President Biden late Sunday pardoned his son Hunter Biden on tax and gun charges, condemning the prosecutions as politically motivated while reversing his own promise not to use his executive authority to save his son from potential prison sentences.
In a statement, Mr. Biden called the convictions “a miscarriage of justice” and accused Republicans of injecting “raw politics” into the judicial process.”
The pardon comes ahead of Hunter Biden’s Dec. 12 sentencing in Wilmington, Delaware for his conviction on three federal gun charges. Hunter Biden is also set to be sentenced in Los Angeles on Dec. 16 after pleading guilty to nine federal tax-evasion charges.
Coming near the end of the 82-year-old president’s term in office, the pardon will ensure that Hunter Biden will spend no time in jail.
Hunter Biden was staring down a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a $750,000 fine in the gun case while the tax charges carried a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison. However, he would have likely received far less than the maximum sentence because he is a first-time offender.
Mr. Biden’s statement blamed House Republicans for the charges, saying they only came about after the GOP launched probes aimed at damaging his reelection effort after years of hounding his son to make him a political liability.
SEE ALSO: Full written statement from Biden on his decision to pardon his son
The president bowed out of the 2024 White House race in July weeks after a devastating debate performance against former President Donald Trump.
“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 — and that is wrong,” Mr. Biden said. “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.”
The president said, “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.”
Mr. Biden said the charges against his son arose after several of his “political opponents in Congress instigated them” to derail his reelection.
He also accused House Republicans of interfering with the plea deal Hunter Biden reached with the Justice Department, which unraveled last year amid intense scrutiny from a federal judge in Wilmington.
The pardon marks a major reversal for the president, who in recent months repeatedly incited that he would not use his power to pardon his son or commute his sentence.
SEE ALSO: Hunter Biden issues statement after being pardoned by father
“I will not pardon him,” Mr. Biden said in June after a Wilmington jury found him guilty on three federal gun charges.
As recently as last Monday, the White House insisted that Mr. Biden would not issue clemency for his son.
“The president has spoken to this,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told reporters on Air Force One. “I don’t have anything to add to what he said already.”
Earlier this month, when pressed on the issue, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded, “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is ’no.’”
In his statement, Mr. Biden didn’t address why he reversed his stance, but did say he kept his promise not to interfere with the justice system by waiting until after the cases were resolved to issue the pardon.
Had Hunter Biden been pardoned at the conclusion of his trial in Delaware on federal gun charges, it would have erupted into a political headache for his father, who was running for re-election.
Republicans have long argued that Hunter Biden was receiving favorable treatment from the Justice Department because of his father’s political clout.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, who was investigating the Biden family business dealings, including Hunter Biden’s questionable dealings with foreign officials, said the pardon was an effort to escape accountability.
He said Mr. Biden lied about the scope of the business dealings as well his promise not to pardon Hunter Biden.
“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,” Mr. Comer said. “It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can do to avid accountability.”
Hunter Biden had planned to resolve the long-running federal investigation into his business dealings with a plea bargain deal with prosecutors that would have avoided an embarrassing trial ahead of the presidential election.
Under the deal, he would have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses in California and avoided prosecution in the Delaware gun case, if he stayed out of trouble for two years.
But the deal fell apart under scrutiny from U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was nominated by Mr. Trump. She questioned several unusual stipulations in the proposed agreements, and neither defense attorneys nor prosecutors could agree to a new deal.
Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed David Weiss, the U.S. attorney from Delaware, as special counsel in August 2023. He indicted Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges roughly a month later.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.