Republican lawmakers are calling out President Joe Biden for lying to the American people when he said he would not pardon his son Hunter for gun and tax crimes.
President Biden issued a sweeping pardon for his son Sunday night for any crimes he “may have committed or taken part in” over an eleven year period from January 1, 2014 to December 1, 2024. The unusually broad pardon comes right before Hunter Biden was going to be sentenced for his federal gun conviction in Delaware and guilty plea for tax-evasion offenses committed in California.
Republicans were quick to point out Joe Biden’s past statements insisting he would not pardon his son and connected them to a broader pattern of him lying about his involvement in his son’s foreign business dealings.
“Joe Biden has lied from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities. Not only has he falsely claimed that he never met with his son’s foreign business associates and that his son did nothing wrong, but he also lied when he said he would not pardon Hunter Biden,” said House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.).
“The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people.”
Comer was one of the Republicans who oversaw the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden over his family’s foreign business dealings and allegations of Justice Department misconduct during the long-running criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.
“Democrats said there was nothing to our impeachment inquiry,” said House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), another leader of the impeachment probe.
“If that’s the case, why did Joe Biden just issue Hunter Biden a pardon for the very things we were inquiring about?”
House Republicans found over $27 million of payments from businesses and individuals in Ukraine, China, Romania, and elsewhere to Hunter Biden and his business partners from 2014 to 2019. They also documented numerous instances where Joe Biden interacted with his son’s business partners and corroborated IRS whistleblower allegations that Justice Department officials slow-walked and obstructed investigative steps during the Hunter Biden tax case.
“Joe Biden just did the thing he told us he would never do, PARDONING his son for crimes he and the majority of the media told us he never committed,” said Representative Wesley Hunt (R., Texas).
“The Biden Crime Family played the only card they had left, using the power of the pardon before America’s President returns to the White House.”
Senate Republicans reacted similarly to their House colleagues, expressing disbelief and outrage at Joe Biden’s pardon.
“I’m shocked Pres Biden pardoned his son Hunter bc he said many many times he wouldn’t & I believed him Shame on me,” Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) posted Sunday on X.
President Biden repeatedly asserted that he would not pardon Hunter and that he respected the Delaware jury’s decision in June to convict him of three federal gun offenses. The jury found Hunter Biden guilty of lying about his drug use on mandatory gun paperwork and possessing a firearm when he was addicted to crack cocaine six years ago.
Three months later, Hunter Biden plead guilty in California to federal tax charges for failing to pay more than $1.4 million of taxes in a timely manner over a four year period last decade. He took the plea agreement rather than face a bruising trial that would have brought even more pain for the Biden family.
“Joe Biden said he would not pardon his son for the crimes he has committed. He lied. Tonight’s pardon is wrong. It proves to the American people that there is a two-tier system of justice,” said Senator John Barrasso (R., Wyo.).
Republicans were not alone in criticizing Joe Biden’s choice to end his presidency by giving his son one of the most generous pardons in American history.
“I respect President Biden, but I think he got this one wrong,” said Representative Greg Stanton (D., Ariz.). “This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”
In disagreeing with Biden’s decision, Colorado governor Jared Polis (D) sympathized with his position as a father who has the power to help out his son.
“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,” Polis said.
“Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law,” he added.
Democrats regularly pointed to Joe Biden’s promises not to pardon his son as a textbook example of their respect for the Justice Department’s independence and contrasted it with President-elect Donald Trump’s disdain for the prosecutions waged against him.
Special counsel David Weiss prosecuted Hunter Biden for the gun and tax offenses while the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry regularly made front-page news. Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, agreed to a lesser plea deal with Hunter Biden that fell apart in court last summer upon scrutiny from Delaware federal judge Maryellen Noreika over a prosecutorial immunity provision.
Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated Weiss to special counsel after the plea deal imploded and IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler testified publicly about their detailed allegations of misconduct.
“We did our duty, told the truth, and followed the law. Anyone reading the President’s excuses now should remember that Hunter Biden admitted to his tax crimes in federal court,” the IRS agents said in a joint statement.
“President Biden has the power to put his thumb on the scales of justice for his son, but at least he had to do it with a pardon explicitly for all the world to see rather than his political appointees doing it secretly behind the scenes. Either way it is a sad day for law abiding taxpayers to witness this special privilege for the powerful.”