As soon as the pardoning of his son Hunter broke people have been up in arms over President Biden and rightfully so. However, it gets worse and worse the more that comes out about it and what is wild is the first breakers of this news ended up being TMZ something I never thought would become a political news breaking source!

Background For those that don’t know the whole backstory let’s run it back. President Biden’s son Hunter has been under investigation/facing charges for years now. The issue with Hunter Biden is not that he broke the law but the way he was so dismissive and used his name to try and get around it. In all honesty the tax fraud chargers (him not paying enough tax from 2016-2019) were something that while serious are a common thing with celebrities and they always get out of them. However, the gun charge was just unacceptable. Not only did he lie on federal forms to purchase the gun but he threw it in a dumpster and his wife at the time went and retrieved it for him.

Presidential Pardon Now what is the pardon Hunter received? It is a Presidential Pardon and covers ANY potential federal crimes he committed between January 2014 and December 2024 (they cover a 10 year period).

President Biden’s Actions Going back to the beginning it turns out that his pardon has been lined up for 3 months now and discussed with Biden aids since he was convicted of 3 gun charges in June 2024. During that time Biden and the Admin stated multiple times they believed in the justice system and would not pardon or commute his son’s sentence letting the judicial system run its course. These were all just lies knowingly said by Biden, his wife, and people close to the matter.

From what has come out Biden was upset a Judge rejected the plea agreement Hunter and the prosecution had agreed to in 2023. In her words the Judged came out and said during the hearing over the plea agreement that she felt she was being asked to “rubber-stamp” the agreement instead of going through it point by point as she was doing.

According to Hunters own defensive team they thought the 9 tax related charges were beatable and the were likely right. The issue of the 3 years of taxes being paid were corrected in 2020 so it was fixed at the end of the day. However, in September Hunter entered a guilty plea and in it stated he didn’t have a deal with prosecutors when it came to sentencing. Everyone at the time was confused by this move because his legal team thought they could win and President Biden had been so steadfast in his “I won’t interfere” that people took him at his word.

Now we know his son did this because his dad had promised him a pardon. I would assume Bidens thinking was that Harris would win the election and Democrats would perform well so their wouldn’t be much blowback but the opposite happened. This is only the 26th pardon by President Biden which is much much fewer than any president since 1945 the closest is George HW Bush with 77 otherwise the number is in the hundreds for presidents including Carter with 566 in his 4 year term.

While former presidents have granted pardons to their family before (Clinton did in 2001 before leaving office for his half-brother and Trump did in 2020 for his for his father in law) those were after the family member SERVED their sentence not before they had even been sentenced.

When Trump takes office in roughly 6 weeks he has already said he is going to pardon those convicted of Jan 6 offenses and the Democrats have tried to take advantage of this and say he is playing politics. Well thanks to Biden that argument is now dead because he did something that we have not seen a President do for his family before.