“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,” the president said in a statement, adding, “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.”
He was set to be sentenced later this month.
The prosecutions had been an embarrassing saga for the Biden family, often overshadowing the president’s time in office. The White House regularly accused Republicans of hammering Hunter Biden in retribution for the efforts to indict President-elect Donald Trump for his behavior while in office.
Joe Biden had long promised that he would not pardon his son, and the White House said just last month that he was not planning to do so. But the president said Sunday he believed his son had been subject to an “effort to break” him and that “raw politics” had infected the justice system.
“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,” Biden said in the statement. “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”
“Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further,” he added. “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”