When Hunter Biden was convicted of federal gun charges this summer, his father, US president Joe Biden, vowed to respect the jury’s verdict. “I said I’d abide by the jury decision, and I will do that,” he said at the G7 summit in Italy on 13 June. “I will not pardon him.” After the younger Biden pleaded guilty to federal tax charges in a separate case in September, his father’s aides continued to insist that the president had no intention of pardoning him. “We’ve been asked that question multiple times,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters when asked about the possibility of a pardon on 7 November. “Our answer stands, which is no.”
But in the end, with just days to go before Hunter, who is 54, was due to be sentenced in both cases, and with only weeks left in office, President Biden announced on 1 December that he would pardon his son after all.
“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,” said Biden, 82, in a statement attempting to justify his decision. He claimed there had been “an effort to break Hunter,” who, he noted, was five and a half years sober after struggling with drug addiction, and “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.” The president insisted that while he still believed in the American justice system, he assessed that in his son’s case, “raw politics has infected the process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.” He said he hoped that his fellow Americans would “understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”
The accompanying decree granted Hunter Biden a “full and unconditional pardon” covering the past decade, from 1 January 2014 to 1 December 2024. This includes not only the gun and tax crimes for which he has already been convicted but a blanket pardon for “those offenses which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in” during that period. That time frame spans, for instance, the two years when Hunter served on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which he joined in April 2014, and his business dealings in China while his father was vice president. He has been accused of leveraging his father’s position during this period to elicit lucrative consulting deals from foreign businesses, although he denies any wrongdoing and no evidence has been found – despite extensive efforts by Republican lawmakers – that Joe Biden granted preferential access to his son’s clients or behaved in any way improperly.
It is not hard to make the case for why a father, granted the ability, might decide to pardon his son. Hunter is the president’s only surviving son – his older brother Beau Biden died from an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2015 – and it is true that he has been subjected to an extraordinary level of scrutiny by his father’s political opponents. One can certainly argue that the federal gun charges for which he was convicted this summer – he wrote on the application form to purchase a handgun that he was sober when he was not – would not have resulted in felony charges for someone with a different last name. Equally, Donald Trump’s announcement on 30 November – 24 hours before Biden granted the pardon – that he intends to replace the current director of the FBI with Kash Patel, a hard-line loyalist, signals the incoming president is serious about his vow to exact “retribution” when he returns to power in January. Biden’s defenders will argue that he was simply acting judiciously to protect his son from a vengeful returning president and his senior officials, who have repeatedly threatened to go after the “Biden crime family” in general, and Hunter in particular. What parent would not be tempted to act to protect their child in these circumstances if they were given the power to do so?
But we should expect more from a president.
Biden cannot insist, on the one hand, that he believes in the American system of justice and the foundational principle that no man is above the law, but then again, that his own son should be exempt. There is no question that Hunter Biden committed the crimes of which he has been convicted. The justice department appointed a special prosecutor to pursue the cases against him – just as was the case for Trump’s federal trials – precisely to avoid any appearance of political interference. He was found guilty by a jury in the gun case, and he pleaded guilty to all nine charges against him in the tax case, which involved not paying at least $1.4 million (£1.1 million) in federal taxes from 2016 to 2019, a period when prosecutors alleged he was addicted to cocaine and spent millions of dollars on an “extravagant lifestyle” that included hiring escorts, staying in luxury hotels, and membership of a sex club. Perhaps he attracted more attention because of his family, but Hunter is hardly the first wealthy, privileged person to be convicted of tax evasion. Many Americans, who have little prospect of making it to the presidential pardons list, are serving prison sentences for a lot less.
Give a gift subscription to the New Statesman this Christmas, or treat yourself from just £49
The outgoing president might argue that there is precedent. Previous presidents have also pardoned family members during their final days in office. Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger Clinton on prior drug charges, for which he had already completed a year-long prison sentence, at the end of his presidency in January 2001. Trump pardoned Charles Kushner – the father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner – who had served a prison sentence for tax offences, and who he has just announced as his nominee to be the next ambassador to France. But Biden premised his opposition to Trump around the idea that American democracy, including the rule of law and the survival of the nation’s institutions, is now at stake. The outgoing president has just made it exponentially harder for Democrats to call out Trump’s contempt for the legal system and the barrage of expected pardons to come, including for many of the rioters convicted of storming the US capitol on 6 January 2021, by pardoning Hunter and, in the process, accepting Trump’s premise that the justice system has become politicised.
“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,” wrote Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, on social media in response to the decision. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation…. Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not a President and not a President’s son.”
It is a sad conclusion to Biden’s half-century-long career in public service that his final acts in office have been characterised by selfishness and hypocrisy. In his eighties, he clung on to the notion that he could run again for the presidency, long after his diminished capabilities had become clear, plunging his party into a desperate scramble for a successor and a doomed election campaign. Now he has chosen to put his own son’s interests above those of the country. As a father, it is an understandable decision. As a president – at a time when the rule of law itself is on the line – it is unforgivable.
[See also: The contradictions of Team Trump]