WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump tied President Joe Biden’s Sunday night pardon of his son Hunter Biden to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, saying those charged with storming Congress after Trump’s 2020 election loss should also get a clean slate.
Calling those convicted and awaiting trial in the Capitol attack “hostages,” Trump called the Jan. 6 prosecutions “an abuse and miscarriage of Justice” in a social media post.
Trump didn’t directly criticize the Hunter Biden pardon, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., blasted the move. “Trust in our justice system has been almost irreparably damaged by the Bidens and their use and abuse of it,” he said on social media Monday morning.
Biden’s announcement of the broadly worded pardon came after months of denials by the president and the White House that Hunter Biden would receive one − and after the family huddled in Nantucket, Rhode Island, for Thanksgiving − included an allegation that Justice Department prosecutors were influenced by politics.
In his statement Sunday night, Joe Biden called his son’s convictions on federal tax and gun charges the result of “raw politics.” Hunter Biden faced sentencing in both cases later this month.
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Hunter Biden was convicted in a Delaware jury trial of buying and possessing a gun while being addicted to drugs. He then pleaded guilty in California to failing to pay taxes for several years during the same period. The convictions came after a plea bargain fell apart in July 2023 that could have allowed him to avoid prison time, but that congressional Republicans criticized as too lenient.
President Biden signed the pardon by arguing his son was “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” and that “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
The elder Biden said the plea agreement unraveled with Republicans in Congress “taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process.”
“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” Joe Biden said.
He and his son each cited Hunter Biden’s more than five years of sobriety in offering and accepting the clemency.
“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,” Hunter Biden said in a statement. “In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages.”
For months, the White House repeatedly denied Biden planned to pardon Hunter Biden.
Joe Biden said in June he would not pardon Hunter Biden during a wide-ranging exclusive interview with ABC News. “No,” the president reporters traveling with him to an economic summit in June, when asked whether he would pardon his son.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, repeated the denials. She told reporters on Sept. 5 the president wouldn’t pardon or commute Hunter Biden’s sentence.
“No, it is still very much a no,” she said.
She continued to deny a possible pardon as recently as a press briefing Nov. 8.
“We’ve been asked that question multiple times,” Jean-Pierre said. “Our answer stands, which is no.”
Johnson pointed to those denials in condemning the pardon.
“President Biden insisted many times he would never pardon his own son for his serious crimes,” he wrote on X. “But last night he suddenly granted a ‘Full and Unconditional Pardon’ for any and all offenses that Hunter committed for more than a decade!”
More:President Biden pardons his son Hunter Biden despite pledges not to
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One the the president traveled to Angola, Jean-Pierre said Biden had “agonized” over the decision. “There were political opponents who were very clear and very vocal about going after his son,” Jean-Pierre said. “One of the reasons the president did the pardon is because it didn’t seem like his political opponents would let go of it. It didn’t seem like they would move on.”
During his first term, Trump regularly assailed Hunter Biden and numerous leading Rebublicans, including his nomiees to lead the Justice Department, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security had labeled him a criminal long before the gun and tax convictions.
The pardon was necessary, wrote Norm Eisen, who worked as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Donald Trump’s first impeachment, because “Trump otherwise would’ve tortured Hunter.”
Democratic reaction to the pardon was mixed.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder called the pardon “warranted” and noted that most prosecutors would not have pursued the gun case unless the weapon was later used in a violent crime − a claim echoed by President Biden. Holder contrasted the Hunter Biden prosecution with Trump’s announcement that he will nominate MAGA loyalist Kash Patel as FBI director.
“Ask yourself a vastly more important question,” Holder wrote on X. “Do you really think Kash Patel is qualified to lead the world’s preeminent law enforcement investigative organization? Obvious answer: hell no.”
But Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, said Biden’s pardon sets a bad precedent that can be abused down the road, arguing that Hunter Biden “brought the legal trouble he faced on himself.”
“While as a father I certainly understand President @JoeBiden ’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country,” Polis said on social media. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.”
Hunter Biden’s criminal investigation began during the first Trump administration, which he revealed in December 2020.
David Weiss, the Delaware U.S. attorney appointed by Trump and retained by Biden, eventually reached a plea agreement that called for Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors, for which he could have potentially received no jail time. Hunter Biden would have entered a pretrial program to avoid a gun charge if he went two years without committing another crime or relapsing.
Congressional Republicans criticized the agreement as a “sweetheart deal.” U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected the it over a dispute about what crimes it would have covered. Prosecutors said they could have still investigated Biden for not reporting foreign business deals under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
After the collapse of the plea deal, Attorney General Merrick Garland named Weiss a special counsel to continue his investigation with greater independence, which led to the two indictments on gun and tax charges.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the charges were the result of political pressure because the indictments contained no new evidence beyond what was available for the plea agreement. President Biden repeated that argument in issuing his pardon.
“Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases,” Joe Biden said.
The pardon came after Trump has argued for years that Justice Department investigations of him were politically motivated.
He called special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election a partisan witch hunt and blasted special counsel Jack Smith, who secured two indictments against Trump for allegedly conspiring to steal the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House.
Trump has repeatedly considered pardoning defendants in the Jan. 6 riot as political prisoners.
More than 1,500 people have been charged in the Jan. 6 attack on charges ranging from misdemeanors to violent felonies to seditious conspiracy. More than 1,000 have pleaded guilty.
“Biden is doing exactly the wrong thing by pardoning Hunter,” John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security advisor, wrote on X. “This will now give Trump the license to pardon all of his supporters including those from Jan 6th.”
“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump said on social media on Sunday. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
House Republicans spent years investigating the president and his son for potential corruption based on Hunter Biden’s overseas business deals. The White House rebutted the accusations by arguing lawmakers found no direct links showing Hunter Biden’s income went to the president or influenced federal policy.
But Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who heads the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, continued to accuse the president of years of corruption with his son.
“It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer said.
