Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden and a recurring target of the Republican opposition, has admitted his guilt in two criminal cases involving him, hoping to settle the accounts as his father’s 2024 campaign takes shape.
This “ends” the proceedings against Hunter Biden, 53, his lawyer assured in a statement on Tuesday. “Hunter is committed to owning up to the mistakes he made when he struggled in his life with torment and addiction. »
“I am very proud of my son,” said the American president at the start of the afternoon.
The Republican opposition has for its part denounced a Department of Justice which would be relentless against Donald Trump – recently indicted for his management of ultra-secret documents – while working to avoid at all costs a prison sentence for the son of the current president.
Hunter Biden, 53, has admitted his guilt in a federal income tax fraud case, detailed prosecutor David Weiss, in charge of the case in the state of Delaware, birthplace of the Biden family.
He will also, according to the same source, make an agreement with the prosecution in a case of violation of firearms legislation, which amounts to an admission of guilt.
He is accused of having acquired a firearm in 2018 when he was a drug addict.
Former President Donald Trump, who could face Joe Biden again in 2024, estimated in a reaction on his Truth Social network that Hunter Biden had only received a sentence comparable to a banal “fine for violating the Code of the road”, and claimed that the judicial system was “broken”.
The leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, meanwhile denounced “special treatment”.
The president “proud” of his son
The youngest son of the American president – the eldest, Beau, died in 2015 of brain cancer – described his problems with addiction, crack in particular, in a book published in the spring of 2021.
He reports the first drama of his life, the death of his mother and his little sister in a car accident in 1972.
Beau and Hunter were seriously injured in the accident, which occurred shortly after Joe Biden was elected senator from Delaware.
The Democrat later remarried Jill Biden, with whom he raised his two sons, and had a daughter.
In his book, Hunter Biden, a former lawyer and businessman turned artist, also claims to be now weaned from alcohol and drugs.
The American president, candidate for the 2024 election, has always publicly supported him and notably said he was “proud” of him during a heated debate opposing him to Donald Trump before the 2020 presidential election.
The judicial epilogue announced on Tuesday should do nothing to change the attacks by the Republican opposition on Hunter Biden’s past as a businessman, who accuses him of corruption for business in Ukraine, accusations that the American president denies.