The day so far
Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden, who pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges and was convicted of firearms charges, has been met with both condemnation and support. Critics and allies have weighed in on political implications, precedents set, and how the move might impact the outgoing president’s legacy.
Here’s what else has happened today:
Donald Trump has named the billionaire investment banker Warren A Stephens – who poured millions of dollars into GOP coffers during the last election cycle – as his nomination as ambassador to Britain.
A “previously undisclosed whistleblower report” on Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, highlighted allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct, which forced him to step down from two non-profits he ran.
American-Israeli soldier Omer Neutra, who was thought to have been a hostage in Gaza, is now feared to have died in the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October 2023.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden will announce more pardons and grants of clemency in the final weeks before he leaves office.
Updated
Trump names billionaire investment banker as US ambassador to the UK
Trump has named the billionaire investment banker Warren A Stephens as his nomination as ambassador to Britain. Making the announcement on Truth Social, Trump called Stephens the “one of the most successful businessmen in the Country”, and said he had always dreamed of serving the United States full-time.
Stephens is the chair, president and CEO of Stephens Inc, a privately owned financial services firm headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, but he’s also a big political spender with a history of throwing millions behind the candidates and causes he favors.
He hasn’t always been on team Trump, even donating against him in the early years, but Stephens poured millions of dollars into GOP coffers during the last election cycle – including at least $3m donated to the Super Pac Make America Great Again Inc.
Once called the “king of Little Rock, Arkansas”, the NYT wrote of Stephens’s wealth, and his tactics for hiding it, in 2017, reporting:
Mr Stephens used an opaque holding company to own an approximately 40 percent stake in a loan business accused by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of cheating working-class and poor Americans. While earning millions from the investment, Mr Stephens helped finance a political onslaught against the bureau, never mentioning his personal connection to the fight.
Trump highlighted in his announcement post that Stephens “has built a wonderful financial services firm, while selflessly giving back to his community as a philanthropist”.
Updated
Speaking on CNN, the congressman Dan Goldman voiced support for the pardon, citing how the incoming administration may double down with politically motivated actions.
“I find it pretty ironic and hypocritical that so many Republicans have seemed to find the rule of law when it comes to Joe Biden’s pardoning of Hunter, and are happily ignorant of the rule of law when it comes to Donald Trump and everything he has done,” he said.
Goldman pointed to Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to head the FBI, as a danger “who is out for revenge”.
“It is yet another example of how Donald Trump is a danger to our rule of law.”
As reported by the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington, Patel is a “deep state” conspiracy theorist and Trump loyalist who has long denigrated the FBI as a pillar of the “corrupt ruling class”. He has threatened to fire its top echelons and shut down the agency’s headquarters, and has publicly pledged to prosecute political opponents and members of the media who he considers enemies of the Administration.
Updated
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said he understood the president’s pardon, telling CNN’s Manu Raju that he wasn’t going to “cast stones”, but that Biden would better protect his legacy if he also pardoned Trump.
“The bottom line is this, Joe Biden is still a father and that paternal it kicked in and that’s what it is,” Manchin said, adding that it would be balanced by “throwing everything out on Trump”:
What I would have done differently and my recommendation as the council would have been, why don’t you go ahead and pardon Donald Trump for all his charges and make it you know, it would have gone down a lot more balanced, if you will … Rather than going through all these court cases and getting, you know, the president has to be the president for the next four years, fighting all these criminal and all this other stuff’s coming after him, just clean that slate up. Let’s get this behind us and move forward. That’s what I – that would have been my recommendation.
Updated
Despite the worrying allegations leveled against him, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, continues to make the rounds of Republican senators whose votes will be vital to his confirmation.
He was on Capitol Hill today, meeting with the Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville:
Updated
Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son after months of saying he would do no such thing amounts to a brazen broken promise by the outgoing president. It also resembles just the sort of thing Donald Trump would do, the Guardian’s David Smith reports:
A loving act of mercy by a father who has already known much sorrow? Or a hypocritical political manoeuvre reminiscent of his great foe? Maybe both can be true.
Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing in two criminal cases, is likely to have been the product of a Shakespearean struggle between head and heart.
On the one hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making,” he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on Sunday. To undermine the separation of powers goes against every fibre of his political being.
On the other hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with references to his parents. As a senator, he once took a train from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware, so he could see his daughter Ashley blow out the candles on a cake made for her eighth birthday, then cross the platform and take the next train back to work.
