Joe Biden announced a presidential pardon for his troubled son Hunter on Sunday night, calling his prosecution ‘selective’ and ‘unfair.’
It goes against what Biden has said as recently is June, directly saying ‘I will not pardon him.’
‘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.
He claimed that people are ‘almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form.’
‘It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.’
The president said that ‘several of my political opponents in Congress’ and made the charges a public concern ‘to attack me and oppose my election.’
He added that had the plea deal Hunter agreed to with the Department of Justice not fallen through, the president would have seen it as a ‘fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.’
‘No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because is my son – and that is wrong,’ he continued.
Joe Biden will announce a presidential pardon for his troubled son Hunter on Sunday night, a senior White House official has said
For months, the nation wondered if the president would pardon his ne’er-do-well son over his convictions on federal gun and tax fraud charges
Biden says that there has been an effort to ‘break Hunter’ and destroy what he says is five-and-a-half years of sober.
‘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.’
The president didn’t shy away from pointing out that the love of his son guided his decision-making but stressed that he was being ‘fair-minded.’
‘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 – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further.’
Hunter was last season on holiday with his father and the rest of the Bidens on Nantucket in Rhode Island.
‘I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.’
For months, the nation wondered if the president would pardon his ne’er-do-well son over his convictions on federal gun and tax fraud charges.
The pardon will cover both the gun charges and Hunter’s guilty plea.
Hunter was last season on holiday with his father and the rest of the Bidens on Nantucket in Rhode Island
It goes against what Biden has said as recently is June, directly telling the press: ‘I will not pardon him’
Biden was scheduled to be sentenced in the Delaware gun case on December 13, and on December 16 in the California tax case.
Biden and even Donald Trump have been pestered on the issue, with Trump suggesting it wasn’t out of the question despite having railed against the First Son for years.
Abbe Lowell, a key member of 54-year-old Hunter’s legal team had begun making his client’s case to the press that he was a political prisoner.
‘This is a seven-year saga propelled by an unrelenting political desire to use a son to hurt his father,’ Lowell said.
Family pardons are not unheard of in presidential history. Before he left office in January 2001, Bill Clinton granted brother Roger a controversial presidential pardon for a 1985 cocaine-trafficking conviction.
Trump himself pardoned Charles Kushner, father of son-in-law and ex-advisor Jared, before leaving office in 2020. Kushner was just yesterday named the US ambassador to France.
Lowell has reiterated that the only reason Hunter is facing conviction is out of political gain for his father’s enemies.
“It is a wild and terrifying story that serves as a stark warning of what is to come as some of the same Republicans who targeted Hunter prepare to resume power and have stated their intention to use the government’s vast power to pursue their perceived enemies,” Lowell told the Washington Post.
