The White House is in damage-control mode after President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter for gun and tax crimes Sunday night, a move that followed months of declarations from Biden and his staff that he would not let his son off the hook.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced a barrage questions aboard Air Force One about the president’s decision to grant his son one of the most sweeping presidential pardons in American history, shielding Hunter from prosecution for any federal crimes he might have committed from January 1, 2014 to December 1, 2024.
“One of the things that the President believes is being truthful to the American people,” Jean-Pierre said in response to a question about Biden’s past insistence that he would not pardon Hunter.
The eleven-year period covers the entirety of Hunter’s lucrative foreign business dealings that formed the basis of the House Republican impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
“He came to the decision this weekend,” Jean-Pierre added. In her telling, Biden “wrestled” with the decision to pardon his son because he believes in the justice system, yet considers the “politically infected” proceedings against his son to be unjustified.
Jean-Pierre’s timeline is at odds with reporting from NBC News, which suggests that Biden and his aides began discussing the possibility of pardoning Hunter as early as June, when he was found guilty of three federal gun crimes. The reported plan was to state publicly that Biden would not pardon his son, while privately keeping the possibility open.
House Republicans found that foreign individuals and businesses from Ukraine, China, Romania, and elsewhere paid Hunter and his associates more than $27 million during and after Biden’s vice presidency. The impeachment investigation also covered several occasions where Biden interacted with his son’s business partners and substantiated IRS whistleblower allegations of misconduct by Justice Department officials during the long-running tax case against Hunter Biden.
Many Republican lawmakers and some Democrats have criticized Biden for lying to the American people. The pardon comes with less than two months to go in Biden’s term and it was announced as he was jetting off to Angola for a trip to sub-Saharan Africa.
Last month, following President-elect Donald Trump’s resounding election victory, Jean-Pierre told reporters the president would not be pardoning his son, echoing her boss’s promises after the gun case.
“We’ve been asked that question multiple times and our answer stands — which is no,” Jean-Pierre stated at the time.
Hunter was convicted in June for possessing a firearm when he was addicted to crack cocaine six years ago and lying about his drug problems on gun paperwork. In September, he pleaded guilty to nine federal tax-evasion charges for failing to pay over $1.4 million of taxes in a timely fashion last decade.
Biden and his son vacationed together over Thanksgiving in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Jean-Pierre would not say if the two discussed the pardon during their holiday vacation, but reasserted that Biden made the decision himself.
Another reporter later asked Jean-Pierre if she agreed with Trump’s belief that the justice system has been weaponized for political purposes.
“No. Read the president’s statement. Seriously, read the president’s statement. He said he believes in the Department of Justice. He does. He says it in his statement. He also believes that war politics infected the process and it led to a miscarriage of justice. He believes his son was unfairly targeted,” she asserted.
Jean-Pierre continuously cited Biden’s statement and repeatedly claimed the president’s son was the victim of selective prosecution. She would not say if the Justice Department under Biden prosecuted anybody else for political reasons.
The federal judges in Hunter’s Delaware and California proceedings both rejected arguments from his attorneys that his father’s Justice Department was selectively prosecuting him. Hunter’s sentencing for both cases were scheduled to take place later this month.