Joe Biden issues pardon for son Hunter as Trump rails against ‘miscarriage of justice’ – US politics live | Joe Biden

Executive Pardon Award
Joseph R. Biden Jr
President of the United States of America

To all whom these gifts will reach, congratulations:

Be it known that this day I, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, pursuant to my authority under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution, I have granted to

ROBERT HUNTER BIDEN

Full and unconditional apology

For those crimes against the United States that he committed or may have committed or participated in during the period from January 1, 2014. through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all crimes charged or prosecuted (including all that resulted in convictions) by Special Counsel David S. Weiss in Case No. 1:23-cr-00061-MN in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware and Case No. 2:23-CR-00599-MCS-1 in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my name and caused the pardon to be recorded in the Department of Justice.

Done at the city of Washington this 1st day of December in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-four and of the independence of the United States two hundred and forty-ninth.

Two months before Hunter arrived in court for his federal tax proceedings, he appeared in court with his mother, Jill Biden, and his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, in Wilmington, Delaware.

After three hours of deliberations and a week-long trial, jurors found him guilty of all three charges related to buying a gun while using crack.

Biden was accused of making two false statements when he filled out a form to purchase a Colt revolver in October 2018: first by falsely stating that he was not addicted to or using drugs, and then by declaring the statement to be true .

A third charge alleges he then illegally possessed the gun for 11 days before his sister-in-law and then-lover Hallie Biden threw it in the trash in a panic.

Prosecutors called other members of the Biden family, including his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, to whom he was married for 24 years, and Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother Beau, as they sought to show that Hunter’s drug use continued into 2018 and 2019

The testimony paints a portrait of Hunter Biden falling deeper into addiction as she struggled to cope with the death of Bo, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

After his marriage broke up, he became romantically involved with Halle Biden, who admitted to smoking crack with him.

Full story below

As we reported in our post at 9:19 a.m. GMTHunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced on federal gun charges on December 12, and his sentencing in the tax case was scheduled for December 16.

The 54-year-old pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges on September 5 in a day filled with confrontation with prosecutors.

The charges carried a possible sentence of 17 years in prison.

Biden was charged with failing to pay his taxes on time from 2016 to 2019, as well as two felony counts of filing a false return and an additional felony count of tax evasion.

He initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, and his lawyers indicated they would argue he did not act “willfully” or with the intent to break the law, in part because of his well-documented struggles with alcohol and drug addiction.

Read the full details below

Joe Biden, c his statement earliertook aim at his political opponents for selectively targeting Hunter Biden for prosecution for gun-related crimes.

Those same opponents have now responded by accusing the president of lying about his family’s activities during his political career.

“Joe Biden has lied from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities,” said Congressman James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, in an X post.

“Not only did he falsely claim that he never met with his son’s foreign business partners and that his son had done nothing wrong, but he also lied when he said he would not pardon Hunter Biden.

“The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg of the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden crime family lied to the American people about.”

President-elect Donald Trump promised to pardon those convicted after storming the Capitol in Washington in January 2021. and took the opportunity to raise the issue.

“Does the pardon Joe gave Hunter include the J-6 hostages who have now been locked up for years?

“Such abuse and miscarriage of justice!” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

David Smith

A loving act of mercy from a father who has already experienced much grief? Or a hypocritical political maneuver reminiscent of his great enemy? Perhaps both could be true.

Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunterwho is facing sentence in two criminal cases, was probably the product of a Shakespearean struggle between the head and the heart.

On the one hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere in the decision-making of the Department of Justice,” he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on Sunday. Undermining the separation of powers goes against every fiber of his political being.

On the other hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with references to his parents. As a senator he once took a train from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware, so she could blow out the candles on her eight-year-old daughter Ashley’s birthday cake at the train station, then cross the platform and catch the next train back to work.

Biden was deeply affected by the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Bidenand 13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident and, much later, the death of his son Bo from brain cancer. In this context, Hunter’s status as the first child of a sitting president to face criminal charges would hurt his father in what Ernest Hemingway called “the broken places.”

Read my full analysis below

Today I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere in the decision-making of the Department of Justice, and I kept my word even as I watched my son be selectively and unfairly prosecuted. Without aggravating factors such as use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a gun as a straw buyer, people almost never end up in court on felony charges just for how they filled out a gun form. Those who fell behind on their taxes due to serious addictions, but later paid them back with interest and penalties, usually receive non-criminal settlements. Clearly, Hunter was treated differently.

The charges in his cases came only after several of my political opponents in Congress incited them to attack me and oppose my election. Then a carefully negotiated plea agreement approved by the Department of Justice unraveled in the courtroom—with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for putting political pressure on the trial. Had the plea agreement been honored, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.

No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases can come to any conclusion other than that Hunter was chosen only because he was my son – and that is wrong. There have been attempts to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of relentless attacks and selective persecution. In trying to break Hunter, they tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe they’ll stop there. That’s enough.

Throughout my career, I have followed a simple principle: Just tell the truth to the American people. They will be honest. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but while I’ve been fighting this, I also believe that crass politics have infected this process and led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made that decision this weekend, there was no point in delaying it any further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and president would make this decision.

Hunter Biden issued a statement following his father’s announcement

“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction — mistakes that were used to publicly humiliate and embarrass me and my family for political sport,” Hunter Biden said in a statement Sunday, adding that he remained sober for over five years.

“In the throes of addiction, I wasted many opportunities and advantages…I will never take the pardon I was granted today for granted and will dedicate the life I have recovered to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”