Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Joe Biden has pardoned his son Hunter over convictions on gun and tax charges in an extraordinary reversal of his promise not to use executive powers to benefit his son less than two months before the end of his presidency.
In a statement on Sunday night, the US president accused political opponents in Congress of “instigating” the charges against Hunter to attack him.
“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,” Biden said.
“From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” Biden added.
Hunter’s legal troubles have been a political headache for Joe Biden ever since his electoral victory in 2020, when his son disclosed he was under federal investigation.
In June this year, he was convicted on three felony counts of lying in a federal background check when purchasing a handgun. The trial featured detailed testimony about his crack cocaine addiction and his romantic relationship with his brother’s widow.
Hunter Biden also pleaded guilty to tax charges last month in a Los Angeles federal court. He was accused of evading $1.4mn in taxes, some through inappropriate business deductions. He allegedly spent the cash on items including cars, drugs, and prostitutes.
The president has issued multiple statements supporting his son, but he has also said he would not pardon him. His reversal comes ahead of sentencing for both cases, which was scheduled for this month.
On Sunday evening, Biden said the legal attacks were part of “an effort to break Hunter”, adding that he had reached his decision to pardon his son over the weekend.
“For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded,” Biden wrote.
“Here’s the truth: 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”.
Steven Cheung, Donald Trump’s communications director, suggested that Biden’s move supported Trump’s claims of a politically motivated justice system. “The failed witch hunts against President Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponising the justice system,” Cheung said.
Republican congressman James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, said Biden had lied when he claimed he would not pardon his son, referring to the family as the “Biden Crime Family”.
In a statement, Hunter Biden said he had “admitted and taken responsibility” for “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”.
The president’s son vowed to “never take the clemency I have been given today for granted” and pledged to devote his life to “helping those who are still sick and suffering”.
The pardon applies to all offences committed by the president’s son between January 1 2014 and December 1 2024.
A poll carried out in June by Monmouth University in New Jersey found that just under half of voters, and nearly two-thirds of Democrats, thought that the justice department’s decision to prosecute Hunter Biden on gun charges was politically motivated.
The same poll found that just over half of all Americans, and almost all Republicans, also believed that president-elect Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial in New York was politically motivated.
