President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, sparing the younger Biden from potential prison time on federal gun and tax felony charges, and also reneged on his previous promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency to benefit his family.
The Democratic president had previously said that he would not pardon his son or reduce his sentence after his conviction in the two cases in Delaware and California. The move Sunday night comes weeks before Hunter Biden is scheduled to receive his sentence following his gun conviction and guilty plea to tax charges, and less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House. .
It culminates a long-running legal saga for the younger Biden, who publicly revealed he was under federal investigation in December 2020 — a month after his father’s 2020 victory — and casts a pall over the elder Biden’s legacy.
Biden, who repeatedly pledged to Americans that he would restore norms and respect for the rule of law after Trump’s first term, ultimately used his position to help his son, violating his public pledge to Americans that he would do no such thing. .
In a statement issued Sunday evening, Biden said: “I believe in the judicial system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe that raw politics have infected this process and led to a miscarriage of justice.”
The president’s broad pardon covers not only gun and tax crimes against the younger Biden, but also any other crimes against the United States that he committed, may have committed, or participated in during the period from January 1, 2014, through December 1. “, 2024.”
In June, Biden flatly ruled out issuing a pardon or commutation to his son, telling reporters as his son faced trial in a gun case in Delaware: “I stand by the jury’s decision. I will do that and I will not forgive him.”
On 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 this question many times. Our answer is: No.”
The elder Biden publicly stood by his only living son when Hunter descended into a 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 countless missteps as a political cudgel against his father: At one hearing, lawmakers showed photos of the president’s drug-addicted son half-naked in a seedy hotel.
House Republicans also sought to exploit Biden’s younger years of questionable foreign business ventures in a since-abandoned effort to impeach his father, who has long denied being involved in or in any way benefiting from his son’s dealings.
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“The charges in his case came only after many of my political opponents in Congress incited them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden said in his statement. “No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases could reach any conclusion other than that Hunter was selected solely because he is my son.”
“I hope Americans understand why Father and President made this decision,” Biden added, claiming he made the decision this weekend.
The president spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Massachusetts, with Hunter and his family, and left for Angola later Sunday in what may be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office on January 20, 2025.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June in a 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 using or addicted to illegal drugs.
He was scheduled to stand trial in September in the California case on charges 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 began.
David Weiss, the Trump-appointed US attorney in Delaware who negotiated the plea deal, was later appointed as special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to gain more independence in the prosecution of the president’s son.
Hunter Biden said he pleaded guilty in this case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after the gun trial revealed salacious details about his struggle with cocaine addiction.
The tax charges carry a penalty of up to 17 years behind bars, and the gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, although federal sentencing guidelines are expected to require much less time and he could have avoided prison time altogether.
Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month in the two federal cases, which were brought by the private counsel after a plea deal with prosecutors that likely would have spared him prison time collapsed under the judge’s scrutiny. Under the original deal, Hunter was supposed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax crimes and would have avoided prosecution in the weapons case as long as he stayed out of trouble for two years.
But the hearing quickly collapsed last year when a judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. The younger Biden was subsequently charged in both 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 “an alternative to attacking and wounding his father, both as a candidate in 2020 and as president later.”
Lawyers for the younger Biden have long argued that prosecutors bowed to political pressure to charge the president’s son amid intense criticism from Trump and other Republicans of what they called a “sweetheart” plea deal.
Rep. James Comer, one of the top Republicans leading Congress’ investigations into the Biden family, criticized the president’s pardon, saying the evidence against Hunter was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“It is unfortunate that instead of acknowledging decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Coomer said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Biden is not the first president to use pardon powers to benefit those close to him.
In the final weeks of his presidency, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as several allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Over the weekend, Trump announced plans to nominate Kushner Sr. to be the US envoy to France in his next administration.
Trump, who pledged to make sweeping reforms and install loyalists at the Justice Department after his impeachment for his role in trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, said in a social media post on Sunday that pardoning Hunter Biden was “such a violation and miscarriage.” “Justice.”
“Does Joe’s pardon for Hunter include the J-6 hostages, who have been imprisoned for years?” Trump asked, referring to those convicted in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
Hunter Biden said in an email statement that he would never take his relief for granted, and pledged to dedicate the life he has rebuilt “to help 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 were exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sports,” the younger Biden said.
Hunter Biden’s legal team on Sunday night in both Los Angeles and Delaware filed a motion with the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.
A Vice spokesperson did not respond to messages seeking comment Sunday night.
NBC News was first to report that Biden is expected to pardon his son on Sunday.
Associated Press writer Josh Bock in Nantucket, Massachusetts, contributed to this report.
