President Biden pardons his son Hunter Biden

CNN

By Marshall Cohen and Betsy Klein, CNN

Washington (CNN) — President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he has pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who faced sentencing this month for federal tax and gun convictions, marking a reversal as he prepares to leave office.

“Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” the president said in a statement. It is a “full and unconditional pardon,” according to a copy of the executive grant of clemency.

This official grant of clemency cannot be rescinded by President-elect Donald Trump.

By pardoning his son, Joe Biden has reneged on a public promise that he made repeatedly before and after dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. The president and his top White House spokesperson said unequivocally, including after Trump won the 2024 election, that he would not pardon Hunter Biden or commute his sentence.

The pardon means Hunter Biden won’t be sentenced for his crimes, and it eliminates any chance that he’ll be sent to prison, which was a possibility. The judges overseeing his cases will likely cancel the sentencing hearings, which were slated for December 12 in the gun case and December 16 in the tax case.

The broadly crafted pardon explicitly grants clemency for the tax and gun offenses from his existing cases, plus any potential federal crimes that Hunter Biden may have committed “from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” This time frame, importantly, covers his entire tenure on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and much of his other overseas work, including in China. He had faced scrutiny for his controversial foreign business dealings, and Trump has repeatedly said he should be prosecuted for his activities in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers on Sunday night formally notified the judges in his criminal cases about the pardon — and he said in a sworn affidavit that he has accepted the pardon from his father.

In new court filings, Hunter Biden’s lawyers told the judges in both of his cases that the pardon “requires dismissal of the Indictment against him with prejudice and adjournment of all future proceedings in this matter.”

Joe Biden said in his statement that he decided to issue the pardon because his son was “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” saying that “Hunter was treated differently” from people who commit similar crimes.

The president said his political opponents in Congress “instigated” the charges “to attack me and oppose my election.”

He said in his statement, “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. … I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”

The president further claimed Hunter Biden was “singled out” for prosecution “only because he is my son” — allegations that were previously raised by Hunter Biden’s lawyers and resoundingly rejected by two federal judges. The judge who oversaw his gun trial in Delaware concluded that Hunter Biden’s theory of a selective prosecution was “nonsensical under the facts here.”

In a social media post Sunday night, Trump called the pardon “such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” In an apparent joke, Trump also asked whether the pardon includes his supporters who attacked the US Capitol during the January 6, 2021, insurrection — whom he has promised to pardon once he’s back in office.

End of a six-year saga

Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury in June of illegally buying and possessing a gun as a drug user, after a gut-wrenching trial that delved into his drug abuse and family dysfunction. He then pleaded guilty in September to nine tax offenses, stemming from $1.4 million in taxes that he didn’t pay while spending lavishly on escorts, strippers, cars and drugs.

Special counsel David Weiss, who was the Trump-appointed US attorney for Delaware, began investigating Hunter Biden in 2018 and filed both indictments in 2023. As president, Joe Biden had the authority to shut down the probe or direct the Justice Department to dismiss the charges — but he kept his pledge to stay out of the matter.

Both criminal cases revolved around Hunter Biden’s decadeslong struggle with drug and alcohol addiction, which he discussed openly, including in his 2021 memoir. From the start, Hunter Biden’s lawyers argued that he was being targeted by overzealous prosecutors who caved to public pressure from Trump and congressional Republicans.

“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 Sunday night.

“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,” he added. “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.”

Joe Biden justified the pardon by pointing out that few people are charged with the addiction-related gun offenses “without aggravating factors,” such as using the weapon as part of a violent crime. He also argued that many people who pay back all of their late taxes, like Hunter did, are allowed to revolve their problems through civil enforcement, instead of facing criminal charges.

This is the latest instance of an outgoing president using the pardon power to help a family member: Shortly before they both left office, Bill Clinton pardoned his brother and Donald Trump pardoned the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“As sympathetic as Hunter Biden’s circumstances might be, a pardon from Joe Biden would still be an abuse of the clemency power,” said Jeffrey Crouch, a leading expert on pardons who teaches at American University. “Presidents should not use clemency to help out their friends, family and allies in order to further their own personal interest.”

Holiday decision

As much as Joe Biden had hoped to remain deferential to the judicial system — and even after promising to stay out of the case — sources told CNN the president decided after Thanksgiving that a pardon was the right move.

“He feels Hunter was targeted in order for his political opponents to hurt him and that was cruel and he endured enough,” a White House official familiar with the situation told CNN on Sunday. “Once he made it, there was no sense in delaying it further.”

One thing that particularly swayed the president: a belief that Republicans were trying to “break Hunter,” as he said in his statement, while his son was still recovering from addiction. The president pointed to his son’s five and a half years of sobriety “even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution.”

He said he “wrestled” with the decision and came to his conclusion this weekend. The Bidens spent the Thanksgiving holiday together in Nantucket, where the president and his son were seen having lunch, attending a tree lighting and going to Mass.

Biden started informing staff of his decision on Saturday evening, a source familiar with the matter said.

Shortly before the president departed Nantucket, a meeting with staff was scheduled for when he arrived back in Washington. The president shared his decision in that meeting with senior aides, some attending in person but most by phone, the source said. First lady Jill Biden was also on hand for the meeting.

The president told staff to prepare to release a statement about the pardon on Sunday, the source said, and staff regrouped on Sunday morning to iron out the details.

In the days before the pardon, Hunter Biden’s attorneys circulated a 52-page document outlining the six-year federal investigation and claiming Trump and congressional Republican were the driving force behind his legal problems. The language mirrored much of what the president said in his Sunday statement explaining his decision to pardon his son.

In the wake of Trump’s election victory last month, White House aides began to sense that a pardon — or a commutation of the younger Biden’s sentences — was a distinct possibility. Some aides believed that Joe Biden would wait to see the sentences his son received in mid-December before making a decision.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on November 7 — two days after the election — that the president had no plans to pardon his son. But in recent weeks, Republicans at varying degrees of proximity to Trump publicly highlighted their belief that Hunter Biden would remain a high-profile investigative target for the incoming Trump administration.

Had Vice President Kamala Harris won the election, sources close to the president say, a pardon would have been less likely — in part because of concerns of the political fallout.

One senior administration official, who requested anonymity to describe private conversations among staff, cited Trump’s late-term pardon of Charles Kushner and said Biden should take the same liberties, especially considering the bond between father and son.

“How could he not?” the official said of the pardon.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s MJ Lee, Evan Perez, Kayla Tausche and Arlette Saenz contributed to this report.

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