President Biden on Sunday issued a “full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter, who was convicted by a jury of illegally purchasing a handgun in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax charges in Los Angeles.
Biden and his staff had repeatedly and publicly stated he would not pardon Hunter. But with less than two months remaining in his term and President-elect Donald Trump openly calling for his political enemies to be prosecuted, Biden reconsidered.
In explaining the controversial and extraordinary action, which came weeks before the president’s son was to be sentenced by federal judges on both coasts, Biden claimed Hunter was the victim of unfair political attacks.
“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 a statement released Sunday.
“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 continued in the statement.
“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.”
Republicans condemned the move, with Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, accusing the president of lying “from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities.”
“He also lied when he said he would not pardon Hunter Biden,” Comer said in a statement.
“Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
President Biden said he came to the decision after spending the Thanksgiving holiday with his son and other family members in Nantucket.
The pardon covers offenses that Hunter Biden “may have committed or taken part in” from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024. It effectively wiped away the two pending criminal cases in which the younger Biden faced a combined maximum of several years in prison, although he was likely to serve only a few years, at most.
But the pardon also offers immunity for other conduct in that period, when he was active in foreign business dealings, including his seat on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company he joined in 2014 while his father was vice president.
Hunter Biden was paid millions by the company. He denies any wrongdoing.
David Weiss, the special counsel whose office brought both cases against Hunter Biden, did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Late Sunday, Hunter Biden’s lawyers submitted notices of the pardon in federal court, saying both cases are now moot and that the pardon “requires an automatic dismissal” of each.
“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,” Hunter Biden said in a statement.
In June, Hunter Biden was convicted of three federal gun crimes, including lying about being drug-free when he purchased and briefly owned a gun while he was addicted to crack cocaine.
The guilty verdict capped a weeklong trial in which prosecutors elicited testimony from Biden’s ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend and his sister-in-law turned lover. All spoke in graphic detail about his addiction to drugs and alcohol, with First Lady Jill Biden often sitting in the front row.
Shortly before the trial testimony began, President Biden told ABC journalist David Muir that he would accept the jury’s verdict in the Delaware case.
“Have you ruled out a pardon for your son?” Muir asked.
“Yes,” Biden replied.
After the verdict, the president said he would continue to “respect the judicial process” while his son considered an appeal.
In September, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to all nine federal tax charges he faced, just as jury selection was about to begin in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.
The indictment in the tax case included racy details of Biden’s life between 2016 and 2019 — the period during which now he admits he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes — including the hundreds of thousands of dollars he spent on escorts, a pornographic website, hotels, luxury car rentals and other lavish personal expenses.
As part of his guilty plea, Biden had acknowledged improperly classifying his personal expenses as business expenses.
In both cases, Hunter Biden and his legal team had sought to paint himself as a victim of selective, unfair, and politically motivated prosecution. His lawyers had pointed to a plea deal that was reached in 2023 and would have spared Hunter any prison time. It unraveled under questioning from a judge in Delaware, and after the deal collapsed, Weiss, the special counsel, secured indictments in both cases.
The president referred to the end of the plea deal in his statement Sunday.
“Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases,” Biden said. Instead, he said, politics had marred his son’s cases. “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.”
Hunter’s lawyers had tried to get both criminal cases dismissed, arguing again that the charges were borne out of a selective and unfair prosecution, but neither judge was swayed.
Hunter Biden now lives in Malibu, where he took up a daily ritual of painting.
