President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunteron Sunday night, sparing the younger Biden from possible prison terms on federal gun and tax charges and reversing his past promises not to use the president’s extraordinary powers to benefit his family members.
The Democratic president previously said he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence after he was convicted in two cases in Delaware and California. The move comes weeks before Hunter Biden was set to receive his sentence following his gun trial and guilty plea to tax charges, and less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump is due to return to the White House.
It ends a long-running legal saga for the younger Biden, who publicly disclosed 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 that he would restore norms and respect for the rule of law after Trump’s first term, ended up using his position to help his son, breaking his public promise to Americans that he would do no such thing.
In June, Biden categorically rejected a pardon or commutation of his son’s sentence, telling reporters as his son faced trial in a Delaware gun case: “I submit to the jury’s decision. I will do it and I will not forgive 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, and that is no.”
The elder Biden publicly stood by his only living son as Hunter fell into serious drug addiction and threw his family life into turmoil, before pulling himself together in recent years. His political rivals have long used Hunter Biden’s myriad mistakes as a political bludgeon against his father: At one hearing, lawmakers displayed half-naked photos of the president’s drug-addicted son in a seedy hotel.
House Republicans sought to use the younger Biden’s years of questionable foreign business ventures in an attempt to revoke his father, who has long denied being involved in or benefiting from his son’s affairs.
In a statement released Sunday night, Biden said, “I believe in the justice system, but as I have fought this, I also believe that crude politics have infected this process and led to a miscarriage of justice.”
“The allegations in his cases only came to light 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 cases 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 a father and a president would come to this decision,” Biden added, claiming he made the decision this weekend. The president spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Massachusetts, with Hunter and his family, and was scheduled to depart later Sunday for what could be his final trip abroad as president before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2025.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June in federal court in Delaware of three felony counts of the purchase gun in 2018 whenprosecutors said, he lied on a federal form claiming he had no illegal drug use or addiction.
He was due to stand trial in September in a case in California that accuses him 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 was set to begin.
David Weiss, the Delaware U.S. attorney appointed by Trump and who negotiated the plea, was subsequently appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to give him more autonomy in prosecuting the president’s son.
Hunter Biden said he is pleading guilty in the case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after salacious details about his struggle with crack cocaine addiction were released at a gun trial.
The tax charges carry up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, although federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible that he would avoid prison altogether.
Hunter Biden was set to be sentenced this month in two federal cases brought by a special prosecutor after a plea deal with prosecutors that would have spared him prison time collapsed under a judge’s scrutiny. Under the original deal, Hunter was to plead guilty to tax offenses and avoid prosecution in the gun case as long as he stayed out of trouble for two years.
But the plea hearing quickly unrolled last year when a judge expressed concern about unusual aspects of the deal. He was subsequently charged in those two cases.
The blanket pardon covers not only those offenses, but any other “offenses against the United States that he committed or may have committed or participated in during the period from January 1, 2014, to December 1, 2024.”
Hunter Biden’s legal team this weekend released a 52-page white paper entitled “The Political Prosecution of Hunter Biden,” which describes the president’s son as a “surrogate for attacking and injuring 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 for what they called a “sweetheart” plea deal.
Both cases against the younger Biden were somewhat unusual. Criminal tax cases are generally rare, legal experts say, and gun-related offenses are usually filed alongside other, more serious charges. In Hunter Biden’s case, his lawyers noted that he had had the gun for 11 days and had never fired a shot. And he paid back the back taxes he owed before he was supposed to be tried.
Rep. James Comer, one of the Republicans leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, condemned the president’s decision to grant his son a pardon, saying the evidence against Hunter was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“It is unfortunate that, rather than own up to their decade of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer said on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.
Biden is hardly the first president to use his power to pardon those 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 multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner over the weekend to be the American envoy to France in his next administration.
Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesman, who has promised a dramatic overhaul and installation of loyalists throughout the Justice Department after he was indicted for his role in an attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election, said in a statement: “That justice system must be fixed and it must to establish due process 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 the relief he was given for granted and vowed to dedicate his rebuilt life to “helping those who are still sick and suffering.”
“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction — mistakes that were used to publicly humiliate and embarrass 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 handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing clemency.
A spokesman for Weiss did not respond to messages seeking comment Sunday night.