Jill Biden backs pardon for Hunter Biden
At a White House holiday season event earlier today with families of National Guard members, reporters asked first lady Jill Biden about Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter.
“Of course I support the pardon of my son,” Jill Biden replied.
Hunter Biden is the son of Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, who died in a crash crash in 1972 along with the president’s daughter, Naomi. Joe and Jill Biden have been married since 1977.
Updated
Special counsel says no 'evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution' in Hunter Biden case
David Weiss, the justice department special counsel who successfully prosecuted Hunter Biden on fraud and gun charges, hit back at Joe Biden’s assertion that his son has been unfairly prosecuted.
In a filing opposing the dismissal of Hunter Biden’s tax fraud case in California, Weiss said:
The defendant filed eight (8) motions to dismiss the indictment, making every conceivable argument for why it should be dismissed, all of which were determined to be meritless. Of note, the defendant argued that the indictment was a product of vindictive and selective prosecution. The Court rejected that claim finding that “[a]s the Court stated at the hearing, Defendant filed his motion without any evidence. And there was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case.
Biden pleaded guilty to the tax charges, after a jury in Delaware earlier this year found him guilty of lying about his drug use on a background check form he filled out to purchase a firearm.
In the filing, Weiss argued against dismissing the tax case, saying that it should instead be closed, with no further action taken against Biden. Here’s more from Weiss:
The defendant did not docket the pardon nor has the government seen it. If media reports are accurate, the Government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred. It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive. No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district.
More Democrats signal discomfort with pardon of Hunter Biden
An increasing number of Democrats is voicing their objections to Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, who was expected to soon be sentenced on federal tax and gun charges.
In a statement released last night, the president said he had opted to pardon Hunter because he believed he was a victim of “selective prosecution” that was intended to undermine his sobriety. In the hours since, several Democrats have said they disagreed with its decision, because it undermined Biden’s stated commitment to the rule of law.
Among those newly speaking out are Vermont senator Peter Welch, who wrote on X:
President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter is, as the action of a loving father, understandable—but as the action of our nation’s Chief Executive, unwise.
And Colorado congressman Jason Crow:
The Hunter Biden pardon was a mistake. I sympathize with a father’s love, especially in a family that has experienced so much personal tragedy. I also understand the legal arguments in favor of a pardon. But Presidential pardons are never judged solely on the merits of the case, particularly when it involves a family member. Presidents hold enormous power and responsibility and must be held to a higher standard. They must instill trust and promote the American people’s faith in their democracy. And right now, upholding the fabric of our democracy is one of our most important tasks.
We have yet to hear from the top Democrats in Congress, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who remains influential in the party, also has not commented publicly.
While Donald Trump did not mention Hamas specifically, the group is plainly aware that he will soon be the next US president, and in a recently released video, an Israeli-American hostage appealed to Trump to make a deal for his release. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Edward Helmore:
The White House has condemned a Hamas-issued propaganda video of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander urging president-elect Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a deal to free remaining hostages in Gaza, calling it “a cruel reminder of Hamas’s terror against citizens of multiple countries, including our own”.
In the video, titled “Soon … Time is running out” and posted on Saturday on the Telegram channel of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, Alexander calls on Trump to use his “influence and the full power of the United States to negotiate for our freedom”.
Alexander, who has been held by Hamas since 7 October 2023, appears to be under duress as he states that he has been held captive for more than 420 days.
“Please do not make the mistake Biden has been doing,” he says, adding that he does not want to “end up dead like my fellow USA citizen, Hersh”, a reference to American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg Polin, who was killed while being held by Hamas in August.
Alexander’s family authorized the release of the video, which includes footage of the young captive covering his face with his hands and crying.
Trump demands release of Middle East hostages before he takes office, or 'there will be ALL HELL TO PAY'
Donald Trump has issued a vague threat to groups who have taken hostages in the Middle East, telling them, to release their captives before his inauguration or else “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY”.
The message, posted on Truth Social, follows news that Omer Neutra, a US-Israeli citizen believed to be taken captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has been dead since the 7 October attack. Dozens of other hostages, a small number of whom have US citizenship, are believed to remain the group’s captivity.
Here’s what Trump wrote, on Truth:
Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East - But it’s all talk, and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!
