On December 1, 2023, after a bench trial in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, Alexander Ledvina was convicted of violating a federal law that bars illegal drug users from owning guns. Exactly a year later, President Joe Biden, whose administration had zealously defended that law in court, pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, for committing the same crime.
Ledvina, a marijuana user who was 26 when he was arrested, was sentenced to four years and three months in federal prison. Hunter Biden, a middle-aged former crack user, faced up to 25 years in prison after he was convicted of illegal gun possession and two related firearm offenses. But thanks to his father's intervention, he did not suffer any criminal punishment at all.
The president, who had repeatedly promised to refrain from intervening in his son's case, said he changed his mind because he concluded that the prosecution was politically motivated. That claim was puzzling because the prosecutor who pursued the gun charges, Special Counsel David Weiss, had been appointed by Biden's own attorney general. But Biden described the charges as highly unusual. "Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges" in cases like this, he said. "It is clear that Hunter was treated differently."
