“I hope Americans understand why a father and a president has made this decision.” With that phrase ended the statement with which the president of the United States, Joe Biden, announced the pardon for his son Hunter. Fatherly love has prevailed over exemplarity as president with a measure of grace that dynamites Biden’s entire message that “no one is above the law” and that the actions of the Department of Justice and the courts have not been politicized during his mandate. To the indignation – or rather the joy – of the Republicans, he has ended up doing what he so many times denied that he would do.
Americans have just elected president a leader who is anything but exemplary. Voters have ignored Donald Trump’s financial, sexual, political and criminal scandals that would have destroyed any other candidate’s chances. Biden was faced with the choice of continuing to lead by example, risking his son going to jail, or swallowing his words to save him. He has chosen the latter.
Biden has not even waited to find out what sentences the judges imposed on Hunter, which were due to be known this month. The president has not only pardoned him for the three crimes related to the illegal purchase and possession of a firearm for which a jury found him guilty and the nine crimes of tax fraud in which he himself admitted the charges. The presidential pardon extends to all criminal acts that may have been committed from January 1, 2014 to December 1, 2024, a period of almost 11 years.
With such a broad pardon, the outgoing president shields his son from any judicial persecution to which he could be subjected during Trump’s term for the events of those years. The president-elect campaigned promising revenge for his own judicial charges and has nominated Pam Bondi for attorney general, and Kash Patel for FBI director, loyal attack dogs suitable for that purpose.
James Comer, one of the Republicans who has led congressional investigations into Biden’s family, trying unsuccessfully to connect them to the president himself, criticized the pardon and said the evidence against Hunter was “just the tip of the iceberg.” “It is unfortunate that, instead of confessing to their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” the congressman tweeted.
Trump reacted on his social network, Truth, with a brief message: “Does the pardon granted by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 hostages, imprisoned for years? What an abuse and injustice!” His message suggests once again that when he takes office he will pardon those convicted of the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned his father-in-law Charles Kushner, whom he has just chosen to be ambassador to France. His own criminal cases are going to be at least put on hold before his election as president.
Both with the accusations against Trump and with the judicial proceedings against his own son, Biden had assumed the discourse that “no one is above the law.” Attorney General Merrick Garland gave special prosecutor powers to the person in charge of investigating the cases against Hunter Biden, who was also a Republican-appointed prosecutor. This attempt to demonstrate exquisite independence in the Department of Justice did not give the Democrats any political gain. The speech by Trump and his allies that the former president was the object of political persecution, a “witch hunt,” as he called it, ended up convincing voters more. Now, in some way, Biden himself assumes the thesis of the politicization of justice.
“They have tried to break me”
“I believe in the justice system, but as I have dealt with this, I also believe that naked politics has infected this process and led to a miscarriage of justice,” Biden said in his statement, released on Sunday, at the end of the bridge. Thanksgiving and just before embarking on an official three-day trip to Angola. “No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases can come to any conclusion other than that Hunter was singled out just because he is my son, and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter, who has been five and a half years sober, 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,” said the president.
Hunter Biden was found guilty in June by a jury of three felonies for purchasing and possessing a firearm while he was a drug addict. He purchased a Colt Cobra revolver on October 12, 2018 at a gun store outside Wilmington, Delaware, and lied on a form by denying that he was an illegal user or drug addict. He then kept that weapon in his possession for 11 days. His crimes were: false statement when purchasing the gun; false statement in documents to be kept on file by the gun seller and illegal possession of a firearm. The maximum sentences that corresponded to them were up to 10 years for the first offense, 5 for the second and another 10 for the third, along with fines of up to $250,000 for each of them and up to three years of supervised release. “I abide by the jury’s decision. “I will do it and I will not pardon him,” said the president after hearing the verdict. The sentencing was scheduled for December 12.
Additionally, in September, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty in the case against him in California to nine tax crimes and evading $1.4 million in taxes. The crimes could result in a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison and the payment of a fine of between $500,000 and one million dollars. The sentencing was scheduled for December 16.
The president’s thesis is that without aggravating factors, people accused of serious crimes are almost never brought to trial solely for how they filled out a gun purchase form and that those who are late paying their taxes due to serious addictions, but They pay later with interest and fines, they usually receive non-criminal punishments. “It is clear that Hunter was treated differently,” says Joe Biden.