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Raskin seeks judiciary committee leadership role
Jamie Raskin, the Maryland congressman and long-time critic of Donald Trump, is seeking to become the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, CNN reports.
The network said it obtained a letter from Raskin declaring his intention to challenge New York representative Jerry Nadler for the role as ranking member, setting up what it calls an “intraparty fight”.
Raskin wrote that he had spent a week consulting colleagues and “engaging in serious introspection” about running for the senior committee role:
This is where we will wage our front-line defense of the freedoms and rights of the people, the integrity of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and the security of our most precious birthright possessions: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and democracy itself.
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The New Yorker has published details from a “previously undisclosed whistleblower report” that allegedly led to the departure of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, from two veterans’ advocacy groups.
The Fox News host faced “serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct” that saw him forced to step down from Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), two nonprofits he ran.
A “trail of documents” includes claims Hegseth was “repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity – to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events”, during his 2013-2016 presidency of the CVA, the New Yorker reported.
Under Hegseth’s leadership, the seven-page report alleges, the organization became a “hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her” at a Louisiana strip club.
Tim Parlatore, an attorney for Hegseth, told the magazine the claims were “outlandish” and fueled by a “petty and jealous disgruntled former associate”.
Read my colleague Jessica Glenza’s story here:
Biden arrives in Angola to tout US investments
Joe Biden, aboard Air Force One, has landed in Luanda for a two-day visit to Angola, Reuters reports. It is his first and only trip to the African continent as US president.
He will deliver remarks at the National Slavery Museum in Luanda and travel to the port city of Lobito to highlight US investments in the region, the news agency said.
Updated
Joe and Jill Biden say they are “devastated and outraged” by the reported death of American-Israeli soldier Omer Neutra, who was thought to have been a hostage in Gaza but who is now feared to have died in the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October 2023.
In a White House statement Monday, the president and first lady said Neutra, a Long Island native and Israeli Defense Forces tank commander who was 21 on the day of the attack, had planned to return to the US for college, and was dedicated “to building peace”:
Less than a month ago, Omer’s mother and father joined me at the White House to share the pain they’ve endured as they prayed for the safe return of their son – pain no parent should ever know. They told me how Omer’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors and how their family’s strength and resilience has been carried through the generations.
During this dark hour – as our nation joins Omer’s parents, brother, and family in grieving this tragic loss – we pray to find strength and resilience. And to all the families of those still held hostage: We see you. We are with you. And I will not stop working to bring your loved ones back home where they belong.
The day so far
Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden, who pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges and was convicted of firearms charges, has attracted condemnation from his Republican adversaries and even from some Democrats. The White House defended the move, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying “it was not an easy decision to make”, and that Biden still has confidence in the justice department even after he said his son was a victim of “selective prosecution”. The president is en route to Angola as he makes the first visit by a US president to sub-Saharan Africa since 2015.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Jean-Pierre said Biden will announce more pardons and grants of clemency in the final weeks before he leaves office.
Some Democrats have defended Biden’s pardon of his son, including New Jersey congressman Josh Gottheimer.
Legal experts said the Biden’s pardon of his son was unusual in its scope, and comparable only to the pardon former president Gerald Ford gave to his predecessor, Richard Nixon.
At least one Democratic congressman has come out to say he understands why Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden.
That would be Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who told CNN:
I’ve said, I’m always for accountability. But what I’m not for are political prosecutions. And, let’s be honest, the only reason why they went after Hunter the way they did, and I’ve talked to many federal prosecutors about this, is because he’s the president’s son, right? It’s somebody who has a lifelong drug addiction, and prosecutors would have handled this differently. So, this was all politically motivated. So, I understand.
…
He should have been handled – given his addiction, he should have been – this shouldn’t have been handled differently. This was a political prosecution.
The ranks of Democrats objecting to Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden are increasing, albeit not dramatically.
The latest to speak out is Colorado senator Michael Bennet, who said on X:
President Biden’s decision put personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.
Interestingly, the state’s Democratic governor Jared Polis was among the first in the party to condemn Biden for the decision.
Presidents can grant clemency and issue pardons at any time, but traditionally step up the tempo as they near the end of their time in the White House.
Jean-Pierre said that Biden will make more decisions about these cases in the weeks to come.
“He’s thinking through that process very thoroughly. There’s a process in place, obviously, and so … I’m not going to get ahead of the president on this, but you could expect more announcements, more pardons and clemency … at the end of this term,” she said.
