Washington: In a deal with the Justice Department, President Joe Biden's son Hunter will admit guilt to federal tax offences but avoid a full trial on a separate gun charge, likely sparing him time in jail.

In accordance with a deal made public on Tuesday, Hunter Biden, 53, will enter a guilty plea for the misdemeanour tax offences. As long as he abides by the terms set forth in court, the agreement will also prevent prosecution on a felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm while using drugs. The resolution of a federal criminal case concurrently with the filing of charges is uncommon but not unheard of.

The agreement puts an end to a protracted Justice Department investigation into Biden's second son, who has acknowledged having addiction issues in the wake of his brother Beau Biden's death in 2015. Additionally, it prevents a trial from happening, which would have resulted in days or weeks' worth of uninteresting headlines for a White House that has steadfastly tried to distance itself from the Justice Department.

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The deal is specifically focused on tax and weapons violations rather than anything more general or connected to the Democratic president, even though it requires the younger Biden to admit guilt. Though unsuccessful, former president Donald Trump and other Republicans persisted in attempting to use the case to cast a negative light on Joe Biden and cast doubt on the impartiality of the Biden Justice Department.

In his presidential run-off challenge to President Biden in 2024, Trump compared the agreement to a "mere traffic ticket," adding, "Our system is BROKEN!"
If you are the president's son, you get a sweetheart deal, according to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who also compared the outcome to the Trump documents case that is currently pending in federal court. Another candidate for the presidency, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, utilised the same term

In a straightforward statement, the White House Counsel's office stated that the president and first lady Jill Biden "love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life."

According to two people with knowledge of the investigation, the Justice Department will recommend 24 months of probation for the tax charges, which means Hunter Biden won't serve any jail time. But the judge has the final say on whether to accept any agreement. The individuals spoke to The Associated Press under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly by name.

He must enter a guilty plea to charges of failing to pay more than $100,000 in taxes on more than $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018, which have a maximum prison sentence of one year. Afterwards, the back taxes were paid, according to a person familiar with the inquiry.

According to the firearms charge, Hunter Biden had a Colt Cobra.38 Special handgun in his possession for 11 days in October 2018 despite being aware that he used drugs. Hunter Biden had a pretrial agreement, according to the Justice Department, despite the fact that the rarely filed count carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison. This probably means the case will be removed from his record as long as he complies with the requirements.

Hunter Biden's attorney Christopher Clark stated in a statement that he believed the five-year investigation was now over.
Clark said, "I know Hunter believes it is crucial to own up to these errors he made during a time of turmoil and addiction in his life. "He looks forward to advancing and continuing his recovery."

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The agreement comes as the Justice Department prosecutes Trump, the first former president to be charged with a federal crime, in what may be the most significant case in its history. Hunter Biden's case was successfully resolved only a few days after former President Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents on his Florida estate in a 37-count indictment. In order to avoid any potential conflicts of interest within the Justice Department, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to file it.

Despite this, Republican criticism of the "politicisation" of the Justice Department has erupted in response to that indictment. Republicans in Congress are still looking into nearly every aspect of Hunter Biden's business dealings, including foreign payments, in the meantime.

The younger Biden is "getting away with a slap on the wrist," according to Rep. James Comer, the Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, despite congressional investigations that GOP lawmakers claim reveal — but have not yet proven — a pattern of corruption involving the family's financial ties.

On the other hand, US Attorney David Weiss, a Delaware prosecutor judge appointed by Trump, claimed the case was thoroughly investigated over five years, according to Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware.

The case's resolution, according to Coons, "brings to a close a five-year investigation, despite the elaborate conspiracy theories spun by many who believed there would be much more to this."

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who was slated to campaign alongside the president Tuesday night, reiterated his support for Biden's reelection.
"Hunter changes nothing," Newsom said to The AP on Tuesday.

According to Caroline Ciraolo, an attorney who led the Justice Department's tax division from 2015 to 2017, misdemeanour tax cases are uncommon and the majority of those that are filed result in a sentence that doesn't include time spent in jail. A probable federal conviction "is not a slap on the wrist," the speaker emphasised.

According to Keith Rosen, a former head of the criminal division at the US Attorney's Office in Delaware, charges of gun possession that aren't related to another firearm crime are also uncommon. According to him, Delaware receives only a small number of cases of various forms of illegal possession per year from individuals without extensive criminal histories.

Hunter Biden revealed that he had received a subpoena as part of the department's examination of his taxes in December 2020, one month after the 2020 election, and that this was the beginning of the Justice Department's investigation into the president's son. The younger Biden's business dealings with a number of organisations, including the Ukraine gas company Burisma, whose board he served on, were the subject of the subpoena. 

At a congressional hearing in August of last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated that the Baltimore field office of the agency was still conducting the investigation and that "I expect our folks to pursue this aggressively."

At a subsequent hearing in March, Garland promised not to get involved in the investigation. However, a later letter to Congress from an unnamed IRS special agent in which he requested whistleblower protection claimed that the investigation had been handled improperly.

In 2014, when his father, Barack Obama's vice president at the time, was assisting in the administration's foreign policy towards Ukraine, the younger Biden joined the board of Burisma. Without any supporting evidence, Trump and his allies have long claimed that Hunter Biden's work in Ukraine influenced Obama administration policies.

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Years before the case was brought, Hunter Biden emerged as a key figure in the first impeachment case against Trump, who, ostensibly in an effort to boost his own reelection bid, had requested in a phone call from the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, the announcement of an investigation into the younger Biden.
Republican candidates for president in 2020 later tried to make Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine a major issue.

Hunter Biden had left a laptop at a Delaware computer repair shop 18 months prior, and it had never been picked up. The New York Post reported that it had received a copy of the hard drive of the laptop from Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in October of that year.