Biden Pardons Hunter!
Washington, Dec 1 (EFE).-
United States President Joe Biden announced Sunday he signed a pardon for his son Hunter Biden, who in June was found guilty of three crimes related to possession of weapons, by hiding his drug addiction in the purchase, saying his judicial problems were politically driven.
“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, adding that his son was “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.”
The president had said on several occasions he would not use the prerogative of presidential pardon to resolve the legal problems of his only living son, who had also pleaded guilty to tax evasion in a California federal court.
Hunter Biden had been found guilty of having lied on a form to obtain a gun in the state of Delaware by claiming he wasn’t a drug user and having possessed that weapon for only 11 days and without it being used in a crime, which the president said was “almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form.”
“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” President Biden said.
“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,” he added.
President-elect Donald Trump took to his social media network Truth Social and called for the pardon of those convicted of the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
On that day, a violent pro-Republican mob stormed the building to prevent legislators from certifying the electoral votes of Joe Biden, winner of the 2020 election.
“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump wrote.
The most serious case for Hunter Biden was the nine-count tax evasion charge he pleaded guilty to in September, as he had a criminal record for his gun possession case in Delaware and could face up to 17 years in prison.
Hunter Biden’s legal problems brought to public attention a dark period in the life of the president’s son due to his deep drug addiction, especially after the death in 2015 of his brother and the president’s first-born son from cancer.
That tragedy also deeply affected Joe Biden, who had already gone through another tough episode after the death of his first wife and his one-year-old daughter in a traffic accident in 1972, in which Beau and Hunter Biden were injured.
The pardon comes at a time without political risk for the president, who after giving up his re-election this summer and aged 82, will leave politics on Jan. 20, when Trump takes office. EFE
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