Joe Biden has issued “a full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter Biden covering convictions on federal gun and tax charges, the US president said in a statement released by the White House on Sunday.
The decision marks a reversal for the president, who had repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his sentence.
Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on federal gun charges on 12 December. He was scheduled to be sentenced in the tax case four days later.
In the statement, Joe Biden said that he had long maintained that he would “not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted”.
But, he argued, “it is clear that Hunter was treated differently”, adding that the charges in the case “came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election”.
Hunter Biden was found guilty in Delaware in June on three felony counts relating to his purchase of a handgun in 2018. He had written on his gun-purchase form, falsely, that he was not a user of illicit drugs.
He pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles in September, opting for an “open” plea, where a defendant pleads guilty to the charges and leaves his sentencing fate in the hands of the judge.
The tax charges carried up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges were punishable by up to 25 years, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible the president’s son would have avoided prison time entirely.
The pardon covers all “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, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted”.
Joe Biden said on Sunday evening that his son had been prosecuted when “without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form”.
He noted in the statement that “those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions”.
Biden accused his political opponents of singling out his 54-year-old son.
“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 – and that is wrong,” he said.
“There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”
Biden departed for Angola later on Sunday evening for what may be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office.
Speculation had been mounting that the president would issue a pardon since Hunter was seen with his father in Nantucket over the Thanksgiving break.
Donald Trump had said in October that he would not be surprised if Hunter Biden were to receive a pardon.
“I wouldn’t take it off the books,” Trump said. “See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously … And Hunter’s a bad boy.”
On Sunday, Trump reacted with outrage, writing on his social network: “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Just one day earlier, though, Trump had reminded Americans that he himself had previously used the pardon power to wipe away convictions of those close to him. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. On Saturday, Trump announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the US ambassador to France.
Republicans have long zeroed in on Hunter Biden’s difficulties – questions around lucrative foreign consultancies, broken relationships and a crack cocaine addiction – in an effort to politically damage his father.
A laptop Hunter Biden left in a Delaware repair shop that made its way into Republican hands formed a scandal in the closing days of the 2020 election. Republicans claimed that the so-called “laptop from hell”, which featured images of Hunter posing with guns, sex workers and crack cocaine, was suppressed by media favorable to Democrats.
Hunter Biden later published a book, Beautiful Things: a Memoir, that detailed his struggles as a drug addict. The Biden family denied more serious accusations that Hunter’s profitable financial arrangements with businesspeople in Ukraine and China amounted to graft using the family name.
James Comer, one of the Republicans leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, denounced the pardon. “The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people,” Comer wrote on X. “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.”
“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,” Hunter Biden said in a statement on Sunday, adding he had remained sober for more than five years.
“In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages … I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”
Hunter Biden’s legal team filed Sunday night in both Los Angeles and Delaware asking the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.
In the statement announcing the pardon, Joe Biden said that for his “entire career” he had followed a simple principle: to tell the truth to the American people.
“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. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.”
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
