U.S. President Joe Biden has pardoned his son Hunter, who was facing sentencing this month for gun and tax offenses and could have been imprisoned for years.
Biden had for months pledged not to pardon his 54-year-old son, a lawyer who for years was caught up in cocaine addiction as his life spiraled out of control.
But the president said in a statement late Sunday that Hunter Biden’s prosecution was selective and politically motivated, aimed at undercutting his reelection campaign before he dropped out of the race in July for another four-year term.
“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.
Hunter Biden was convicted of three felonies in June for a 2018 gun purchase. Prosecutors said he falsely claimed on a federal form to not be illegally using or addicted to drugs.
He also pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in a case where he was accused of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes.
He faced up to 17 years in federal prison in the tax case during a scheduled sentencing hearing in Los Angeles on December 16, although sentencing experts said that most likely as a first-time offender, he would have served no more than 36 months behind bars.
Hunter Biden was facing a stiffer maximum sentence, 25 years, in the gun case but was more likely, based on precedent in similar cases, to be handed a much shorter sentence, perhaps up to 16 months during a hearing scheduled in Delaware for December 13.
The president’s action Sunday pardoned Hunter Biden in both cases, as well as any offense he “has committed or may have committed or taken part” from Jan. 1, 2014, to Jan. 1, 2024.
Hunter Biden said in a statement, "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."
The president said in his statement that he hopes “Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.”
“For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: 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 – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further,” Biden said.
President-elect Donald Trump criticized the move, calling it “such an abuse and miscarriage of justice” compared to hundreds of Trump supporters who have been imprisoned after being convicted for an array of offenses stemming from the rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while they tried to block Congress from certifying that Biden had defeated Trump’s reelection bid in the 2020 campaign.
Trump has said he will consider pardoning many of the rioters when he takes power again on January 20 after winning the November presidential election. Some of the rioters have already served their sentences, but many are still in prison for years to come, while other trials have yet to occur.
Trump, in the late stages of his first term in office, pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was convicted on tax offenses and other charges. On Saturday, Trump said he intends to nominate the elder Kushner to be the U.S. ambassador to France.
Trump also pardoned one of his former national security advisers, Michael Flynn, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former chief strategist Steve Bannon and campaign aide George Papadopoulos, among others.
Reactions to President Biden pardoning his son varied across the U.S. political landscape and not always predictably along political party lines as is usually the case when contentious decisions are announced.
Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, said that while he understood the “natural desire” of Biden wanting to help his son, he said, “I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country. This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.”
Greg Stanton, a Democratic congressman from Arizona, said, “I respect President Biden, but I think he got this one wrong. This wasn’t a politically motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies and was convicted by a jury of his peers."
Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, posted on X that he was “shocked” by the pardon because the elder Biden “said many, many times he wouldn’t & I believed him. Shame on me."
But Eric Holder, a Democrat who was the U.S. attorney general under former President Barack Obama, said the president’s son was only prosecuted because his last name was Biden. He said no U.S. attorney “would have charged this case given the underlying facts.”
Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.
