseeing the case.“[Hunter Biden] is not entitled to plead guilty on special terms that apply only to him,” said prosecutor Leo Wise. “Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty.”A trial, in the run-up to the November presidential election, could air embarrassing details of the younger Biden’s life. A defense attorney for Biden, Abbe Lowell, told the judge that the evidence against his client is “overwhelming” and that he wanted to resolve the case.The son of the president stands accused of failing to pay his taxes on time from 2016 to 2019, as well as two felony counts of filing a false return and an additional felony count of tax evasion.Hunter Biden walked into the courtroom for jury selection on Thursday morning holding hands with his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and flanked by Secret Service agents. Initially, he pleaded not guilty to the charges related to his taxes from 2016 to 2019 and his attorneys had indicated they would argue he did not act “willfully”, or with the intention to break the law, in part because of his well-documented struggles with alcohol and drug addiction.A guilty plea will head off a weeks-long trial that would mark the second time in three months that the younger Biden sits in a federal courtroom as a jury of his peers is assembled to assess whether he is guilty of a slew of criminal charges.Hunter Biden was found guilty in Delaware on three felony counts relating to his purchase of a handgun in 2018 because he wrote on his gun-purchase form, falsely, that he was not a user of illicit drugs. The new trial takes place in the city where Biden has lived for years and where, according to the prosecution, he spent extensively 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”.The most serious charges relate to his 2018 return on which, according to the prosecution, he sought to claim his children’s college tuition fees and more than $27,000 in online pornography as business expenses.The tax charges and the gun charges carry maximum sentences of more than 20 years in prison, although legal experts say that, as a first-time offender, Biden is likely to be punished far less harshly even if he were to be found guilty a second time.It has been a whirlwind of a summer for Joe Biden’s son, one in which he was convicted of felonies, rushed to Washington as pressure mounted on his father not to run for re-election, raised eyebrows by dropping into White House meetings – and, according to one report, acting as his father’s “gatekeeper” – then appeared on stage at the Democratic national convention to bask in his father’s reflected glory.Now that Joe Biden has abandoned his re-election ambitions and thrown his support behind his vice-president, Kamala Harris, the political stakes of Hunter Biden’s latest trial will be lower. Still, his legal troubles will take some of the sting out of Donald Trump’s constant complaints that he is the target of a political witch-hunt and that the president has “weaponized” the justice system against him.After Hunter Biden’s June conviction, Joe and Jill Biden issued a statement saying they would respect the judicial process and not consider a pardon for their son. The first lady attended court in Delaware most days, but it is not clear whether she would do the same in California. More