Biden pardons his son Hunter despite previous pledges

Washington: President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions and reversing his past promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency to benefit his family members.

The Democratic president previously said he would not pardon his son, Hunter, nor commute his sentence after his convictions in two cases in Delaware and California. Biden’s turnaround comes weeks before Hunter was to be sentenced after his trial conviction in the gun case and guilty plea on tax charges, and less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.

Joe Biden had previously said he would not pardon son Hunter (left). Credit: AP

Biden’s move caps a long-running legal saga for the president’s son, who publicly disclosed he was under federal investigation in December 2020 – a month after Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory, and casts a cloud over the elder Biden’s legacy.

Biden, who time and again pledged to Americans that he would restore norms and respect for the rule of law after Trump’s first term in office, ultimately used his position to help his son, breaking his public pledge to Americans that he would do no such thing.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump called Biden’s pardon “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”

In a statement released on Sunday evening (Monday AEDT), Biden said: “Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter”, and alleged that the prosecution of his son was politically motivated and a “miscarriage of justice”.

“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.

“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 said he made the decision at the weekend. The president spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Massachusetts, with Hunter and his family.

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.”

Joe and Hunter Biden in downtown Nantucket on Friday. Credit: AP

As recently as November 8, days after Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris, 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.”

Hunter 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 was to stand trial in September in the California case accusing him of failing to pay at least $US1.4 million in taxes. But he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanour and felony charges in a surprise move hours after jury selection was set to begin.

Hunter 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.

Hunter Biden with Jill Biden (left) and his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, outside court after a jury found him guilty of gun charges in Delaware in June.Credit: AP

The president, whose son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015, said his opponents had sought to break Hunter with selective prosecution.

He said people were almost never brought to trial for felony charges over how they filled out a gun form, and said others, who were late in paying taxes because of addiction but paid them back with interest and penalties as his son had, typically received “non-criminal resolutions” to their cases.

The tax charges carry a maximum penalty of up to 17 years in jail 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 Hunter would avoid prison entirely.

Credit: Matt Golding

David Weiss, the Trump-appointed US 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 was supposed to be sentenced this month in the two federal cases, which the special counsel brought after a plea deal with prosecutors, that would probably have spared him prison time, fell apart under scrutiny by a judge. Under the original deal, Hunter was supposed to plead guilty to misdemeanour tax offences and would have avoided prosecution in the gun case as long as he stayed out of trouble for two years.

But the plea hearing unravelled last year when the judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. Hunter was subsequently indicted in the two cases.

The sweeping pardon covers not just those offences, but also any other “offences 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”.

Hunter’s legal team this weekend released a 52-page white paper titled “The political prosecutions of Hunter Biden” which described the president’s son as a “surrogate to attack and injure his father, both as a candidate in 2020 and later as president”.

His 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.

Representative James Comer, one of the Republican chairman leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, blasted the president’s decision to issue his son a 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.

In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump over the weekend announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the US envoy to France in his next administration.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, who has pledged to dramatically overhaul and install loyalists across the Justice Department after he was prosecuted for his role in trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, said in a statement: “That system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what president Trump will do as he returns to the White House with an overwhelming mandate from the American people.”

Hunter said in an emailed statement that he would never take for granted the relief granted to him and vowed to devote the life he has rebuilt “to helping those who are still sick and suffering”.

“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” he said.

Hunter Biden’s legal team filed on Sunday night in Los Angeles and Delaware, asking the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.

A spokesperson for Weiss did not respond to messages seeking comment on Sunday night.

AP, Reuters

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