Hunter Biden’s lawyers dropped a bombshell on Thursday, saying their client would plead guilty to nine charges in his federal tax evasion trial, just before jury selection was about to begin. “Mr. Biden intends to change his plea this morning,” Hunter’s lawyer Abbe Lowell told the judge in a Los Angeles federal courtroom, as reported by the New York Post. President Biden’s son, arriving at court with wife Melissa Cohen, was facing his second trial in the span of a few months after he was convicted in June of illegally owning a gun while hooked on drugs, says the Post. The younger Biden was facing the new trial on nine federal charges for allegedly failing to pay US$1.4 million in taxes for the years 2016 through 2019, says the Post, adding if convicted at the second trial, the 54-year-old Biden would have faced up to 17 years behind bars. He also faces 25 years behind bars when he’s sentenced in the gun case in November. On Fox News, anchor Martha MacCallum said, “I don’t know if he woke up this morning or if he planned this a few weeks ago, but he may have listened to the same legal podcast I listened to which basically said ‘He’s going to be convicted. He had a terrible case.' My guess, having covered this, is that he has been pushing back, saying ‘I’m not settling, I’m not looking for a deal, I’m not guilty.’" MacCallum said Hunter may have realized he was likely to get a very long sentence. “So when it’s a choice between a really long sentence and a shorter sentence, but you’re talking jail time, I think he decided he would probably go with the shorter sentence,” she said. “He also has the potential to be commuted by his father, who said quite clearly, he wouldn’t do that, but he's now in a different boat, he’s not running for president anymore. We know how much he loves his son; we know from reporting there was a tremendous amount of stress on the current president over this issue.” “So there’s drama, a hope of a shorted sentence and potentially a commuted sentence and maybe some leniency in his other cases if he just comes forward and says, ‘look I just want to pay what I owe,’” said MacCallum.Biden's sentencing date is December 16.
