Newsweek, December 2024
President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, could undermine Democrats’ messaging against President-elect Donald Trump, political experts said. Biden announced Sunday that he would pardon his son, who had been convicted on firearms charges and pleaded guilty to tax fraud charges this year. He wrote it is “clear that Hunter was treated differently” than other defendants and that the charges “came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.”
In June, Hunter Biden was convicted of lying on a federal form when he bought a gun in 2018 and swore he wasn’t a drug user. In September, he pleaded guilty to charges of trying to avoid paying more than $1.4 million in taxes. “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,” Biden wrote. “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.”
