Issues 'and UnFull Conditional Pardon' for His Son Hunter Biden Before the New Year, Weeks Before Trump's Succession The pardon was issued weeks before President Biden left office and transferred power to President-elect Donald J. Trump, who spent years attacking Hunter Biden over his legal and personal issues.
On Sunday night, President Biden used the powers of his office to waive aside years of legal troubles, including a federal conviction for illegally buying a gun and for tax evasion, to issue a full and unconditional pardon to his son, Hunter, whom he had repeatedly insisted he would not.
In a statement issued by the White House, Mr. Biden said he had decided to issue the executive grant of clemency for his son "for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.
He says that he made the move due to the political motivations for which charges had been brought against Hunter to politically hurt him.
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," Mr. Biden said in the statement. "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 that is wrong.".
He added, "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.".
It was an extraordinary role reversal for a president whose own presidency and five-decade-long career were built partly on the promise that he would not infringe upon the dispensation of justice. In 2020, he presented the case for expelling former President Donald J. Trump from office as necessary to restore such independence to America's democracy, and in 2024 he presented that same case.
But in his statement, Mr. Biden attempted to argue the case for intervention after all, and he accused his political enemies of going after his son in ways that anybody else wouldn't have been. He said he still had faith in the justice system but added: "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."
It coincided with the day when Mr. Trump made it plainer than ever that his second term was going to be one of retribution and revenge against Mr. Biden — with Hunter Biden very much in view. On Saturday, the president-elect said he would appoint Kash Patel, a loyalist who has promised to go after Mr. Trump's enemies, as F.B.I. director.
In a statement, Mr. Biden said, "I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision."
Within hours of Mr. Biden's pardon announcement, Hunter Biden also issued his own statement.
I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport, he said. 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.
He was relieved, but also bitter over what he felt was an unnecessary prosecution, said two people familiar with the situation, after his father told him he was being pardoned when the family gathered in Nantucket, Mass., for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Many of the president's allies and critics had assumed he would pardon his son, even though he and his spokeswoman had denied for months that he had ever intended to do so. NBC News first reported on Sunday evening that Mr. Biden had indeed decided to issue the pardon, meaning that his son will face no federal charges stemming from crimes he may have committed during that period.
But the move quickly drew forth statements of derision from Mr. Biden's political opponents.
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