WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s son Hunter will plead guilty to federal tax offenses but avoid full prosecution on a separate gun charge in a deal with the Justice Department that likely spares him time behind bars.

Hunter Biden, 53, will plead guilty to the misdemeanor tax offenses as part of an agreement made public Tuesday. The agreement will also avert prosecution on a felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user, as long as he adheres to conditions agreed to in court.

The deal ends a long-running Justice Department investigation into the taxes and foreign business dealings of President Biden’s second son, who has acknowledged struggling with addiction following the 2015 death of his brother Beau Biden. It also averts a trial that would have generated days or weeks of distracting headlines for a White House that has strenuously sought to keep its distance from the Justice Department.

The president, asked about the development at a meeting on another subject in California, said simply, “I’m very proud of my son.” The White House counsel’s office said in a statement that the president and first lady Jill Biden “love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life.”

While the agreement requires the younger Biden to admit guilt, the deal is narrowly focused on tax and weapons violations rather than anything broader or tied to the Democratic president. Nonetheless, former President Donald Trump and other Republicans continued to try to use the case to shine an unflattering spotlight on Joe Biden and to raise questions about the independence of the Biden Justice Department.

Trump, challenging President Biden in the 2024 presidential race, likened the agreement to a “mere traffic ticket,” adding, “Our system is BROKEN!”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy compared the outcome to the Trump documents case now heading toward federal court and said, “If you are the president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another presidential challenger, used the same term.

Two people familiar with the investigation said the Justice Department would recommend 24 months of probation for the tax charges, meaning Hunter Biden will not face time in prison. But the decision to go along with any deal is up to the judge. The people were not authorized to speak publicly by name and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

He is to plead guilty to failing to pay more than $100,000 in taxes on over $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018, charges that carry a maximum possible penalty of a year in prison. The back taxes have since been paid, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

The gun charge states that Hunter Biden possessed a handgun, a Colt Cobra .38 Special, for 11 days in October 2018 despite knowing he was a drug user. The rarely filed count carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, but the Justice Department said Hunter Biden had reached a pretrial agreement. This likely means as long as he adheres to the conditions, the case will be wiped from his record.

Christopher Clark, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said in a statement that it was his understanding that the five-year investigation had now been resolved.

“I know Hunter believes it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life,” Clark said. “He looks forward to continuing his recovery and moving forward.”

The agreement comes as the Justice Department pursues perhaps the most consequential case in its history against Trump, the first former president to face federal criminal charges. The resolution of Hunter Biden’s case comes just days after a 37-count indictment against Trump in relation to accusations of mishandling classified documents on his Florida estate. It was filed by a special counsel, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to avoid any potential conflict of interest in the Justice Department.

That indictment has nevertheless brought an onslaught of Republican criticism of “politicization” of the Justice Department. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans continue to pursue their own investigations into nearly every facet of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including foreign payments.

Rep. James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the younger Biden is “getting away with a slap on the wrist,” despite investigations in Congress that GOP lawmakers say show — but have not yet provided evidence of — a pattern of corruption involving the family’s financial ties.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, on the other hand, said the case was thoroughly investigated over five years by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Delaware prosecutor appointed by Trump.

Resolution of the case, Coons said, “brings to a close a five-year investigation, despite the elaborate conspiracy theories spun by many who believed there would be much more to this.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was scheduled to campaign with the president Tuesday evening, reaffirmed his support for Biden’s reelection.

“Hunter changes nothing,” Newsom told the AP on Tuesday.

Misdemeanor tax cases aren’t common, and most that are filed end with a sentence that doesn’t include time behind bars, said Caroline Ciraolo, an attorney who served as head of the Justice Department’s tax division from 2015 to 2017. An expected federal conviction “is not a slap on the wrist,” she said.

Gun possession charges that aren’t associated with another firearm crime are also uncommon, said Keith Rosen, a past head of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware. For people without a significant criminal history, the total number of multiple types of illegal possession cases filed every year in Delaware amounts to a handful, he said.

The Justice Department investigation into the president’s son burst into public view in December 2020, one month after the 2020 election, when Hunter Biden revealed that he had received a subpoena as part of the department’s scrutiny of his taxes. The subpoena sought information on the younger Biden’s business dealings with a number of entities, including Burisma, a Ukraine gas company on whose board he sat. A federal grand jury in Delaware heard testimony related to his taxes and foreign business transactions.

In February 2021, the department sought the resignation of most Trump-era U.S. attorneys, as is customary in a new presidential administration, but made a point of noting that it was leaving Weiss in place as a way to ensure continuity in the probe. Weiss said in a June 7 letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan that he had “ultimate authority” over the investigation.

At a congressional hearing last August, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the investigation remained active out of the bureau’s Baltimore field office and said it was a matter that “I expect our folks to pursue aggressively.”

Garland pledged not to interfere in the probe at another hearing in March. An unnamed IRS special agent, though, later alleged mishandling of the investigation in a letter to Congress in which he sought whistleblower protection.

The younger Biden joined the board of Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then Barack Obama’s vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine. Trump and his allies have long argued, without evidence, that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine influenced the Obama administration’s policies.

Years before the case was brought, Hunter Biden surfaced as a central character in the first impeachment case against Trump, who in an apparent bid to boost his own reelection bid had asked Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a telephone call to announce an investigation into the younger Biden.

Republicans later sought to make Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine a prominent issue during the 2020 presidential election.

In October of that year, the New York Post reported that it had received from Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani a copy of a hard drive of a laptop that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved.

