The president of the United States, Joe Biden, pardoned his son Hunter on Sunday night, despite his repeated promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the office for the benefit of his family members. With the presidential pardon, Hunter Biden avoids a possible prison sentence for federal crimes for lying on the criminal record and illegally purchasing and possessing a firearm, and is also exonerated from his guilty plea on the nine counts of tax fraud that were attributed to him.
Biden’s grace comes just a month and a half before the arrival at the White House of Republican Donald Trump, who has described clemency as a “miscarriage of justice” and pointed out those imprisoned for the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. in a message published in Truth Social as soon as the presidential pardon was announced. “Does the pardon granted by Joe to Hunter include the hostages of January 6, who have already been imprisoned for years? What an abuse and miscarriage of justice!” wrote the Republican.
The Democratic president had previously said that he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence in the proceedings against him in Delaware and California. In a few weeks, Hunter Biden was awaiting the reading of the sentence after his conviction in the case of illegal purchase and possession of a revolver – the first time that the son of a president sat on the bench – because in the second trial, with his guilty plea to tax charges, he avoided going to trial. But Trump’s imminent arrival at the White House, with his intention to purge those he considers internal enemies, including politicians, could have changed Biden’s mind in the final stretch of his mandate.
More recently, on November 8 – three days after Trump’s resounding victory at the polls – White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ruled out a pardon or other type of clemency for the youngest of the Biden, saying: “We have been asked that question multiple times. Our answer remains, and it is no.”
But in a statement released tonight, at the end of a long holiday weekend in the United States, Bien explains his contradiction. “Today I signed the pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere in the decision-making of the Department of Justice, and I have kept my word even as I watched my son be selectively and unfairly prosecuted,” Biden says, alleging that the prosecution of Hunter, the only living child from his first marriage, was politically motivated — the same allegation Trump made regarding his charges — and was a “miscarriage of justice.” “The charges in their cases arose only after they were instigated by several of my political opponents in Congress to attack me and oppose my election,” the statement added. “No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases can come to any conclusion other than that Hunter was singled out solely because he is my son.”
“I hope Americans understand why a father and a president have come to this decision,” adds Biden, who claims to have made it this weekend. The president spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket (Massachusetts) with Hunter and his family, with whom he could be seen shopping in a bookstore and greeting neighbors on the streets. “This is the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have struggled with this, I also believe that crude politics has infected this process and led to a miscarriage of justice. Once the decision was made this weekend [de indultar a Hunter] “There was no point in delaying it further,” he concludes.
With grace, it culminates a long legal adventure for the president’s son, who publicly revealed that he was under federal investigation in December 2020, a month after his father’s victory in the presidential elections in which he defeated Trump. Last June, the Democratic president categorically ruled out a pardon or possible commutation of his son’s sentence, telling reporters while his son sat in the dock in Delaware, surrounded by his mother, the first lady, Jill Biden: “I abide by the jury’s decision. “I will do it and I will not pardon him.” The conviction was a setback for the Democrat’s electoral career, which two weeks later was affected and definitively sunk after his poor performance in the televised debate with Trump.
Hunter Biden’s turbulent biography is largely responsible for the guilty verdict. The president’s son presented a written statement of background “in which he certified that he was not an illicit user or addict of any stimulant, narcotic or any other substance, when in reality, as he knew, said statement was false and fictitious,” said the prosecution, because his drug addiction was well known. The prosecutor accused him of two crimes for these falsehoods (one for the false information on the form and another for lying to the seller of the weapon) and a third for the subsequent possession of the weapon, which was also illegal due to his recognized addictions.
The president’s statement highlights that Hunter’s addictions made him an easy target for Republicans. “There has been an effort to break Hunter, who has been sober for five and a half years, even in the face of relentless attacks and targeted persecution. By 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 statement concludes. Hunter fell into a self-destructive spiral of alcohol and drugs after the death of his older brother, Beau, in 2015 from a brain tumor.
In addition to the gun case and tax fraud, Hunter Biden has served as a battering ram for Republicans to politically attack his father for his business dealings in Ukraine, with the state gas company Burisma, and in China, at the time when the Democrat was vice president. of Barack Obama. His business activity has been the subject of scrutiny by the Republican opposition for years. No evidence has been found that Joe Biden intervened in them or anything that suggests a possible conflict of interest, but that did not prevent the then president of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, from ordering a formal investigation in September 2023. as a preliminary step to a possible political process (impeachment) to the president.