As she continued taking questions from reporters, Jean-Pierre signaled that Joe Biden decided to pardon his son as it became clear that his political enemies would continue prosecuting him.
It appeared to be a nod towards the incoming Donald Trump administration, who could pursue further legal action against Hunter Biden once they take office.
“We have seen in last five years or so, the president’s political opponents say this … this is not the President saying it. They said it themselves. They were going after Hunter Biden and so he made this decision,” Jean-Pierre said.
White House spokeswoman defends Hunter Biden pardon
Taking questions from reporters aboard Air Force One as Joe Biden travels to Angola, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is attempting to explain why the president changed his mind and opted to pardon his son.
Biden has said for months that he would not exercise his presidential powers to end the prosecutions of his son on tax fraud and gun charges, even as it became clear that Hunter Biden could serve jail time after pleading guilty to the former, and being convicted of the latter.
Jean-Pierre, who as recently as last month said Joe Biden would not pardon his son, partially explained why he changed his mind.
“He wrestled with it. It was not an easy decision to make,” Jean-Pierre said, while declining to say if the president discussed the decision with Hunter as they spent Thanksgiving together.
In his statement pardoning Hunter, Biden criticized the “selective prosecution” of his son. Asked if the president still has confidence in the justice department, Jean-Pierre said: “The president does believe in the justice system and the Department of Justice. And he also believes that his son was singled out politically.”
Updated
From the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington, here’s more on Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s choice to lead the FBI who may wind up being his most controversial nominee since his short-lived pick of Matt Gaetz to lead the justice department:
Donald Trump’s plan to nominate as FBI director the “deep state” conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, a virulent critic of the bureau who has threatened to fire its top echelons and shut down the agency’s headquarters, is facing blowback in Congress as US senators begin to flex their muscles ahead of a contentious confirmation process.
Politicians from both main parties took to the Sunday talk shows to express starkly divergent views on Patel, whom Trump announced on Saturday as his pick to lead the most powerful law enforcement agency in the US. The move is dependent on the incumbent FBI chief, Christopher Wray, who Trump himself placed in the job in 2017, either being fired or resigning.
It is already clear that confirming Patel through the US Senate is likely to be less than plain sailing. Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, indicated that Patel could face a tough confirmation battle.
Rounds pointedly sang the praises of the existing FBI director in an interview with ABC’s This Week. He said that Wray, who still has three more years of his 10-year term to serve, was a “very good man”, adding that he had “no objections about the way that he is doing his job right now”.
The senator also emphasised the separation of powers between president and Senate, signaling possible trouble for Patel. Rounds said he gave presidents “the benefit of the doubt”, but also emphasised that “we have a constitutional role to play … that’s the process”.
Other Republican senators rallied to Patel’s side. Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, told CBS’s Face the Nation that he believed Patel would be confirmed.
“Patel is a very strong nominee to take on the partisan corruption of the FBI.”
Another story to watch this week is the reaction of Donald Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel to lead the FBI.
An unabashed Trump loyalist, Patel has claimed that the federal law enforcement agency is biased against Trump, and vowed to close its Washington headquarters and prosecute some agents as well as journalists. Patel worked as a national security and defense official in the first Trump administration, where some of his colleagues described him as unqualified for the job he was holding.
Those complaints may come back to haunt him when the Senate gets around to considering his nomination. The Wall Street Journal heard from two of Patel’s former colleagues, who offered starkly different views of his qualifications to lead the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency:
“He’s coming from outside the system,” said Michael Spivack, who worked with Patel when he was a federal public defender in Florida more than a decade ago. “If you really want to change the system, you need bright intelligent people coming from the outside.”
But some who supervised Patel during the first Trump administration warn that he is unfit for the job.
“He’s absolutely unqualified for this job. He’s untrustworthy,” said Charles Kupperman, who served as Trump’s deputy national-security adviser and worked closely with Patel. “It’s an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual of this nature,” he said.
A second Democratic congressman representing a swing district has objected publicly to Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden.
Greg Landsman, who just won re-election representing to a district encompassing the city of Cincinnati, wrote of the pardon on X:
As a father, I get it. But as someone who wants people to believe in public service again, it’s a setback.
More top House Republicans joined in on condemning Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter.
