Hunter Biden’s Pardon Features Several Shades of Hypocrisy, Including the Gun Policy Implications
President Joe Biden’s explanation of the pardon he granted his son on Sunday night is dishonest, hypocritical, and evasive in several ways. He reneged on his repeated promises not to intervene in the federal gun and tax cases against Hunter Biden. Those promises included an explicit commitment to refrain from doing what the president ultimately did anyway. His justification—that his son was “singled out” for political reasons—bears more than a passing resemblance to President-elect Donald Trump’s reflexive complaint that every civil and criminal case against him was invalid for similar reasons.
The pardon undermines the elder Biden’s high-minded defense of the Justice Department’s independence, which he and other Democrats have frequently described as a crucial safeguard against the abuses of self-interested politicians like Trump. Biden’s defense of that turnaround also glides over his persistent support for the arbitrary, constitutionally dubious gun laws that his son violated, which the president has portrayed as crucial to preventing violence and promoting public safety.
Last June, a federal jury convicted Hunter Biden of three firearm felonies related to his 2018 purchase of a revolver, which he was prohibited from owning because he was a crack cocaine user at the time. In September, Biden pleaded guilty to nine tax offenses, including three felonies. His father does not claim Hunter Biden was innocent of those charges. Instead, he claims that federal prosecutors treated Hunter more severely than they would have treated a defendant who was not the president’s son.
Hunter Biden earned a fortune by trading on his father’s name, then repeatedly failed to pay taxes on that income. No biggie, the president says, since “those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given noncriminal resolutions.”
The elder Biden also argues that the gun case was highly unusual. “Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser,” he says, “people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form.”
The president says he would have been happy with the resolution that his son’s lawyers reached with federal prosecutors last year. Under that arrangement, which collapsed amid objections by a federal judge, Hunter Biden would have pleaded guilty to two tax misdemeanors, and the government would have recommended a sentence of probation. Prosecutors also agreed to drop the gun case once Biden completed a pretrial diversion program.
After that deal fell apart and subsequent negotiations were unsuccessful, Biden faced additional charges in both cases. That is what typically happens when a defendant exercises his Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, and it illustrated the enormous power that prosecutors have to coerce guilty pleas.
A single charge of illegal gun possession under 18 USC 922(g)(3) became three charges, including two based on “how [Hunter] filled out a gun form.” One count alleged a violation of 18 USC 922(a)(6), which applies to someone who knowingly makes a false statement in connection with a firearm transaction—in this case, by denying illegal drug use. The other new count, based on the same underlying conduct, involved 18 USC 924(a)(1)(A), which applies to someone who “knowingly makes any false statement or representation with respect to the information” that a federally licensed dealer is required to record. The upshot was that Biden faced a maximum prison sentence of 25 years, quite a jump from zero time behind bars under the nixed diversion agreement.
In the tax case, two misdemeanors became three felonies and six misdemeanors, all of which were covered by Biden’s guilty plea. “There was no plea agreement,” the Justice Department noted. As a result, the probation sentence that the government was prepared to accept in 2023 became a potential prison sentence of up to 17 years.
Biden’s actual sentences probably would have been much shorter than the maximums. But the dramatic escalation in potential penalties epitomized the “trial penalty” that helps explain why 97 percent of federal felony convictions are based on guilty pleas rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal court.
That much was par for the cour
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