A pardon from President Joe Biden appears to put an end to ongoing criminal cases against his son Hunter, but Congress under full Republican control still could further investigate the younger Biden or other members of the president’s family in the new year.
House Republicans fixated on Hunter Biden this Congress, with allegations against the younger Biden making up key parts of the Republican impeachment inquiry against President Biden.
For months, House Republicans sought to link the business dealings of the president’s son with his father as part of the inquiry into alleged influence peddling from the younger Biden years before his father became president.
But the inquiry never materialized enough evidence to convince House Republicans to hold a floor vote on articles of impeachment.
President Biden’s announcement Sunday was a bold reversal of public assurances from his administration that he would not issue a pardon for his son. In it, he said the charges against Hunter “came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday that Biden had concluded, as he “wrestled with” the question of a pardon, his “political opponents” would not “let go” on investigating Hunter Biden.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, alluded to a broader investigation as he criticized the pardon, though he and other Republicans did not specifically mention continuing that work in the new year.
“Democrats said there was nothing to our impeachment inquiry,” Jordan posted on social media. “If that’s the case, why did Joe Biden just issue Hunter Biden a pardon for the very things we were inquiring about?”
House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James R. Comer, R-Ky., condemned the pardon in a statement and said that “the charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people.”
“It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer said.
Biden reversal
Biden issued a “full and unconditional pardon” for his son in two criminal cases brought by special counsel David Weiss, along with “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”
The broad scope could shield Hunter Biden from future prosecutions during a second Trump administration.
But House lawmakers could continue to investigate the Biden family, and Senate committees under Republican control in the new Congress could also open their own investigations.
Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., in a social media post, indicated that it was a given that President Biden would pardon Hunter Biden. But LaLota said what “truly matters” are larger questions, such as what are the potential risks to U.S. security stemming from potential dealings involving the Biden family.
“These are the questions that deserve our full attention. Let’s stay focused on what really matters,” LaLota, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said.
House lawmakers could also decide to continue to pursue testimony from two Justice Department attorneys about a criminal case against Hunter Biden. The committee filed a lawsuit that seeks to compel compliance with congressional subpoenas.
The House Republican impeachment investigation was stained by some embarrassing flops on the part of Republicans.
In one example, Republicans accused President Biden of being involved in a bribery scheme involving the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, in the past. But a confidential FBI source was charged with fabricating the bribery scheme, in a case brought by Weiss.
During a 2023 congressional hearing, a Republican-called witness, legal scholar Jonathan Turley, said he did not believe the current evidence would support articles of impeachment against President Biden.
Republicans also argued that the Biden administration took steps to impede a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, but no evidence surfaced showing Biden pressuring prosecutors behind the scenes to go easy on his son.
Hunter spotlight
Republicans also engaged in a prolonged public spat with Hunter Biden as they sought to bring him in for a closed-door deposition.
Last December, House Republicans said they would start contempt of Congress proceedings against the younger Biden after he did not appear for closed-door deposition. Meanwhile, the president’s son traveled to Capitol Hill and challenged the lawmakers to hold a public hearing.
The following month, as the House Oversight and Accountability Committee met to consider a contempt of Congress measure, Hunter Biden made a surprise showing at the meeting, with Democrats trying to push the committee into letting him answer questions in a public forum.
Earlier this year, a federal jury in Delaware found Hunter Biden guilty of three felonies that prosecutors say were related to his illegal buying of a firearm in 2018. And in September, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses in a federal case filed in California.
In that case, an indictment accused Hunter Biden of engaging in a yearslong scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in “self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019, from in or about January 2017 through in or about October 15, 2020.”
President Biden, in a statement Sunday evening, announced he had signed a pardon for his son, arguing that “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
“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 said in a statement.
“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. 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,” the president wrote.
Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, noted the pardon would cover Hunter Biden’s “Burisma activities,” referring to the Ukrainian energy company.
“Whether or not there was criminality, there might have been an investigation by the incoming Trump administration,” Goldsmith posted on social media. “That is off the table now (as is Hunter’s 5th Amendment claim before congressional investigators).”
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