United States President, Joe Biden, has pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, saving him from a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions.
The move goes against Biden’s previous promises not to use his presidential powers to benefit his family.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June of three felonies for purchasing a gun in 2018 while lying about his drug use.
He was also set to stand trial in September for failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes, but instead pleaded guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges.
The pardon has sparked controversy, with many criticising Biden for breaking his promise not to use his powers to help his family. This decision also raises questions about the rule of law and the use of presidential powers.
This is not the first time a president has pardoned a family member or close associate; however, the timing and circumstances of this pardon have raised eyebrows and sparked debate.
Biden in a statement released on Sunday evening said, “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
The president’s sweeping pardon covers not just the gun and tax offenses against the younger Biden, but also any other “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”
In June, Biden categorically ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling reporters as his son faced trial in the Delaware gun case, “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”
As recently as November 8, days after Trump’s victory, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ruled out a pardon or clemency for the younger Biden, saying, “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no.”
The elder Biden has publicly stood by his only living son as Hunter descended into serious drug addiction and threw his family life into turmoil before getting back on track in recent years. The president’s political rivals have long used Hunter Biden’s myriad mistakes as a political cudgel against his father: In one hearing, lawmakers displayed photos of the drug-addled president’s son half-naked in a seedy hotel.
House Republicans also sought to use the younger Biden’s years of questionable overseas business ventures in a since-abandoned attempt to impeach his father, who has long denied involvement in his son’s dealings or benefiting from them in any way.
“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden said in his statement. “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son.”
“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” Biden added, claiming he made the decision this weekend.
The president had spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Massachusetts, with Hunter and his family, and was set to depart for Angola later Sunday on what may be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2025.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June in Delaware federal court of three felonies for purchasing a gun in 2018 when, prosecutors said, he lied on a federal form by claiming he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.
He had been set to stand trial in September in the California case accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. But he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges in a surprise move hours after jury selection was set to begin.
David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware who negotiated the plea deal, was subsequently named a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to have more autonomy over the prosecution of the president’s son.
Hunter Biden said he was pleading guilty in that case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after the gun trial aired salacious details about his struggles with a crack cocaine addiction.
The tax charges carry up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible he would have avoided prison time entirely.
Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month in the two federal cases, which the special counsel brought after a plea deal with prosecutors that likely would have spared him prison time fell apart under scrutiny by a judge. Under the original deal, Hunter was supposed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses and and would have avoided prosecution in the gun case as long as he stayed out of trouble for two years.
But the plea hearing quickly unraveled last year when the judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. The younger Biden was subsequently indicted in the two cases.
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 “surrogate to attack and injure his father, both as a candidate in 2020 and later as president.”
The younger Biden’s lawyers have long argued that prosecutors bowed to political pressure to indict the president’s son amid heavy criticism by Trump and other Republicans of what they called the “sweetheart” plea deal.
Rep. James Comer, one of the Republican chairmen leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, blasted the president’s pardon, saying that the evidence against Hunter was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer said on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.
Biden is hardly the first president to deploy his pardon powers to benefit those close to him.