Department of Justice prosecutors rejected Hunter Biden‘s offer on Thursday to enter an unusual plea in his criminal case in California that would involve the first son accepting guilt for the nine tax charges he is facing while avoiding admitting to the underlying allegations in his indictment.
Leo Wise, a prosecutor working on behalf of special counsel David Weiss, told Judge Mark Scarsi that Biden appeared to be asking for “special terms.”
“Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty, and he’s not allowed to plead guilty on special terms that only apply to him,” Wise said, according to a report from the courtroom.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell took issue with Wise saying an Alford plea would somehow be special only to Biden.
“I know it makes a headline,” Lowell tells Judge Scarsi, but “it’s just so wrong” that he had to start by addressing it.
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The decision by the special counsel’s team to urge Scarsi to move the case to trial comes after Biden’s legal team surprised prosecutors Thursday morning by entering what is known as an “Alford plea” just before jury selection in the case was set to begin.
“This is the first we’ve heard of this,” Wise told the judge earlier in the day, according to NBC.
Scarsi proposed punting jury selection until Friday to allow the government to prepare a full argument against Biden’s Alford plea.
An Alford plea involves a defendant admitting that there is enough evidence in a case for prosecutors to secure a guilty conviction, but it allows the defendant to avoid admitting to any allegations.
In Biden’s case, it would allow the first son to avoid admitting in court that he made millions of dollars from foreign business dealings and spent the income on frivolous purchases, all while neglecting his taxes.
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It would also allow Biden to avoid a weekslong trial that, according to court filings, is expected to delve deep into the first son’s past personal struggles with drugs, alcohol, and women during the 2016 to 2019 time period, when he allegedly did not pay his taxes.
The hearing was still underway as of Thursday afternoon, and it was unclear how Biden and his defense attorneys would respond to Weiss’s unwillingness to accept the first son’s plea terms. Legal experts with experience working in the DOJ, including conservative defense attorney William Shipley, took to X to explain that the department never agrees to Alford pleas.