Despite ruling the possibility, the U.S. President Joe Biden has issued an official pardon for his son Hunter.
Hunter Biden was facing sentencing for two criminal cases.
In a statement released in this regard, the president said his son had been “singled out” and called his cases “a miscarriage of justice”.
Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to tax charges earlier in September, and was found guilty of being an illegal drug user in possession of a gun in June – becoming the first child of a sitting president to be a convicted of a crime.
Reacting to the pardon, President-elect Donald Trump said: “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the [6 January] Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
Trump was alluding to his followers who, on January 6, 2021, invaded the US Capitol in an attempt to reverse his loss in the 2020 election.
Following the president’s repeated declarations that he would not grant his son clemency, Joe Biden finally granted his son a complete and unconditional pardon.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated in September, just a few months ago, that Biden would not pardon his son.
In a subsequent briefing last month, she reiterated that position, stating: “That subject has been posed to us several times. Our response, “no,” remains unchanged.
Before that, in June, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy, Biden had said he would neither pardon his son nor commute his sentence.
“I said I’d abide by the jury decision, and I will do that. And I will not pardon him,” he told reporters covering the summit.
But on Sunday evening, President Biden said although he believed in the justice system, “politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice”.
“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.
Biden said he wrestled with the decision, and added: “Once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further.”
“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” he said.
The president made the statement after spending Thanksgiving weekend on Nantucket with his family. On Friday, reporters saw Biden walking with Hunter, his daughter Ashley, and his four-year-old son Beau.
The revelation of the pardon sparked a heated response from senior Republicans in Washington, with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer claiming the president “lied from start to finish” about the facts of his son’s case.