Joe Biden pardons Hunter’s gun-wielding, tax-delinquent son, despite a promise not to
US President Joe Biden on Sunday night pardoned his son, Hunter, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence on gun and tax charges and reversing his past promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency to benefit his family.
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 pleading guilty to gun and tax charges, and less than two months before president-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.
It includes the legal saga of the president’s son, who publicly disclosed that he was under federal investigation in December 2020 — a month after Joe Biden’s 2020 victory — and is wreaking havoc on 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. .
In a statement released Sunday evening, Biden said, “I believe in the justice system, but as I struggle with this, I believe that dirty politics has infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice.”
The executive pardon 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.”
In June, Biden ruled that his son would be pardoned or commuted, telling reporters during his son’s Delaware gun trial, “I abide by the jury’s decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”
As recently as November 8, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a pardon or sympathy for the younger Biden, saying, “We’ve been asked that question many times. Our answer is no.”
‘Hunter was singled out,’ said the president
The elder Biden publicly stood by his only living son as Hunter became a drug addict and threw his family’s life into chaos before getting back on track in recent years. The president’s political rivals have long used Hunter Biden’s many failings as a political genius against his father: At one point, lawmakers released photos of the president’s drugged son naked in a seedy hotel.
The son of the American president Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, says that although his family helped him find opportunities, he denies any inappropriate behavior in doing foreign work in Ukraine and China.
House Republicans also sought to use Biden’s younger years of dubious foreign business in an already doomed effort to impeach his father, who has long denied being involved in his son’s dealings or benefiting from them in any way.
“The charges against him came after many of my political opponents in Congress incited them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden said. “No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s crimes would come to any other conclusion than that Hunter was only nominated because he is my son.”
“I hope that the American people will understand why my father and the President will reach this decision,” added Biden, saying that he made this decision this weekend.
The president spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Mass., with Hunter and his family, and was set to head to Angola later Sunday in what may be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2025.
Legal issues
Hunter was convicted in June in federal court in Delaware of three counts of purchasing a gun in 2018 in which, prosecutors say, he lied on a federal form that he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.
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 unexpectedly agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor and criminal charges hours after jury selection began.
David Weiss, the US attorney appointed by Trump in Delaware who negotiated the plea deal, was then appointed as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to have more independence in the prosecution of the president’s son.
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 a 17-year prison sentence, while gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison — although federal sentencing guidelines were expected to carry far less time, and it’s possible he could avoid prison time altogether.
Republican lawmakers have blasted former Twitter executives for allegedly suppressing negative content about US President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in a hearing that suggests the GOP is making good on its promise to investigate Biden and his family.
Hunter Biden was due to be sentenced this month on two federal charges, brought by a special counsel after a deal with prosecutors that might have saved him from prison fell apart under the judge’s scrutiny. Under the original deal, he had to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and would have avoided prosecution on the gun charge as long as he stayed in trouble for two years.
But the hearing was brought to an early end last year when a judge raised concerns about the unusual aspects of the deal. The younger Biden was then charged with two counts.
Hunter Biden’s legal team this weekend released a 52-page white paper titled, The Political Prosecutions of Hunter Biden, describing the president’s son as “a man who attacked and harmed his father, as a candidate in 2020 and later as president.”
Lawyers for the younger Biden have long said prosecutors are yielding to political pressure to indict the president’s son amid intense criticism from Trump and other Republicans for what they call a “deal of love”.
‘The justice system needs to be fixed’: Trump spokesman
Rep. James Comer, one of the Republican chairmen leading the congressional investigation into Biden’s family, criticized the president’s pardon, saying that the evidence against Hunter was “simply flimsy.”
“It’s sad that, rather than come clean about decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer said on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
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.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump – who has promised to overhaul and install integrity throughout the Justice Department after being prosecuted for his role in trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election – said in a statement, “That justice system needs to be fixed. And due process needs to be restored to all Americans, which is exactly what it is.” President Trump will do as he returns to the White House with the greatest authority of the American people.”
‘Mistakes on darkest days’
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 publicly humiliate and embarrass me and my family through political games,” the younger Biden said.
Hunter Biden’s legal team filed Sunday night in Los Angeles and Delaware to ask the judges holding his gun and tax charges to immediately dismiss them, saying he was pardoned.
A spokesman for Weiss, the special counsel who brought the charges, did not return messages seeking comment Sunday night.
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