WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, on Sunday night, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence on a federal gun charge and tax evasion and reversing his past promises not to use the unusual powers of the presidency for personal gain. of his family members.
The Democratic president had previously said he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence after he was convicted in two cases in Delaware and California. The move comes just weeks before Hunter Biden receives his sentence after his gun conviction and guilty plea on tax charges, and less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.
It includes the legal saga of the younger Biden, who publicly disclosed that he was under federal investigation in December 2020 — a month after his father’s 2020 victory — and undercuts the elder Biden’s legacy. Biden, who repeatedly promised the American people that he would restore norms and respect for the law after Trump’s first term, ended up using his position to help his son, breaking his public promise to the American people that he would not do such a thing. .
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In June, Biden ruled that his son would be pardoned or commuted, telling reporters during his son’s Delaware gun trial, “I follow the jury’s decision. I will do that and I will not forgive him.”
As recently as Nov. 8, days after Trump’s victory, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a pardon or clemency for the younger Biden, saying, “We’ve been asked that question many times. Our answer is a firm, which means no. “
In a statement released Sunday evening, Biden said, “Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” saying his son’s prosecution was politically motivated and a “miscarriage of justice.”
“The charges against him came only after many of my political opponents in Congress encouraged them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden said. “No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s crimes can come to any other conclusion than that Hunter was only appointed because he is my son.”
“I hope the American people will understand why my father and the President will make this decision,” added Biden, saying he made the decision this weekend. The president spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Massachusetts with Hunter and his family, and was due to leave later Sunday for what will likely be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2025.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June in a Delaware federal court of three counts of buying a gun in 2018 when, prosecutors say, he lied on a federal form that he was not an illegal drug user or addict.
He was due to appear in court in September in a California lawsuit accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. But he agreed to plead guilty to contempt of court and a charge of aggravated assault by surprise hours after jury selection began.
Hunter Biden said he is pleading guilty in this case to spare his family the pain and shame after the gun case revealed painful details about his struggle with cocaine addiction.
Tax charges carry up to 17 years in prison and gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, although federal sentencing guidelines were expected to carry much less time and possibly avoid prison time altogether.
The amnesty covers not only those crimes, but also any other “crimes against the United States that you committed or may have committed or participated in during the period from January 1, 2014 to December 1, 2024.”
Biden is not the first president to use his pardon power to benefit those close to him.
In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, his son-in-law’s father, Jared Kushner, and several associates convicted in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump this week announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the US ambassador to France in his next administration.
Hunter Biden said in an emailed statement that he will never take the relief he’s been given for granted and vowed to rebuild his life “to help those who are still sick and suffering.”
“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the most difficult days of my addiction – mistakes that were used to humiliate and embarrass me and my family through political games,” the younger Biden said.
A spokesman for special counsel David Weiss, who brought the charges, did not return messages seeking comment Sunday night.
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Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Nantucket, Massachusetts contributed to this report.
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