President Joe Biden had previously said he would not pardon or commute the sentence of his son following his conviction on three federal felony counts of illegally purchasing a gun. Photo / Eric Lee, The New York Times
President Joe Biden had previously said he would not pardon or commute the sentence of his son following his conviction on three federal felony counts of illegally purchasing a gun. Photo / Eric Lee, The New York Times
The “full and unconditional pardon” comes weeks before President Biden leaves office. The president’s spokeswoman had denied for months that he had any intention of granting clemency for his son.
President Joe Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son Hunter onSunday night (Monday NZ time), using the power of his office to waive aside years of legal troubles, including a federal conviction for illegally buying a gun.
In a statement issued by the White House, Biden said he had decided to issue the executive grant of clemency for his son “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”.
He said he did so because the charges against his son were politically motivated and designed to hurt the President politically.
“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 in the statement. “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 added: “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.”
After Biden announced the pardon, Hunter Biden issued a statement of his own. “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. “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.”
Many of the President’s allies and critics had expected him to use the unique authority vested only in his office, even though he and his spokesperson had denied for months that he had any intention of doing so. NBC News first reported Sunday evening that Biden had in fact decided to pardon his son.
But the move quickly drew expressions of scorn from Biden’s political adversaries and others and called into question the President’s honesty, given the many public statements he had made saying he would not pardon his son.
Clay Travis, a conservative radio host, posted on social media, “It’s really extraordinary how blatantly they lie”. Ron Fournier, a former top editor at The Associated Press, wrote that Biden “lied. He doesn’t trust the judicial system. He does believe that some people are above the law. This makes him no better than Trump”.
Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for Trump’s 2020 election team, posted: “Joe Biden pardoned three turkeys this week,” a reference to the annual pardoning of two actual turkeys at the White House just before Thanksgiving.
Hunter Biden walks out of a courthouse in Los Angeles in September. Photo / Jenna Schoenefeld, The New York Times
The reversal by Biden came just 50 days before he is set to leave the White House and transfer power to President-elect Donald Trump, who spent years attacking Hunter Biden over his legal and personal issues as a part of series of broadsides against the Biden family.
Biden said for much of his time in office that he would refrain from commenting on high-profile criminal cases, even related to his son, to make good on a commitment to maintain the independence of the Justice Department.
“I said I’d abide by the jury decision,” Biden told reporters during the Group of 7 summit in June. “I will do that.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly said that Biden would not issue a pardon for his son, often chiding reporters for asking the question.
In the summer of 2023, she was asked whether there was “any possibility” that the President would end up pardoning his son. She answered simply, “No.” When the reporter tried to ask the question again, she cut the question short and said: “I just said no. I just answered.”
Hunter Biden faced as much as 25 years in prison for lying on a federal form about his drug addiction when he bought a handgun in 2018, but he was unlikely to receive a sentence near that length. First-time offenders who did not use weapons for a violent crime typically receive much lighter sentences. Legal analysts have said it was possible that the President’s son could receive a year or less behind bars or even probation.
It is not the first time a President has used his executive power to commute the sentence of a family member. On his last day in office, President Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger Clinton for old cocaine charges. A month before leaving office, Trump pardoned his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, for tax evasion and other crimes.
Both Roger Clinton and Charles Kushner had long since completed their prison terms, and the pardons were about forgiveness or vindication rather than avoiding time behind bars. Over the weekend, Trump said he would nominate Charles Kushner to be the US ambassador to France.
The full statement
President Joe Biden issued the following statement.
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 noncriminal 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 courtroom — 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.
