President Biden Faces Criticism From Local Delegation For Decision To Pardon His Son Hunter

President Joe Biden is facing criticism after doing what he had pledged multiple times not to do; issue a full and unconditional pardon for his son Hunter. The action comes as the younger Biden was just weeks away from being sentenced on multiple felony convictions.

Biden's decision to pardon his son is not a complete surprise, given how close the Biden family is and how close he is to leaving office. But, for some, it raises an uncomfortable question about Biden's credibility, given all that he's said about Donald Trump over the last four years and the importance of restoring respect for the rule of law.

"Mr. President, why did you decide to pardon your son?" a reporter tried to shout over the jetwash of Air Force One Monday. Biden did not respond.

While President Biden visits with leaders in Angola, Africa this week, many Americans will revisit Biden's words of just a few months ago.

"I abide by the jury's decision, and I will not do that," Biden said on June 13, 2024, "I will not pardon him."

That was two days after a Delaware jury convicted Hunter Biden for lying about his drug use while trying to buy a gun in 2018. In early September, almost three months later, he pleaded guilty in California to tax evasion.

As recently as the week after the election, Biden's Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters the president had no intention of granting clemency to his son.

In a statement explaining the change of heart, the president -- and father -- asked Americans for their understanding, writing: "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,"

President-elect Donald Trump, who has helped propel Republicans' persistent attacks on Hunter Biden in an effort to tie -- unsuccessfully, to date -- his illegal actions to his father, said on social media that Biden's pardon was "an abuse and miscarriage of justice."

At the end of his first term, Trump pardoned numerous associates, as well as his son-in-law Jared Kushner's father for tax crimes.

Hunter Biden's pardon is unusually broad in scope; it covers, not just the specific convictions for which he faced sentencing this month, but any offense that he committed, or may have committed, in the last ten years.

In an interview Monday morning on News 9, Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) said that was nearly unprecedented.

"It was basically--he could have done anything and it's a federal offense, it's pardoned," said Lankford. "We've literally not seen a pardon like that since [Richard] Nixon."

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Congressman Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) said, "I see Biden is ending his presidency with the same disregard for our justice system that he started it with, putting the interests of his family ahead of the needs of our country."

Biden returns to the White House on Thursday.