President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, on Sunday just days before he was scheduled to be sentenced in separate federal gun and tax cases—marking an about face for the lame-duck president.
“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 said in a statement.
The president accused his “political opponents in Congress” of pursuing the prosecution against his son—who became the first child of a sitting president to be criminally convicted after he was found guilty on firearms charges in June.
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Biden, 82, has repeatedly insisted he had no plans to pardon his troubled 54-year-old son, but reversed that decision on Sunday night, insisting Hunter was “treated differently” than others facing the same charges.
Biden decided to issue the pardon over the weekend, a White House source told NBC News, who first broke the story before the official announcement. Hunter, his wife Melissa Cohen Biden, and their son Beau joined the president on Nantucket for Thanksgiving in the days leading up to the decision, multiple outlets reported.
“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.
The aging president, whose decision will spare Hunter time behind bars, alluded to his son’s battles with alcohol and drug addiction.
“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,” Biden said.
“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.”
Biden’s order granted his son a pardon for all offenses he “committed or may have committed or taken part in” for an almost 11-year period between January 2014, before Hunter joined the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings—which Republicans claimed was part of a Biden family “bribery scheme”—through December 2024.
In a statement sent to the Daily Beast, Hunter reflected on his five years of sobriety.
“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my 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 said.
And without naming his father, Hunter expressed appreciation for the president’s pardon.
The pardon comes just one day after defense attorneys for Hunter issued a 52-page paper titled “The political prosecutions of Hunter Biden” on Saturday—portraying the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a felony as a victim of circumstance.
In the white paper obtained by the Daily Beast, Hunter’s attorneys argue that he is on President-elect Donald Trump’s “enemies list” and will face increased scrutiny from federal prosecutors when he takes office.
“A system that is supposed to protect against abuses failed to do so and was corrupted by political leaders in this country,” the document reads.
The special counsel who prosecuted both of Hunter Biden’s cases, David Weiss, was appointed by Trump to be the U.S. attorney for Delaware. However, Biden’s own attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Weiss as the special counsel overseeing the Hunter Biden investigation, which resulted in two separate convictions.
“The prospect that Trump will turn his vengeance on the Special Counsel prosecutors if they fail to take a harder line against Hunter no doubt exerts considerable pressure on them not to let up on Hunter,” the filing adds.
The report from Hunter’s attorneys directly criticized the prosecution’s decision to pursue the case.
“Hunter posed no threat to public safety nor worked in his father’s administration. There were no victims in the gun or tax crimes he was accused of committing. Owning a handgun for 11 days that was never loaded nor used, and a late filing and payment of taxes, should not have been the foundation to punish Hunter for no more than being a ‘Biden.’”
The president’s statement on Sunday announcing the pardon seemingly reflected the reasoning from his son’s lawyers.
“Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions,” Biden said.
Hunter was found guilty on federal gun charges in June. He then pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges in September.
The first son is scheduled to be sentenced in his gun case on Dec. 12 in Delaware, where he faces up to 25 years in prison. His sentencing on tax evasion in California will take place on Dec. 16. The tax charges come with a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison.
Biden repeatedly said he had no plans to pardon his own son, telling ABC News’ David Muir in an interview he would accept the outcome of his son’s trial. More recently, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted a pardon was still out of the question at a press briefing on Nov. 7—the day after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
During the campaign season, Trump repeatedly used similar language to Hunter Biden’s legal team—labeling the prosecutions against him as “political persecution.” Lawyers for the president-elect even floated the idea of a $100 million lawsuit against the Justice Department, alleging the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents constituted persecution.
However, Trump has more recently changed his tune on Hunter—even suggesting in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would consider a pardon for the son of his former political rival himself.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, now Trump’s pick to lead the State Department, also previously insisted that Trump would not use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies.
In its first statements about the pardon, Trump’s incoming administration focused on the Justice Department under Biden.
“The failed witch hunts against President Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponizing the justice system,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to The New York Times. “That system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what President Trump will do as he returns to the White House.”
In another statement posted on Truth Social, Trump again redirected the conversation away from Hunter, instead focusing on MAGA supporters who were convicted for their roles in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” the president-elect wrote. Trump has previously floated the idea of issuing pardons for some participants in the Capitol riot after his loss to Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Congressional Republicans who led the charge against Hunter were indignant after news of the pardon broke. “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,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said in a statement posted on social media.
As chair of the House Oversight Committee, Comer led the years-long investigation focused on building impeachment charges against Joe Biden, which failed. Although the committee’s eventual report never recommended charges against any Biden, Comer is publishing a book in January still accusing the family of corruption.
