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# President Joe Biden Pardons His Son Hunter After Previously Saying He Wouldn’t

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eO27jxXD.m3u8" -->
## Video: President Joe Biden Pardons His Son Hunter After Previously Saying He Wouldn’t

[Watch (HLS stream): President Joe Biden Pardons His Son Hunter After Previously Saying He Wouldn’t](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eO27jxXD.m3u8) (2:26)

![President Joe Biden Pardons His Son Hunter After Previously Saying He Wouldn’t](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/eO27jxXD/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2024-12-02. President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, on Sunday night, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions and reversing his past promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency for the benefit of his family._


---

Dec 2, 2024 5:20 PM UTC

---

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---


## Transcript

President Joe Biden has pardoned his son Hunter, following convictions on tax and gun charges. This is an announcement that wipes the slate clean and ensures that Hunter Biden will not be incarcerated as he prepares for sentencing. What's really notable here is this is an action that the White House had repeatedly said over the course of many weeks that the president did not intend to take. However, in a statement that he has issued, President Biden has said that in looking at the facts of the case, he had concluded that Hunter Biden was singled out in a miscarriage of justice and was prosecuted because he was the president's son.

And so he has determined that the cases were unfair and that Hunter Biden deserve credit for having turned his life around in the years since the conduct occurred. And so it's really notable that he's taking this action now to really help his son benefit his son and undo two to separate criminal cases that really shattered his son for the last several years. In this case, the pardons came not only in the final weeks of President Biden's tenure, but also in the days before Hunter Biden was to be sentenced. You'll remember he was convicted in a gun case in Delaware and pleaded guilty in a separate tax case in California.

He was set to learn his fate, and prosecutors were set to, you know, try to seek to have a sentence imposed on him. And so this pardon really averts that punishment, ensures that he won't be faced with an incarceration. And so the pardon does seem designed to preempt that next step in the criminal process. But it is also the case that it is not the first time that a president has deployed his pardon power to benefit those around him. You'll remember, of course, that in December 2020, then President Donald Trump pardoned the father of his son in law. So he pardoned Charles Kushner, whose son, Jared, is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka Um, and that raised attention.

He also part of multiple close allies who were convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. So there is a precedent for presidents taking part in power to benefit, you know, family members, people close to them. But there's no question that in doing this, President Biden is probably setting himself up for questions in the days ahead.

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