Hunter Biden pleaded guilty under an Alford plea, in which one maintains one’s innocence while admitting the prosecution has enough evidence to find one guilty.
Hunter Biden, the sole surviving son of President Joe Biden, pleaded guilty Thursday in Los Angeles to avoid a trial on nine federal tax charges that include three felonies and six misdemeanors.
The charges involve failing to file and pay $1.4 million in taxes, filing falsely, and claiming false and fraudulent business deductions.
The House Oversight Committee found the Biden family and associates received more than $20 million from overseas, including entities in China and Russia. The indictment alleges Hunter Biden spent this money on drugs and prostitutes while not paying taxes.
“Between 2016 and October 15, 2020, the Defendant spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes,” the indictment said.
Hunter Biden pleaded guilty under an Alford plea, in which one maintains one’s innocence while admitting the prosecution has enough evidence to find one guilty. This is different from a nolo contendere plea, which unlike the Alford plea does not require special court approval, and is often entered in which the defendant neither admits or disputes the charges. While a nolo contendere plea is often viewed as a tacit admission of guilt, the Alford plea is viewed as a relatively lesser admission of guilt. Hunter Biden now avoids a public trial that would involve witnesses detailing his life during the period in which he allegedly committed tax fraud.
Hunter Biden was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for securities fraud under the Trump administration, and was found guilty of felony gun charges for lying about his drug use on a gun purchase form and possessed a firearm while using illicit drugs. Hunter Biden is set to be sentenced for his gun charges, for which he can face up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines, on November 13, a week after the 2024 presidential election.
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In late August, the RCMP seized nearly 40 kilograms of illegal drugs and half-a-million dollars in cash from a home in Prince George, B.C., while responding to a break-and-enter call.
The RCMP linked the drug operation to organized crime and said it was one of the largest busts in the history of the 80,000-person city, which is located in the B.C. heartland.
“It is obvious we can no longer ignore the effects of the B.C. gang conflict in Prince George, as this is a clear indication that more than our local drug traffickers are using Prince George as a base of operations,” Insp. Darin Rappel, interim detachment commander for the Prince George RCMP, told local media at the time.
It is operations such as these that may be contributing to a perception among British Columbians — particularly those in northern parts of the province — that crime rates are rising.
A survey released Sept. 24 shows a majority of respondents believe B.C. crime rates are up — and often unreported — even though official crime data suggest the opposite.
The survey was commissioned by Save Our Streets, a coalition of more than 100 B.C. community and business groups that is calling for non-partisan, province-wide efforts to establish safer communities in the face of widespread mental health and addiction issues and lack of confidence in the justice system.
“I’m glad that we have our data,” said Jess Ketchum, co-founder of Save Our Streets. “[N]ow we can show that, ‘Look, 88 per cent of the public in B.C. believe that crime is going unreported.’”
“[And] the reason that it’s going unreported is that they’ve lost faith in the justice system,” he said.
‘Revolving doors’
Fifty-five per cent of the 1,200 British Columbians who participated in the survey said they believed criminal activity had increased over the past four years. The survey did not specify types of crime, though it mentioned concerns about violence against employees, vandalism and theft.
But crime data tells a different story. B.C. crime rates fell eight per cent during the years 2020 to 2023, according to Statistics Canada.
Underreporting of crime may partly explain the trend. A 2019 nationwide Statistics Canada survey of individuals aged 15 years and older showed only 29 per cent of violent and non-violent incidents were reported to police. Victims often cited the crime being minor, not important, or no one being harmed as reasons for not reporting.
What is clear is many British Columbians perceive crime is being underreported: 88 per cent of all survey respondents said they believe many crimes go unreported.
Perceptions of Crime & Public Safety in British Columbia. Online survey commissioned by Save Our Streets, conducted by Research Co. with a representative sample of 1,200 British Columbians, Sept 9-12, 2024. (Graphic: Alexandra Keeler)
Mario Canseco, president of Research Co., the public research company that conducted the Save Our Streets survey, attributes the gap between actual and perceived crime rates to the heightened visibility of mental health and addiction issues in the media.
“You look at the reports, you watch television news, listen to the radio, or read the newspaper, and you see that something happened, or that there was a high-profile attack,” said Canseco. “That leads people to believe that things are going badly.”
Survey respondents, though, attributed the lack of crime reporting to a lack of confidence in the justice system, with 75 per cent saying they believe an inadequate court system is to blame. Eighty-seven per cent said they supported bail reform to keep repeat offenders in custody while awaiting trial.
“There was support [in the survey results] for judicial reform that would allow for steps to resolve the revolving doors of the justice system when it comes to repeat offenders,” said Ketchum.
Cowboys
The survey highlighted regional differences in perceptions of B.C. crime rates and views on whether addiction-related crime ought to be addressed as a public health or law enforcement issue.
Respondents from Northern B.C., Prince George and the surrounding Cariboo region were more likely to say they believed criminal activity had increased than respondents from southern and coastal regions of the province.
