President Joe Biden spared his son Hunteron Sunday night, sparing the younger Biden from possible prison time for federal gun and tax convictions and reversing his past pledges not to use the president’s emergency powers to benefit members of his family.
The Democratic president had previously said he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence following convictions in two cases in Delaware and California. The move comes weeks before Hunter Biden is set to be sentenced after his gun conviction and guilty plea to tax charges, and less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House.
It ends a long legal saga for the younger Biden, who publicly announced 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 promised Americans to restore norms and respect for the rule of law after the first term of Trump’s presidency, ended up using his position to help his son, breaking a public promise to Americans to do no such thing.
In June Biden strongly ruled out a pardon or commutation of his son’s sentence, telling reporters that his son was facing trial on a gun charge in Delaware: “I abide by the jury’s decision. I will do so and I will not spare.”
As recently as Nov. 8, days after Trump’s victory, White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre ruled out a pardon or clemency for Biden Jr., saying, “We’ve been asked that question several times. Our answer is valid, which is not.”
The elder Biden publicly supported his only living son when Hunter fell into serious drug addiction and threw his family life into disarray before snapping out of it in recent years. His political rivals have long used Hunter Biden’s many missteps as a political cudgel against his father: During one hearing, lawmakers showed half-naked photos of the president’s drug-addled son in a seedy hotel.
And House Republicans sought to use the younger Biden’s years in dubious business ventures abroad in an effort that was later abandoned impeachment his father, who has long denied involvement in his son’s dealings or receiving any benefit from them.
In a statement released Sunday night, Biden said, “I believe in the justice system, but as I’ve fought this, I also believe that crass politics infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice.”
“The charges in his affairs were brought only after several of my political opponents in Congress incited them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden added. “No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s affairs can come to any conclusion other than that Hunter was singled out simply because he is my son.”
“I hope the American people will understand why the father and the president made this decision,” Biden added, claiming he made the decision this weekend. The president spent Thanksgiving in Nantucket, Mass., with Hunter and his family and was scheduled to depart later Sunday for what may be his final foreign trip as president before he leaves office on Jan. 20, 2025.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June in federal court in Delaware of three felony counts of buying gun in 2018 whenProsecutors said he lied on a federal form, claiming he did not use drugs illegally or was addicted to them.
He was scheduled to stand trial in September in a California case accused 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 U.S. attorney in Delaware who negotiated the plea deal, was later appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to have more autonomy in prosecuting the president’s son.
Hunter Biden said he is pleading guilty to the case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after a firearms trial released salacious details about his struggle with cocaine addiction.
The tax charges carry up to 17 years in prison and the weapons charges carry up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to carry far less, and it was possible he would avoid prison altogether.
Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced this month in two federal cases brought by a special prosecutor after a plea deal with prosecutors that likely spared him prison time collapsed under a judge’s scrutiny. Under the original deal, Hunter had to plead guilty to tax violations and would have avoided prosecution on the gun charge as long as he stayed out of trouble for two years.
But the plea hearing quickly solved last year when a judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. He was subsequently charged in two cases.
The full pardon applies not only to those crimes, but also to any other “crimes against the United States that he committed, may have committed, or participated in between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.”
Hunter Biden’s legal team released a 52-page white paper this weekend titled “The Political Stalking of Hunter Biden,” describing the president’s son as a “surrogate to attack and injure his father, both as a candidate in 2020 and later as president.” . Hunter Biden’s lawyers have long argued that prosecutors bowed to political pressure to indict the president’s son amid fierce criticism from Trump and other Republicans of what they called a “sweetheart” plea deal.
Both cases against the younger Biden were somewhat unusual. Criminal tax cases are generally rare, and gun crimes are usually filed along with other, more serious charges, legal experts say. In Hunter Biden’s case, his lawyers noted that he had the gun for 11 days and never fired it. And he paid off his back taxes before he was due to appear in court.
Representative James Comer, one of the Republican chairs leading the congressional investigation into the Biden family, criticized the president’s decision to pardon his son, saying the evidence against Hunter was “only the tip of the iceberg.”
“It’s very unfortunate that President Biden and his family, instead of owning up to decades of wrongdoing, continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer told website X, formerly known as Twitter.
Biden is hardly the first president to use his pardon power to benefit people 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 numerous allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. Trump announced plans to nominate Kushner Sr. over the weekend to be the representative of the United States in France in his next administration.
Stephen Cheng, Trump’s press secretary, who has vowed to overhaul and appoint loyal people throughout the Justice Department after he was impeached for his role in trying to derail the 2020 presidential election, said in a statement: “This justice system must be corrected. and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what President Trump will do when he returns to the White House with an overwhelming mandate from the American people.”
Hunter Biden said in an emailed statement that he would never take for granted the help he received and vowed to dedicate the life he has regained to “helping those who are still sick and suffering.”
“I have acknowledged and taken responsibility for my mistakes in the darkest days of my addiction — mistakes that were used to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” the younger Biden said.
Hunter Biden’s legal team filed a motion Sunday night in Los Angeles and Delaware asking the judges hearing his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing clemency.
A spokesman for Weiss did not return messages seeking comment Sunday night.
