Congressional Republicans ripped into President Biden after he issued a pardon for his son Sunday night – hammering the lame-duck commander in chief for reversing his vow not to intervene in Hunter’s federal criminal cases.
Biden faced scathing criticism soon after he announced he had pardoned Hunter Biden, who was convicted of three felony gun charges in June and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges connected to skipping out on at least $1.4 million in taxes in September.
“I’m shocked Pres Biden pardoned his son Hunter [because] he said many many times he wouldn’t & I believed him Shame on me,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a social media post.
“Most Americans can sympathize with a father’s decision to pardon his son, even if they disagree,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted.
“What they can’t forgive is Biden lying about it repeatedly before the election.”
Before and even after the presidential election, Biden and the White House claimed Hunter would not clinch a pardon from his father.
“We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Nov. 8.
Rep. James Comer, who chaired one of the congressional probes into the Biden family, said the criminal charges against Biden were “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Joe Biden has lied from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities. Not only has he falsely claimed that he never met with his son’s foreign business associates and that his son did nothing wrong, but he also lied when he said he would not pardon Hunter Biden,” Comer said in a statement.
“The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people. It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.”
Biden said Sunday he pardoned his son because he believes Hunter was unfairly prosecuted in a pair of criminal cases, claiming they were infected by politics.
The action covers any offenses Hunter might have committed — and his father may have been involved in — between Jan. 1, 2014 and Dec. 1, 2024, including the first son’s tenure sitting on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings while Joe Biden oversaw that nation as part of his vice presidential portfolio.
House Republicans scrutinized Hunter’s foreign business dealings — which also included seven-figure windfalls from Chinese state-linked energy firms — and accused President Biden of interacting with his relatives’ foreign business partners when he was vice president in an effort to influence peddle and subsequently obstructing their probe of the matter.
An impeachment inquiry was opened up last year to probe whether Biden engaged in “abuse of power” and “obstruction of justice or obstruction of Congress” before it was dropped after the 82-year-old Democrat dropped his reelection bid.
“Democrats said there was nothing to our impeachment inquiry,” Rep. Jim Jordon posted on X. “If that’s the case, why did Joe Biden just issue Hunter Biden a pardon for the very things we were inquiring about?”
“Joe Biden issued a pardon to Hunter Biden for any crimes that he might have committed since 2014,” said Rep. Jim Banks, who was elected senator of Indiana this past November.
“Why such a specific year? Well, Hunter Biden just so happened to join the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm, in that same year, 2014. So corrupt.”
