President Biden is facing criticism for absolving his son after insisting he would not and, according to some critics in his own party, paving the way for Donald Trump’s return to office.
President Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter “further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all,” Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado said.
The threat of a retribution-focused Trump administration and his son’s looming sentencings prompted the president to abandon a promise not to get involved in Hunter Biden’s legal problems.
President Biden was deeply concerned that legal problems would push his son into a relapse after years of sobriety, and he began to realize there might not be any way out beyond issuing a pardon.
President Biden granted blanket clemency to stop his son from being prosecuted by the Trump administration for his foreign business. Experts reached for historical parallels.
In 1973, Joe Biden was with his sons Beau, left, and Hunter in the hospital as they recovered from a car crash that had killed their mother. He was sworn in as a senator there, so they could be with him.
The gun case federal prosecutors brought against Hunter Biden was relatively rare, but the tax charges he pleaded guilty to may have been less unusual.
Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, in early September, leaving a federal courthouse in California where he pleaded guilty to three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses.
Lawmakers in the president’s own party, many of them moderates, said his decision to pardon his son was selfish and would further damage Americans’ waning faith in democracy and the rule of law.
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