Hunter Biden Pleads Guilty

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Biden's Hunter trigger

In private, no issue is more likely to anger or sadden President Biden than attacks on his son Hunter, according to people close to the president who have seen his moods shift when there's bad news about Hunter.

• Why it matters: For Biden — who privately has expressed guilt over Hunter's ongoing legal and political fights — the next year will be emotionally fraught. Hunter faces new criminal charges and will be at the center of a GOP-led impeachment inquiry, Axios' Alex Thompson reports.

Only a few long-serving aides feel free to discuss Hunter's situation with the president, and only at certain moments — knowing that it can prompt both fury and dejection.

• The ongoing criminal investigation into Hunter Biden has strained President Biden's relationship with his attorney general, Merrick Garland, who appointed a special counsel in August to oversee the federal investigation into Hunter after the prosecutor requested that status.

The 81-year-old president has suggested to close associates that if he hadn't run in 2020, Hunter wouldn't be facing criminal prosecutions or be the target of daily stories by conservative media — all while trying to stay sober and rebuild his life.

• Hunter, 53, could face up to 17 years in prison if convicted of three felony and six misdemeanor charges — including filing a false tax return — that were included in an indictment released Friday.
• Hunter also faces a felony gun charge in Delaware and could face contempt of Congress proceedings if he fails to appear at a closed-door deposition Wednesday before the GOP committees leading the impeachment inquiry into his father.

Between the lines: President Biden's bond with Hunter is particularly deep and complicated, people close to Biden told Axios.

• After Beau Biden, Hunter's older brother, died of cancer in 2015, Hunter became the only living person from the 1972 car accident that killed Joe Biden's wife and daughter. Joe Biden has clung tightly to Hunter ever since, at times referring to him as "my only surviving son."
• While Hunter was struggling with addiction — particularly from 2017-2019, after his father left the vice presidency — current and former aides described Joe Biden as despondent and worried that he'd lost both of his sons.

Hunter appears to know how the attacks and investigations have affected his father.

• "What they're trying to do is they're trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle — and so therefore destroying a presidency in that way," Hunter told the musician Moby in a podcast released last week.

President Biden often jokes that people think he's not Irish because "I don't hold a grudge." That doesn't apply when it comes to Hunter: GOP attacks on Hunter have blown up some of Biden's longest political relationships.

• Biden and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) used to be close Senate friends — Graham said in 2015 that Biden was "as good a man as God ever created."
• But today the two have almost no personal relationship because of Graham's investigations into Hunter during the 2020 campaign and since.

Biden vents about Graham privately.

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Hunter Biden pleads not guilty to federal tax charges after an earlier deal imploded

LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Joe Biden’s son pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal tax charges filed after the collapse of a plea deal that could have spared him the spectacle of a criminal trial during the 2024 campaign.

https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-criminal-case-joe-biden-2024-015cba20dfba90930706fc8a7d4ae38d?

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Hunter Biden’s tax trial set for September as judge agrees to delay, with gun trial still in June

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hunter Biden is scheduled to stand trial on federal tax charges in September after a judge on Wednesday granted his request to delay the California trial that had been approaching next month.

https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-federal-tax-case-california-bb2e2eb41eb2cd30206a47c40ba6044e?