On November 1 President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden for federal felony gun and tax convictions reversing his pledge not to pardon his son or commute his son’s sentence after convictions in two cases one in Delaware and the other in California. The pardon itself is sweeping in scope and goes way beyond the two recent federal felony convictions and covers the time frame of January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.
The pardon comes weeks before Hunter Biden’s sentencing was to happen after his trial conviction in the gun case and guilty plea on tax charges. The pardon also comes less than two months before Donald Trump is set to return to the White House. The pardon ends a long running saga that began in December 2020 when Hunter Biden publicly disclosed he was under federal investigation.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-son-hunter-charges-pardon-pledge-24f3007c2d2f467fa48e21bbc7262525
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/01/politics/hunter-biden-joe-biden-pardon/index.html
Following is the full statement released by President Biden on the pardon of his son Hunter Biden:
“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 non-criminal 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 court room – 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.”
The link to the news source is here:
The pardon reads in full as follows:
Executive Grant of Clemency
Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
President of the United States of America
To All to Whom These Presents Shall Come, Greetings:
Be It Known, That This Day, I, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, Pursuant to My Powers Under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, of the Constitution, Have Granted Unto
ROBERT HUNTER BIDEN
A Full and Unconditional Pardon
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, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted (including any that have resulted in convictions) by Special Counsel David C. Weiss in Docket No. 1:23-cr-00061-MN in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware and Docket No. 2:23-CR-00599-MCS-1 in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF I have hereunto signed my name and caused the Pardon to be recorded with the Department of Justice.
Done at the City of Washington this 1st day of December in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-four and of the Independence of the United States the Two Hundred and Forty-ninth.
The link to the news source is here:
In June, Biden categorically ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling reporters as his son faced trial in the Delaware gun case, “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.” As recently as Nov. 8, days after Trump’s victory, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ruled out a pardon or clemency for the younger Biden, saying, “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no.”
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden have repeatedly and publicly stood by Hunter Biden as he descended into serious drug addiction and as he threw the Biden family life into turmoil. First Lady Jill Biden attended the first trial while the President maintained his distance. The president’s political rivals have long used Hunter Biden’s myriad mistakes as a political weapon against his father. One Republican law maker in a congressional hearing, displayed photos of the drug-addled Hunter Biden half-naked in a seedy hotel.
House Republicans sought to use Hunter Biden’s years of questionable overseas business ventures in a since-abandoned attempt to impeach President Biden, who strenuously denied involvement in his son’s dealings or benefiting from them in any way.
HUNTER BIDEN REACTS
Hunter Biden has signed his name on a legal acknowledgment of the pardon and he issued the following statement:
“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,” Hunter Biden said in a statement to Fox News. “Despite all of this, I have maintained my sobriety for more than five years because of my deep faith and the unwavering love and support of my family and friends.”
“In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages,” he continued. “In recovery we can be given the opportunity to make amends where possible and rebuild our lives if we never take for granted the mercy that we have been afforded. 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.”
On November 1 Hunter Biden’s legal team filed “Motions to Dismiss” the federal cases in Los Angeles and Delaware asking the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.
REPUBLICANS REACT
Not at all surprising, many Republicans were down right hostile and quick to condemn the pardon on social media, calling it an effort to “avoid accountability” and casting President Joe Biden as a “hypocrite.”
“His FBI and DOJ raided Barron’s bedroom and Melania’s closet at Mar-a-Lago,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said on X, referring to the federal search of Trump’s home in Florida in connection with the now-dismissed classified documents case against him. “Joe Biden is a liar and a hypocrite, all the way to the end.”
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said on X that Biden “will go down as one of the most corrupt presidents in American history.”
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the House Oversight Committee, said on X, “It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.” Comer’s committee has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department recommending charges against Hunter Biden.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the decision “shocked” him.
“I’m shocked Pres Biden pardoned his son Hunter whe said many, many times he wouldn’t & I believed him. Shame on me,” he said on X.
DEMOCRATS REACT
Some Democrats weighed in on the pardon. Governor Jared Polis, D-Colo., criticized Biden’s decision and said this on X:
“While as a father I certainly understand President @JoeBiden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country. … This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.”
