President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he is pardoning his son Hunter.
“Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” the president said in a statement. It is a “full and unconditional pardon.”
The pardon covers any alleged offenses by Hunter Biden since the start of 2014 to Dec. 1, 2024.
Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury in June of illegally buying and possessing a gun. He then pleaded guilty in September to nine tax offenses, stemming from failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes. He settled the outstanding tax bill once he got sober.
Biden argued Hunter was “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” and the charges “came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,”
The president added there “has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober.”
Biden noted that it’s extremely rare for the DOJ to bring prosecutions solely for making misstatements on a gun form. He also said the tax charges singled out his son since the DOJ typically doesn’t criminally prosecute people “who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties”
“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,” the president wrote.
Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 12 for his conviction on federal gun charges. He also was set to be sentenced on Dec. 16 in his tax evasion case.
“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,” Biden said in his statement.