Including the majority leader, Steve Scalise, who wrote on X:
You’ve been lied to every step of the way by this Administration and the corrupt Biden family. This is just the latest in their long coverup scheme. They never play by the same rules they force on everyone else. Disgraceful.
And judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan, a leader of the effort to impeach the president for alleged corruption. He said:
Democrats said there was nothing to our impeachment inquiry. If that’s the case, why did Joe Biden just issue Hunter Biden a pardon for the very things we were inquiring about?
Republican House speaker says justice system 'irreparably damaged' by Hunter Biden pardon
House Republicans have spent the past two years attempting to prove that Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings and legal troubles are evidence of wider corruption involving Joe Biden and his family. They never turned up enough evidence to prove the link, and their attempt to impeach the president fell flat.
Leading the pursuit of the president and his son was House speaker Mike Johnson, who had this to say about Joe Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter:
President Biden insisted many times he would never pardon his own son for his serious crimes. But last night he suddenly granted a “Full and Unconditional Pardon” for any and all offenses that Hunter committed for more than a decade! Trust in our justice system has been almost irreparably damaged by the Bidens and their use and abuse of it. Real reform cannot begin soon enough!
Legal experts who spoke to Politico noted the scope of Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, saying that it is comparable only to the pardon Gerald Ford granted to his White House predecessor, Richard Nixon.
Rather than pardoning his son of the individual offenses that he faced, as is typical, Biden pardoned him of offenses over a period of more than 10 years – likely so the incoming Trump justice department can’t levy new charges against him.
Here’s more, from Politico:
Experts on pardons said they could think of only one other person who has received a presidential pardon so sweeping in generations: Nixon, who was given a blanket pardon by Gerald Ford in 1974.
“I have never seen language like this in a pardon document that purports to pardon offenses that have not apparently even been charged, with the exception of the Nixon pardon,” said Margaret Love, who served from 1990 to 1997 as the U.S. pardon attorney, a Justice Department position devoted to assisting the president on clemency issues.
“Even the broadest Trump pardons were specific as to what was being pardoned,” Love added.
Joe Biden’s “full and unconditional pardon” of his son is deliberately vague. Donald Trump and his allies have long fixated on the president’s son, and Trump has repeatedly pledged to use his second term to investigate and prosecute members of the Biden family. Conservative commentators have engaged in parlor-game speculation that Hunter Biden could be charged with bribery, illegal lobbying or other crimes stemming from his foreign business activities and drug addiction.
So rather than merely pardoning his son for the gun crimes for which he was convicted and the tax crimes for which he pleaded guilty, the president’s pardon covers all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in” from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024. That language mirrors the language in Ford’s pardon of Nixon, which did not merely cover the Watergate scandal but extended to “all offenses against the United States” that Nixon “has committed or may have committed” between Jan. 20, 1969, and Aug. 9, 1974 — the exact span of Nixon’s presidency.
Joe Biden is currently in the air, heading for Luanda, Angola, as part of a last-minute visit to sub-Saharan Africa that will be the first by any US president in nine years.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is scheduled to take questions at some point during the flight from Sal, Cabo Verde, where Biden made a brief stop earlier today. No doubt reporters will pepper her with questions about the president’s decision to pardon his son – something Jean-Pierre was saying as recently as a few weeks ago that he would not do.
Gaggles on Air Force One are not held on camera, and it’s unclear if this one will be broadcast live in an audio-only format. We’ll let you know what Jean-Pierre has to say when we find out.
This post has been corrected to say it has been nine years since a US president visited sub-Saharan Africa, not eight.
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In the hours since Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, signs have emerged that some Democrats are not pleased with the decision.
Among the first lawmakers to speak out against it was congressman Greg Stanton, who represents a swing district in Arizona. He 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.
We’ll let you know what other Democrats have to say about Biden’s pardon as the day goes on.
Updated
Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter following his federal gun and tax cases may have sent shockwaves through Washington but it isn’t the first time a president has used his power to help his family.
As my colleague David Smith notes, Donald Trump pardoned the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner for tax evasion and retaliating against a cooperating witness.
Bill Clinton as president also pardoned his half-brother Roger for cocaine charges in 2021, after he served his sentence ten years earlier.
Clinton also pardoned his former business partner Susan McDougal, who had been sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the Whitewater real estate deal.
You can read David’s full analysis below
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With Donald Trump set to retake power in early 2025, its a reminder of how the legal travails faced by the president-elect interwove with those by Hunter Biden.
