Justifying the decision to pardon his own son, President Joe Biden pointed to Republicans bringing “political pressure” on the criminal justice system, which he claimed had scuttled a plea deal and was why Hunter’s tax-and-gun issues risked landing him in prison for up to 25 years.
“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,” Biden said in a statement. In that, he wasn’t exactly wrong, his son having been charged by a Trump-appointed prosecutor, albeit one kept on the job by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had conceded that the “average American” never “would have been charged with the gun thing,” referring to Hunter Biden allegedly purchasing a firearm while still suffering from drug addiction (the tax thing, he said, was more legitimate).