Similarly, Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona said he thought Biden “got this one wrong” and said on X.:
“This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution. … Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”
Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland spoke about the possibility of a pardon and offered a possible explanation of what a pardon’s basis could be. Raskin said this to CNN:
“There is a defense called selective prosecution. … If you can show that the government has a set of cases that all look alike, but they pick one person out to prosecute based on, say, a political animus towards the person, which essentially is the claim that Donald Trump has been making about why he was targeted, the power exists for the president to show mercy for people who have committed crimes and either suffered some kind of injustice in the process or the punishment is disproportionate.”
TRUMPS REACTION TO PARDON AND HIS OWN RECORD OF PARDON ABUSE
Biden is not the first president to deploy his pardon powers to benefit those close to him. He learned that lesson from none other than Donald Trump. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted by special counsel Robert Mueller’s in the Russia investigation. Trump over the weekend announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the U.S. envoy to France in his next administration.
Trump said in a social media post on December 1 that Hunter Biden’s pardon was “such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice. … Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump asked, referring to those convicted in the violent Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
People need to be reminded of what Trump’s record on pardons really is as outlined in this MSNBC report by Steve Benen:
“First, Jan. 6 criminals are not “hostages.”
Second, if we’re going to talk about pardons, abuses, and miscarriages of justice, Trump might not like where the conversation ends up.
… Trump’s record on pardons is arguably the worst in American history. During his first term, he effectively wielded his pardon power as a corrupt weapon, rewarding loyalists, completing cover-ups, undermining federal law enforcement, and doling out perverse favors to the politically connected.
Trump’s list of scandalous pardon abuses is so long, it could be a lengthy book. The names should be familiar: Paul Manafort. Michael Flynn. Steve Bannon. Roger Stone. Seven different Republican members of Congress who were locked up for corruption crimes.
Trump saw presidential pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for his friends and associates, engaging in the kind of brazen corruption that would’ve defined his term were it not eclipsed by other breathtaking scandals.
If prominent GOP voices want Biden to pay a political price for pardoning his son, fine. He said he wouldn’t do this, then he did it anyway, and in the process, he invited political attacks that are rooted in fact for a change.”
But if Trump thinks he has the moral high ground on the issue, that’s bonkers.
THE HUNTER BIDEN CHARGES REVIEWED
Hunter Biden was convicted in June in Delaware federal court of 3 felonies for purchasing a gun in 2018 when, prosecutors said, he lied on a federal form by claiming he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs. He had been set to stand trial in September in the California case accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges in a surprise move hours after jury selection was set to begin.
David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware who negotiated the plea deal, was subsequently named a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to have more autonomy over the prosecution of the president’s son. Hunter Biden said he was pleading guilty in that case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after the gun trial aired salacious details about his struggles with a crack cocaine addiction. The tax charges carry up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible he would have avoided prison time entirely.
Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month in the two federal cases, which the special counsel brought after a plea deal with prosecutors that likely would have spared him prison time fell apart under scrutiny by a judge. Under the original deal, Hunter was supposed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses and and would have avoided prosecution in the gun case as long as he stayed out of trouble for two years. But the plea hearing quickly unraveled last year when the judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. The younger Biden was subsequently indicted in the two cases.
Hunter Biden’s legal team this weekend released a 52-page white paper titled “The political prosecutions 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.”
The younger Biden’s lawyers have long argued that prosecutors bowed to political pressure to indict the president’s son amid heavy criticism by Trump and other Republicans of what they called the “sweetheart” plea deal.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-son-hunter-charges-pardon-pledge-24f3007c2d2f467fa48e21bbc7262525
COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS
Many are condemning President Joe Biden for issuing a pardon of his son and some going so far as saying that it will taint his entire legacy as President. That is highly doubtful and ridiculous at best. In all likelihood the pardon will be nothing more than a footnote in history. No one should be surprised by President Joe Biden’s pardon given Trumps repeated threats to go after his political enemies as he rewards his loyalists. Trump has vowed to pardon what he calls the J-6 Hostages who stormed the capitol at his urging to overthrow the 2020 election and where as many as 5 people were killed. When Trump pardons his J-6 convicted felons, it will be a clear gross misuse of power and a miscarriage of justice by Trump. Congressional Republicans will no doubt applaud his actions as the compassionate thing to do, even though people got killed as members of congress coward in fear as the the doors of the Senate Chamber were being breached and Vice President Mike Pence was swept to safety.