Before he was prosecuted, Hunter Biden’s legal team requested the federal gun and tax cases against him be thrown out after Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon dismissed a classified documents case in Florida.
Both Biden and Trump were prosecuted by special counsels appointed by the US attorney general, Merrick Garland.
In dismissing the Trump case, Cannon ruled that the appointment of the special counsel who prosecuted Trump, Jack Smith, violated the constitution because he was appointed directly to the position by Garland instead of being nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Biden’s lawyers said on Thursday that that’s exactly what happened in his case, as Weiss in his role as special counsel filed cases against Biden in California and Delaware and separately brought charges against a former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens.
However, the move proved ultimately unsuccessful, with those two cases going ahead in June and September.
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What is a presidential pardon?
The US constitution says that a president has the power to grant clemency, which includes both pardons and commutations.
A pardon forgives federal criminal offenses; a commutation reduces penalties but isn’t as sweeping.
The power has its roots in English law – the king could grant mercy to anyone – and it made it over the ocean to the American colonies and stuck around.
The US supreme court has found the presidential pardon authority to be very broad.
Donald Trump granted 237 acts of clemency during his four years in office and Barack Obama granted clemency 1,927 times in his eight years. Presidents have forgiven drug offences, as mentioned in our post at 11.59 GMT, fraud convictions and Vietnam-era draft dodgers, among many other things.
But a president can only grant pardons for federal offences, not state ones. Impeachment convictions also aren’t pardonable.
*The Associated Press
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Who else has Joe Biden’s pardoned since he was elected president?
Coming just weeks before he leaves office, Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter has already attracted controversy and driven debate in Washington.
But it isn’t first time he has exercised his power to benefit those convicted of criminal offences.
He previously pardoned thousands of people given criminal records for marijuana use and possession on federal lands and also granted clemency to 11 people serving what the White House called “disproportionately long” sentences for nonviolent drug offences.
No one was freed from prison under last year’s action, but the pardons were meant to help thousands overcome obstacles to renting a home or finding a job.
Democrats criticize Biden's decision to pardon son Hunter
Joe Biden’s decision has split Democrats on Capitol Hill (we reported on some Republican reaction in our previous post).
Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, criticized Biden’s decision.
“While as a father I certainly understand President Joe Biden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country,” Polis said on X, as reported by NBC News, which was the first to break the news of the presidential pardon.
“This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.”
Arizona congressman Greg Stanton, also a Democrat said he thought Biden “got this one wrong.”
“This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution,” Stanton said, also on X. “Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”
However, former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, now an independent, wrote on X, “Joe Biden pardoning Hunter looks bad but most fathers would do the same thing under the circumstances.”
Updated
Hunter Biden pardon: What we know so far
If you’re just waking up, here is a round-up of developments since US president Joe Biden announcing he was pardoning his son following his convictions for federal gun and tax offences.
Joe Biden issued a pardon to son Hunter Biden on Sunday night, shortly before boarding a plane to Angola
In a statement released shortly afterwards, Hunter said he would never take the clemency for granted
President-elect Donald Trump responded by calling for the pardon and release of January 6 ‘hostages’
The move also attracted the ire of Republicans who targeted the Biden family throughout his presidency
Joe Biden's previous statements on pardoning Hunter
The US president has come under criticism for a perceived reversal over his stance on pardoning his son.
As recently as 8 November, 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.”
“I said I’d abide by the jury decision, and I will do that. And I will not pardon him,” Biden also told reporters at the G7 summit in June
When asked if he planned to commute Hunter Biden’s sentence, the president mouthed “no”, according to the BBC.
Updated
President-elect Donald Trump - as we reported earlier - responded angrily to Joe Biden’s pardon.
But he himself pardoned several allies and friends in own final days in office among the 70 people granted clemency in 2021.
As this list details, they included former aide Steve Bannon, rapper Lil Wayne, and his daughter’s father-in-law Charles Kushner, whom he has now nominated as ambassador for France.
The use of presidential pardons have long been a feature of US politics, as my colleague Luke Harding previously reported, below.
