White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday, during a trip to Angola, that “no reasonable person” could conclude anything other than that Hunter Biden deserved a pardon. President Joe Biden granted his son a pardon on Sunday evening for offenses dating back to 2014, when both he as vice president and his son as a ‘businessman’ began endeavors in Ukraine. His decision marked a sharp reversal from years of assurances by Jean-Pierre and Biden himself, including as recently as last month, that a pardon would not be considered.
Breitbart News reported that Jean-Pierre changed her tune on Monday, claiming that Hunter Biden would not have been prosecuted if he had not been a person “who has the last name of the president,” and also claimed that he had been “singled out politically.” She added: “The president wrestled with this decision, he made the decision this weekend, and he decided to move forward with pardoning his son.”
Journalists, visibly skeptical, pressed Jean-Pierre with questions about whether she was suggesting that the Department of Justice had been politicized, and if so, whether President Biden bore responsibility due to his appointees. They also inquired about the extent of politicized cases within the department. Jean-Pierre declined to answer these questions directly but stated that President Biden had no intention of demanding Attorney General Merrick Garland’s resignation over allegations of targeting his son to appease Republicans, Breitbart added.
She stated that Biden disagreed with President-elect Donald Trump regarding the claim that the justice system has been weaponized. “He believes in the Department of Justice,” she said, though “politics infected the process.” She noted that the plea deal negotiated by Hunter Biden’s attorneys had collapsed, but that only happened after the federal judge overseeing the case discovered “an immunity clause that would have protected him from future prosecutions. The unprecedented clause had been concealed from the court,” Breitbart added.
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy stated on Monday that no American would escape the gun and tax offenses allegedly committed by Hunter Biden. McCarthy said Americans are commonly charged with these sorts of crimes and that it would be nearly impossible to avoid jail time for similar charges. “So if I rob a bank, but I bring the money back, that’s okay? It’s idiotic. As far as the gun case is concerned, that was not what they call a lie-and-try case where you fill out the form but you don’t get the gun because they find out there’s a problem,” McCarthy told Fox News on Monday.
“[Hunter] actually got the gun. Those cases get brought all the time. And as for a tax violation, it’s just like the bank robbery, it’s a little bit of a drastic example, but I think it makes the point. Paying back the money that you owe doesn’t mean that you didn’t commit the crime. It’s not a defense,” McCarthy continued. “So it’s just — those are just silly arguments and in point of fact, he got cut break after break because he was Hunter Biden, because he was the president’s son. This idea that he was singled out for that reason, they actually tried to make the case against him going away which is a break that no American would get.”
In June, a Delaware jury found the president’s son guilty on three felony charges related to his alleged purchase of a Colt Cobra revolver in 2018, while knowingly being addicted to drugs, and for making false statements on the purchase paperwork. Additionally, he faced nine charges in California for allegedly failing to pay over $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019, which carried a potential prison sentence of up to 17 years.
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