President Joe Biden on Sunday granted a “full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter Biden, who has been dogged by Republican attacks for years. The president’s son will be sentenced this month on federal weapons charges and federal tax evasion, following a conviction and guilty plea, respectively.
The president’s decision marks a marked reversal after he repeatedly vowed not to use his executive powers to pardon his son or commute his sentence. In a White House statement on Sunday, Biden said he granted the pardon because he believes the charges were politically motivated.
“No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases could come to any conclusion other than that Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” the president said.
He added:
Throughout my career, I have followed a simple principle: Just tell the American people the truth. They will be honest. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I struggle with this, I also believe that raw politics has infected this process and led to a miscarriage of justice – and when I made this decision this weekend, it made no sense anymore to postpone it even further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.
The pardon comes just weeks before Biden’s term ends and President-elect Donald Trump, whose attacks on Hunter Biden helped focus control of Congress and the federal government on the president’s son, returns to White House House.
Hunter Biden is expected to be sentenced on December 12 for his June conviction on federal weapons charges. He will also be sentenced on December 16 in a separate federal tax evasion case after pleading guilty in September. He faced a maximum prison sentence of 42 years, although he was expected to receive a much lighter sentence, partly because he was a first-time offender.
The pardon is expected to cover his gun charges as well as his tax bill, NBC News reported, the first outlet to report on the decision. It covers all crimes that the 54-year-old “has committed or may have committed or participated in in the period from January 1, 2014 to December 1, 2024.”
A representative for Special Counsel David Weiss, who appointed Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2023 to investigate Hunter Biden, did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment. Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell also declined to comment.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