Updated
Here’s the full text of Biden’s pardon announcement:
To All to Whom These Presents Shall Come, Greeting:
Be It Known, That This Day, I, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, Pursuant to My Powers Under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, of the Constitution, Have Granted Unto
ROBERT HUNTER BIDEN
A Full and Unconditional Pardon
For those 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 (including any that have resulted in convictions) by Special Counsel David C. Weiss in Docket No. 1:23-cr-00061-MN in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware and Docket No. 2:23-CR-00599-MCS-1 in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF I have hereunto signed my name and caused the Pardon to be recorded with the Department of Justice.
Done at the City of Washington this 1st day of December in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-four and of the Independence of the United States the Two Hundred and Forty-ninth.
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What happened during Hunter Biden's federal gun case?
Two months before Hunter arrived in court for his federal tax proceedings, he appeared in court with his mother Jill Biden and wife Melissa Cohen Biden, in Wilmington, Delaware.
After three hours of deliberation and a week long trial, jurors found him guilty on all three felony counts he faced relating to buying a handgun while being a user of crack cocaine.
Biden was accused of making two false statements when filling out a form to buy a Colt revolver in October 2018: first by stating untruthfully that he was not addicted to or using drugs, and then by declaring the statement to be true.
A third charge alleged that he then illegally owned the gun for 11 days, before his sister-in-law and then lover, Hallie Biden, threw it in a trash bin in a panic.
The prosecution called other members of the Biden family, including his former wife, Kathleen Buhle, to whom he was married for 24 years, and Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother Beau, as it tried to show that Hunter’s drug use had continued during 2018 and 2019.
The testimony painted a portrait of Hunter Biden falling deeper into addiction as he struggled to cope with the death of Beau, who died from brain cancer in 2015.
After the breakup of his marriage, he formed a romantic relationship with Hallie Biden, who admitted to having smoked crack with him.
Full story below
What tax offenses did Hunter Biden plead guilty to?
As we reported earlier, Hunter Biden was due to be sentenced for his conviction on federal gun charges on 12 December, with his sentencing on the tax case due on 16 December.
The 54-year-old pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges on 5 September on what was a day fraught with confrontation with prosecutors.
The charges carried a possible 17 year prison sentence.
Biden was accused of failing to pay his taxes on time from 2016 to 2019, as well as facing two felony counts of filing a false return and an additional felony count of tax evasion.
He initially pleaded not guilty to the charges and his attorneys had indicated they would argue he did not act “willfully”, or with the intention to break the law, in part because of his well-documented struggles with alcohol and drug addiction.
Read the full details below
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Joe Biden, in his statement earlier, took aim at his political opponents for selectively targeting Hunter Biden for prosecution over gun purchase offenses.
Those same opponents have now responded by accusing the president of lying about his family’s activity during his political career.
“Joe Biden has lied from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities,” said Representative James Comer, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability in a post on X.
“Not only has he falsely claimed that he never met with his son’s foreign business associates and that his son did nothing wrong, but he also lied when he said he would not pardon Hunter Biden.
“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.”
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US-president elect Donald Trump responds to pardon
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to pardon those convicted after storming the US Capitol in Washington on January 2021 and took the opportunity to raise the issue.
“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!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social social media platform.
A loving act of mercy by a father who has already known much sorrow? Or a hypocritical political manoeuvre reminiscent of his great foe? Maybe both can be true.
Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing in two criminal cases, is likely to have been the product of a Shakespearean struggle between head and heart.
On the one hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making,” he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on Sunday. To undermine the separation of powers goes against every fibre of his political being.
On the other hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with references to his parents. As a senator, he once took a train from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware, so he could blow out the candles on a birthday cake for his eight-year-old daughter, Ashley, at the station, then cross the platform and take the next train back to work.
Biden was profoundly shaped by the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and 13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident and, much later, the death of his son Beau from brain cancer. In that context, Hunter’s status as the first child of a sitting president to face criminal charges will have pained his father in what Ernest Hemingway called “the broken places”.
Read my full analysis below
Joe Biden’s statement on decision to pardon Hunter - in full
Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I 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. 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. 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. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.
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. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.
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. 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.
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. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.
Hunter Biden: 'I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes'
Hunter Biden issued a statement following his father’s announcement:
“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.”
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Hello and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.
On Sunday night, before boarding a plane to Angola, US president Joe Biden issued a pardon to his son Hunter – something he had repeatedly said he would not do.
Biden said he hoped the American people would understand his decision to issue the pardons over convictions on federal gun and tax charges.
“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.
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. Joe Biden is just weeks away from leaving office.