The story was greeted with skepticism due to questions about the laptop’s origins, including Giuliani’s involvement, and because top officials in the Trump administration had already warned that Russia was working to denigrate Joe Biden ahead of the November election. No evidence has emerged of any Russian connection to the laptop or to emails found on the device.

BERLIN (AP) — Police in southern Germany said Monday that an American tourist who was pushed into a ravine during an attack near Neuschwanstein castle in which her 21-year-old friend was killed has been released from the hospital.

The 22-year-old woman had tried to stop a 30-year-old Michigan man from allegedly assaulting her friend after luring them onto a trail leading to a viewpoint overlooking the famous castle, which draws more than a million tourists every year.

The older woman fell nearly 50 meters (165 feet) down a steep slope but was able to leave the hospital Friday, police spokesperson Holger Stabik said.

Both women were recovered by mountain rescuers shortly after the attack Wednesday, but the younger victim later died of her injuries in the hospital.

The suspect, whose name like those of the victims wasn’t released due to German privacy rules, was arrested shortly after the incident. He is being held on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and attempted sexual assault.

Stabik said police have received about two dozen photos and videos on a specially created website and are appealing for anyone with additional images of the suspect and victims to come forward.

Prosecutors said the women did not know the man until the incident.

A spokesperson for the prosecutors’ office in Kempten, Thomas Hörmann, said the investigation into the incident is continuing but it may be three or four months before authorities decide on an indictment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s bid to appease Republican hard-liners and get the House moving again after a recent party rebellion on the floor has some Democrats warning of a difficult road ahead when it comes to passing legislation that will keep the government running.

Republicans teed up votes this past week on guns and on censuring one of former President Donald Trump’s most prominent critics, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Those votes helped get the House moving again, though the latter effort failed, with Schiff helped by some 20 Republicans.

The most consequential move of the week, however, was an announcement from GOP leadership that arrived with little fanfare. Republicans said they plan to pursue appropriations bills, which fund government programs and agencies, with less spending than the top-line numbers they agreed to in a deal with the White House last month. That compromise avoided what would have been an unprecedented federal default.

McCarthy argued that the numbers he negotiated with the White House amount to a cap and “you can always do less.” GOP Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, who leads the House Appropriations Committee, followed with a statement that said she would seek to limit nondefense spending at 2022 budget levels, saying the debt agreement “set a top-line spending cap -– a ceiling, not a floor.”

The announcements delighted Republicans who had criticized McCarthy, R-Calif., and opposed the debt ceiling legislation because they felt that agreement allowed too much spending. But it drew immediate pushback from Democrats who say an attempt to circumvent the debt ceiling agreement’s top-line numbers effectively guarantees a standoff with the Senate and White House and possibly even a damaging government stoppage when funding expires this fall.

“It is a prelude to a shutdown — what they are engineering,” said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

The emerging dynamic raises the potential for another round of economy-rattling brinkmanship in Washington just months after lawmakers narrowly avoided a damaging federal default.

Partial government shutdowns have become increasingly common in the modern era, with the longest coming under President Donald Trump as he demanded money for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. With President Joe Biden facing down the Republican-controlled House as he runs for reelection in 2024 and some conservatives openly dismissive of the damage a shutdown can cause, the spending fight appears nearly certain to escalate.

The tension created by the GOP’s pursuit of more non-defense spending cuts was evident during hearings held Wednesday and Thursday of the House Appropriations panel.

Democrats accused House Republicans of going back on their word. “Do you think any of us would have made a deal if we thought your ‘22 number was the deal?” said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. “What kind of deal is that? What kind of respect for yourselves is that?

“You knew that wasn’t a ceiling,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. “Traditionally, that’s where we are starting. Caps are not ceilings in our world. They are a starting point and then we negotiate from those numbers we have agreed to. That’s how it has always been.”

But Republicans said McCarthy was clear during negotiations that spending had to come down from current levels.

“We can try to fool the American people with smoke and mirrors and pretend, but the speaker was clear. We are in a debt crisis in this country,” said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md.

Under the debt ceiling agreement, the White House said nondefense spending was expected to be roughly flat in the next budget year and increase by 1% the following year. Defense spending would increase by about 3.3% next year and 1% the following year. The agreement to curb discretionary spending does not include programs like Medicare and Social Security, which are considered mandatory spending.

A few Republicans have urged leadership not to bend to a minority within the conference.

“I think we’ve just got to be really careful not to allow, you know, a small portion of our conference to continually be chipping away at previously agreed upon issues,” said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark. “That top-line number was agreed to in the (debt-ceiling bill.) They may not like it. They voiced their displeasure last week. They kind of shut the House down, but we’ve got work to do. We need to be doing it.”

Republicans only have a five-seat majority in the House, which magnifies the power that a small bloc can have. It took just 11 members, mostly members of the House Freedom Caucus, to stall House votes on legislation in early June and send lawmakers home early. One of those 11, Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., said moving to 2022 spending levels for nondefense programs will be good for Republican candidates in next year’s general election because that’s what voters are demanding.

“Democrats have no interest in cutting spending,” Good said. “They have to be forced to do so. We should have used the debt ceiling to force them to cut spending. We should use the appropriations process to force them to cut spending. We shouldn’t fear a government shutdown. Most of what we do up here is bad anyway.”

Many senators, Democrat and Republican, did not seem as concerned about the possibility of a shutdown.

“This crowd that is giving McCarthy trouble is irrelevant for purposes of getting appropriations bills passed,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “When it comes to appropriations bills, you have to create a coalition that doesn’t include the Freedom Caucus.”

“In the end, I think we’ll resolve these issues,” said Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.