Biden pardons son of gun, tax offences
United States President Joe Biden has issued an official, unconditional pardon for Hunter, his son.
In June, Hunter was convicted of drug charges and illegal possession of a gun — becoming the first child of a sitting US president to be convicted of a crime.
The law prevents drug addicts from owning firearms.
In September, Hunter pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges.
The 54-year-old Hunter had worked as a lawyer and a lobbyist abroad, including in China and Ukraine. He was discharged from the US Navy in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.
In a statement, Biden said his son has been the victim of political persecution.
“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,” Biden said.
“Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room — with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process.
“Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.”
The president added that he kept his word by not interfering with “the Justice Department’s decision-making. And I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted”.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” he added.
“There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. 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.”
Biden said “raw politics infected the process” of his son’s trial and that he ruminated over the pardon during the weekend.
“There was no sense in delaying it further,” Biden said of the pardon.
“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”
This is not the first time a US president would be pardoning a member of their family.
In 2001, Bill Clinton pardoned Roger Clinton, his half-brother, for a cocaine-related offence committed in 1985.
In 2020, Donald Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, father-in-law of Ivanka, his daughter. The president-elect recently nominated Kushner as ambassador to France.