Canseco suggests that drug use and associated crime are now becoming more apparent in smaller communities, as the drug crisis has spread beyond the major cities of Vancouver and Victoria. Residents of these communities may thus see these problems as more novel and alarming, he says.
Eighty-four per cent of respondents in Northern B.C. said they viewed opioid addiction as a health issue, while only 68 per cent of respondents in Prince George/Cariboo shared this perspective.
Respondents from Prince George/Cariboo exhibited the strongest preference for punitive measures regarding addiction and mental health, with nearly unanimous support for harsher penalties, bail reform and increased police presence.
“It’s one of the tougher areas in the province … somewhat more cowboys,” Ketchum said about Prince George and the Cariboo region, where his hometown of Quesnel is located. “I think there’s less tolerance.”
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Differences in each region’s demographic makeup may also help to explain differing sentiments.
Northern B.C. has the highest concentration of B.C.’s Indigenous population, with about 17 per cent of the population identifying as Indigenous, versus eight per cent in Prince George.
Indigenous communities tend to emphasize addiction as a health issue rooted in historical trauma and social inequities, and prefer community-based healing over punitive measures. Indigenous communities are also frequently distrustful of the RCMP, given its history of being used to extend colonial control.
A majority of all survey respondents favoured investing in mental health facilities, drug education campaigns and rehabilitation over harm-reduction strategies such as safer supply programs, supervised injection sites and drug decriminalization.
“People want to see a more holistic approach [to the drug crisis],” said Canseco. “[T]he voter who hasn’t been exposed to something like [harm reduction], and who may be reacting to what they see on social media, is having a harder time understanding whether this is actually going to help.”
“I was pleased to see the level of support for more investments in recovery, more investments in treatment, around the province,” said Ketchum.
But Ketchum says the preference of some respondents for punitive approaches to B.C. crime rates – particularly in the province’s more northern regions — worries him.
“I believe that if governments don’t respond adequately now, and this is allowed to escalate, that there’ll be more and more instances of people taking these things into their own hands.”
This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.
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St. Gabriel Catholic Mission in northern Alberta was burned to the ground
Jamil Jivani called church burnings an attack on religious freedom and said Bill C 4-11 would increase the penalty for crimes of arson by adding the targeting of churches as an aggravating factor in sentencing for these acts of destruction.
A Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP urged support from his political opponents for a bill that would give stiffer penalties to arsonists caught burning churches down.
“This is a very serious issue. It is not just an attack on churches as buildings, it’s an attack on communities, on families and an attack on religious freedom in Canada,” CPC MP Jamil Jivani said in an X video post on October 2.
“We need to see action, we need the other political parties to realize that this is a serious problem. We need support behind Bill C -411, and we need to do more to protect churches in Canada.”
In the span of less than one week, as reported by LifeSiteNews, two more Christian churches were reduced to ash piles, one Catholic and the other Anglican.
Jivani called out the fires as attacks on freedom, saying the “pattern of destruction that we have observed of church after church after church being burned to the ground in Canada” must stop.
“Why isn’t the government doing anything about this problem?” he asked. “Well, let me tell you, conservatives have put forward legislation on this issue. Bill C 4-11 would increase the penalty for crimes of arson against churches by adding the targeting of churches as an aggravating factor in sentencing for arson crimes.”
Jivani observed that Conservatives have not seen “other political parties support this Bill C-411.”
“The Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc, all of them continue to be silent on this problem. This pattern of destruction we have not seen the other political party support our legislation, Bill C-411, and they’re not even offering their own legislation,” he said.
“We need support behind Bill C-411, and we need to do more to protect churches in Canada.”
Bill C-411, or “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (arson — wildfires and places of worship)” was introduced by CPC MP Marc Dalton in June.
The law, if passed, would create specific criminal offenses for setting fires to churches and for starting wildfires.
Under the new legislation, arson that directly target churches or other places of worship would be punishable by “imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years and to a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of five years” for the first offense.
“For each subsequent offence, imprisonment for life and to a minimum punishment for a term of seven years,” the legislation stated.
The legislation also outlines consequences for starting wildfires of fines up to $250,000 and life imprisonment.
Since the spring of 2021, 112 churches, most of them Catholic, have beenburned to the ground, vandalized or defiled in Canada.
The church burnings started after the mainstream media and the federal government ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the now-closed residential schools in Canada.
LifeSiteNews reported last week that Leah Gazan, backbencher MP from the socialist New Democratic Party (NDP), brought forth a bill that seeks to criminalize the denial of the unproven claim that the residential school system once operating in Canada was a “genocide.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews in August, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet said it will expand a multimillion-dollar fund geared toward documenting thus far unfounded claims that hundreds of young children died and were clandestinely buried at the residential schools.
Canada’s Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations confirmed it spent millions searching for “unmarked graves” at a residential school but turned up no human remains.
Canadian indigenous residential schools were run by the Catholic Church and other Christian churches but were mandated and set up by the federal government. They were open from the late 19th century until the last school closed in 1996.
While there were indeed some Catholics who committed serious abuses against native children, the unproved “mass graves” narrative has led to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment since 2021.
