President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he has pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who faced sentencing this month on gun crime and tax convictions, marking a reversal as he prepares to leave office.
“Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” the president said in a statement. It is a “full and unconditional pardon,” according to a copy of the executive grant of clemency.
This official grant of clemency cannot be rescinded by President-elect Donald Trump.
By pardoning his son, Joe Biden has reneged on a public promise that he made repeatedly before and after dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. The president and his top White House spokesperson have said unequivocally, including after Trump won the 2024 election, that he would not pardon Hunter Biden or commute his sentence.
The pardon means Hunter Biden won’t be sentenced for his crimes, and it eliminates any chance of his being sent to prison, which was a possibility. The judges overseeing his cases will likely cancel the sentencing hearings, which were slated for December 12 in the gun case and December 16 in the tax case.
The pardon covers any potential federal crimes that Hunter Biden committed “from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024,” which, importantly, covers his entire tenure on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
He had faced scrutiny for his controversial foreign business dealings, and Trump has repeatedly said he should be prosecuted for his activities in Ukraine.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers on Sunday night formally notified the judges in his criminal cases about the pardon — and said in a sworn affidavit that he has accepted the pardon from his father.
In new court filings, Hunter Biden’s lawyers told the judges in both of his cases that the pardon “requires dismissal of the Indictment against him with prejudice and adjournment of all future proceedings in this matter.”
Joe Biden said in the statement that he decided to issue the pardon because his son was “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” saying that “Hunter was treated differently” from people who commit similar crimes.
The president said his political opponents in Congress “instigated” the charges “to attack me and oppose my election.”
He said in his statement, “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. … I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”
Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury in June of illegally buying and possessing a gun, after a gut-wrenching trial that delved into his drug abuse and family dysfunction. He then pleaded guilty in September to nine tax offenses, stemming from $1.4 million in taxes that he didn’t pay while spending lavishly on escorts, strippers, cars and drugs.
Special counsel David Weiss, who was the Trump-appointed US attorney for Delaware, began investigating Hunter Biden in 2018 and filed both indictments in 2023. As president, Joe Biden had the authority to shut down the probe or direct the Justice Department to dismiss the charges — but he kept his pledge to stay out of the matter.
Both criminal cases revolved around Hunter Biden’s decadeslong struggle with drug and alcohol addiction, which he discussed openly, including in his 2021 memoir. From the start, Hunter Biden’s lawyers argued that he was being targeted by overzealous prosecutors who caved to public pressure from Trump and congressional Republicans.
“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 Sunday night.
“In recovery we can be given the opportunity to make amends where possible and rebuild our lives if we never take for granted the mercy that we have been afforded,” he added. “I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”
As much as Joe Biden had hoped to remain deferent to the judicial system, the president came to believe that “raw politics had infected the process,” one White House official familiar with the decision told CNN on Sunday.
“He feels Hunter was targeted in order for his political opponents to hurt him and that was cruel and he endured enough,” the official said. “Once he made it, there was no sense in delaying it further.”
One thing that particularly swayed the president: a belief that his political opponents were trying to “break Hunter,” as he said in his statement, as Hunter Biden was recovering from addiction. The president pointed to his son’s five and a half years of sobriety “even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution.”
He said he “wrestled” with the decision and came to his conclusion this weekend. The Bidens spent the Thanksgiving holiday together in Nantucket, where the president and his son were seen having lunch, attending a tree lighting and going to Mass.
In the wake of Trump’s election victory last month, White House aides began to sense that a pardon — or a commutation of the younger Biden’s sentences — was a distinct possibility. Some aides believed that Joe Biden would wait to see the sentences his son received in mid-December before making a decision.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on November 7 — the day after the election — that the president had no plans to pardon his son. But in recent weeks, Republicans at varying degrees of proximity to Trump highlighted their belief publicly that Hunter Biden would remain a high-profile investigative target in the next term.
Had Vice President Kamala Harris won the election, sources close to the president say, a pardon would have been less likely — in part because of concerns of the political fallout.
One senior administration official, who requested anonymity to describe private conversations among staff, cited Trump’s late-term pardon of Charles Kushner, his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, and said Biden should take the same liberties, especially considering the bond between father and son.
“How could he not?” the official said of the pardon.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s MJ Lee and Evan Perez contributed to this report.
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