US President Joe Biden pardons son Hunter in final weeks in office

US President Joe Biden has issued a pardon for his son Hunter Biden, who had been convicted of gun charges and pleaded guilty to federal tax charges.

"From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department's decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted," he said in the statement.

The White House had said repeatedly that Mr Biden would not pardon or commute the sentences of his son, a recovering drug addict who became a target of Republicans, including president-elect Donald Trump.

"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," Mr Biden said.

The president, whose son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015, said his opponents had sought to break Hunter with selective prosecution.

"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."

He said people were almost never brought to trial for felony charges over how they filled out a gun form, and said others who were late in paying taxes because of addiction but paid them back with interest and penalties, as his son, typically received "non-criminal resolutions" to their cases.

"It is clear that Hunter was treated differently. 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.

Trump reacted to the news by nonsensically asking if the pardon extended to the January 6 rioters who were convicted for their roles in the attack on the Capitol.

"Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!" he railed in a post on his social media website Truth Social.

Mr Biden said he had made the decision over the weekend.

The president, his wife Jill Biden and their family including Hunter, spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Massachusetts and returned to Washington on Saturday night.

During a walk around Nantucket shops on Friday afternoon, one supporter shouted at the president from across a street to pardon his son.

"Here's the truth: 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 — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further," Mr Biden said.

"I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision."

The pardon caps a long-running legal saga for the younger Biden, who publicly disclosed he was under federal investigation in December 2020 — a month after his father's 2020 victory — and casts a pall over the elder Biden's legacy.

Joe Biden, who time and again pledged to Americans that he would restore norms and respect for the rule of law after Trump's first term in office, ultimately used his position to help his son, breaking his public pledge to Americans that he would do no such thing.

In June, he categorically ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling reporters as his son faced trial in the Delaware gun case, "I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him."

As recently as November 8, days after Trump's victory, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ruled out a pardon or clemency for the younger Biden, saying: "We've been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no."

Pardoned for two offences

The pardon came ahead of sentencing hearings for Hunter Biden's trial conviction in the gun case and guilty plea on tax charges scheduled for mid-December.

In June, a jury in his home state of Delaware found him guilty of three felonies for purchasing a gun in 2018 when, prosecutors said, he lied on a federal form by claiming he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs and then illegally possessing the weapon for 11 days.

He was set to stand trial in September in the California case accusing him of failing to pay at least $US1.4 million ($2 million) in taxes while spending lavishly on drugs, sex workers and luxury items.

But he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanour and felony charges, including tax evasion and filing fraudulent returns, in a surprise move hours after jury selection was set to begin.

David Weiss, the Trump-appointed US Attorney in Delaware who negotiated the plea deal, was subsequently named a special counsel by Attorney-General Merrick Garland to have more autonomy over the prosecution of the president's son.

Hunter Biden said he was pleading guilty in that case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after the gun trial aired salacious details about his struggles with a crack cocaine addiction.

In a statement following the pardon, Hunter Biden admitted he had made mistakes but added that he had remained sober for more than five years.

"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," he said.

"In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages … 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."

The tax charges carry up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible he would avoid prison time entirely.

Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month in the two federal cases, which the special counsel brought after a plea deal with prosecutors that likely would have spared him prison time fell apart under scrutiny by a judge. 

Under the original deal, Hunter was supposed to plead guilty to misdemeanour tax offences and would have avoided prosecution in the gun case as long as he stayed out of trouble for two years.

But the plea hearing quickly unravelled last year when the judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. He was subsequently indicted in the two cases.

The sweeping pardon covers not just those offences, but also any other "offences against the United States" committed in the past 10 years.

Hunter Biden's legal team this weekend released a 52-page white paper titled The Political Prosecutions of Hunter Biden, describing the president's son as a "surrogate to attack and injure his father, both as a candidate in 2020 and later as president".

Hunter Biden's lawyers have long argued that prosecutors bowed to political pressure to indict the president's son amid heavy criticism by Trump and other Republicans of what they called the "sweetheart" plea deal.

Representative James Comer, one of the Republican chairmen leading congressional investigations into Biden's family, blasted the president's decision to issue his son a pardon, saying that the evidence against Hunter was "just the tip of the iceberg".

"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 on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.

ABC/Reuters