House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Monday rebuked President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden.
The top House Republican criticized the president’s move Sunday to grant clemency to his son despite previously promising not to do so.
“President Biden insisted many times he would never pardon his own son for his serious crimes,” Johnson said in a post to X. “But last night he suddenly granted a ‘Full and Unconditional Pardon’ for any and all offenses that Hunter committed for more than a decade!”
“Trust in our justice system has been almost irreparably damaged by the Bidens and their use and abuse of it,” he added before saying, “Real reform cannot begin soon enough!”
The president and the White House had promised nearly a dozen times not to grant clemency to Hunter Biden.
“I am satisfied that I’m not going to do anything,” the president told reporters during one instance in June 2024. “I will abide by the jury’s decision. I will do that. And I will not pardon him.”
Johnson is just one of a host of House Republicans who appeared stunned by the president’s turnabout on pardoning his son. Some have criticized him for “lying,” and others have argued the president’s decision was a “corrupt” move to protect the family name.
“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,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said in an X post.
“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,” he added.
The president’s announcement of the “full and unconditional” pardon for Hunter Biden over the weekend came just weeks before his son was set to be sentenced to up to 17 years in prison by a California judge over accusations he spent millions of dollars made from foreign business ventures on prostitutes, drugs, and other purchases while neglecting to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes.
The announcement also came before Hunter Biden faced sentencing from a Delaware judge in December about lying on a federal form about his drug use to purchase a revolver, submitting a false statement into a federal record, and unlawfully possessing the firearm for 11 days.
The president justified pardoning his son Sunday by arguing that the charges leveled against him this year by his Department of Justice had been inflected by “raw politics” and led to “a miscarriage of justice.”
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A host of members of the president’s own party, including multiple Senate Democrats, have joined Republicans in slamming the pardon.
“A president’s family and allies shouldn’t get special treatment,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) said in an X post Monday. “This was an improper use of power, it erodes trust in our government, and it emboldens others to bend justice to suit their interests.”
