Hunter Biden agreed with the Justice Department on Tuesday to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and accept terms that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a separate gun charge, a big step toward ending a long-running and politically explosive investigation into the finances, drug use and international business dealings of President Biden’s troubled son.
Under a deal hashed out with a federal prosecutor who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time and be sentenced to probation.
The Justice Department also charged Mr. Biden but, under what is known as a pretrial diversion agreement, said it would not prosecute him in connection with his purchase of a handgun in 2018 during a period when he was using drugs. The deal is contingent on Mr. Biden remaining drug-free for 24 months and agreeing never to own a firearm again.
The agreement must still be approved by a federal judge. Mr. Biden is expected to appear in court in Delaware in the coming days to be arraigned on the misdemeanor tax charges and plead guilty.
“With the announcement of two agreements between my client, Hunter Biden, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, it is my understanding that the five-year investigation into Hunter is resolved,” Mr. Biden’s lawyer, Christopher Clark, said in a statement.
Assuming there are no last-minute changes or complications, the deal would most likely resolve the investigation without Mr. Biden facing a federal prison sentence.
Even though years of investigation by a Republican-appointed prosecutor found evidence to charge Mr. Biden only on the narrow tax and gun issues rather than the broader international conspiracies promoted by Mr. Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill, the agreement was assailed by the right as too lenient.
The agreement came less than two weeks after the Justice Department indicted Mr. Trump on charges that he risked exposing national security secrets and obstructed efforts by the government to reclaim classified documents from him. On Tuesday, Republicans argued that the deal demonstrated a partisan double standard, despite the clear differences in the nature and scope of the cases.
“The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket,’” Mr. Trump proclaimed on his website, Truth Social.
The federal prosecutor who oversaw the inquiry and signed off on the agreement, David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, set out the terms in a terse public statement that concluded, without elaboration, “The investigation is ongoing.”
A White House spokesman, Ian Sams, said in a statement: “The president and first lady love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life. We will have no further comment.”
The crimes to which Mr. Biden is pleading guilty, said Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University and a sentencing expert, are ones that the average person is rarely prosecuted for because they are usually only brought along with more serious offenses.
“If these are the only offenses, most prosecutors are going to say it’s not worth a federal case,” Mr. Berman said. “They would say: Let’s not make a federal case of it for the average person because it’s not worth it to bring a case unless there’s reason to be concerned that there’s a public safety issue or the trust that everyone is treated equally under the law is at stake.”
Mr. Berman said that in this case, federal prosecutors were in a unique situation because the very high-profile defendant was the subject of investigations for a variety of activities. The failure to bring some charges when there is no factual dispute, he said, could create the impression of a two-tiered system of justice.
“Everyone is paying attention, and the facts are not in dispute, so a failure to bring charges would create the perception that there was some sort of special treatment or leniency being given to the president’s son,” Mr. Berman said.
No one questions that Mr. Biden, a 53-year-old Yale-educated lawyer, has had significant personal troubles and pursued a professional path that has intersected with his father’s in ways that have raised ethical issues.
After his father became vice president in 2009, he built relationships with wealthy foreigners that brought in millions of dollars, surfacing concerns inside the Obama administration and among government watchdog groups that he was cashing in on his family name.
He went into a downward spiral after his brother, Beau, died in 2015, becoming addicted to crack cocaine and engaging in tawdry, self-destructive behavior.
As president, Mr….
Read More: Hunter Biden Investigation: Hunter Biden to Plead Guilty on Misdemeanor Tax