US President Joe Biden has granted his son Hunter an official, unconditional pardon.
Hunter was convicted of drug charges and unlawful weapons possession in June, making him the first child of a serving US president to face criminal charges.
The law prohibits drug users from possessing weapons.
In September, Hunter pleaded guilty to tax evasion.
Hunter, 54, had previously worked as a lawyer and lobbyist abroad, particularly in China and Ukraine. He was discharged from the United States Navy in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.
In a statement, Biden stated that his son has been the target of political persecution.
Biden said:
“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.”
“Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room — with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process.
“Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.”
The president added that he kept his word by not interfering with “the Justice Department’s decision-making. And I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted”.
“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 added.
“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.”
Biden said “raw politics infected the process” of his son’s trial and that he ruminated over the pardon during the weekend.
“There was no sense in delaying it further,” Biden said of the pardon.
“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”
This isn’t the first time a US president has pardoned a family member.
In 2001, Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother, Roger Clinton, for a 1985 cocaine-related offence.
In 2020, Donald Trump pardoned his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner. The president-elect recently appointed Kushner as ambassador to France.
