Hunter Biden was in a very dangerous situation.
After Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, it became clear that some of his most vocal critics were ready to seize power and make good on their promise of revenge against Trump’s enemies.
Hunter also faced months, and even years, in prison after being convicted of illegally buying a handgun and pleading guilty to tax charges.
In his circle and the wider Biden family circle, there were growing fears that Hunter’s status as a political and legal target would worsen. A white paper written by his lawyers and distributed over the long Thanksgiving weekend outlines the risks and the most serious threats he has faced.
But on Sunday night, the clouds lifted.
With the dramatic pardon that his father President Biden had repeatedly said he would never grant, Hunter was now free of all those criminal obligations. With a stroke of the pen, the president had given his son a powerful 11-year immunity from all federal charges.
The pardon came at a steep price for his father, who was widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike.
For Hunter, the pardon is a rare chance to reset after coming out of a crack cocaine and alcohol addiction.
“He was happy. Thank you,” said Mark Geragos, one of Hunter’s attorneys. He declined to elaborate.
Bobby Sager, a friend of Hunter and his second wife, Melissa, saw the couple last week and spoke to Hunter in recent days. The pardon provided relief, Sager told The Times.
“It’s been a long, hard road,” said Sager, who attended Hunter Biden’s trial in Wilmington, Del., and had dinner with family after court. “They have been closely watched for six years. Today is the first day they can wake up and not have that as part of their first thoughts.”
Hunter ‘wants to find ways to be useful’
Hunter’s next move is unclear.
The 54-year-old suspect promised to “dedicate his rebuilt life to help those who are still sick and suffering,” according to a statement he issued on Sunday. The president’s son did not respond to several messages seeking comment.
The fortune was at the heart of his federal tax case and fueled his drug addiction through foreign business deals, legal work and consulting. He was also a board member of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, a job that paid $500,000 to $1 million a year.
Most recently, his income has come from the sale of his paintings, his 2021 memoir, “Good Things,” and a multi-million dollar loan from his friend, attorney and confidante, LA-based attorney Kevin Morris.
For the past few years, Hunter has been living in rental properties throughout LA and Malibu while publicly vowing to stay off alcohol and crack cocaine. Paparazzi photographed him out with his wife, shopping at the Grove, and two weeks ago, taking his young son Beau to Disneyland.
Sager said Hunter could continue writing, get into podcasting or another public speaking endeavor, pursue his artistic ambitions or pursue another path.
“You want to find ways to help other people who are in recovery — recovery from their addiction or health in general,” Sager said, adding that “the world” needs “healing.” “He is qualified in many ways to be a constructive voice in that conversation.”
Hunter was followed for years by a group of documents in a project supported by Morris.
The filmmakers shot the most intimate moments in Hunter’s life: painting at home in Malibu, facing criticism for his efforts to sell his art, and defying a Congressional subpoena in Washington. In June, the filmmakers continued on to Hunter’s trial in Delaware and shot outside the courtroom as the jury deliberated and ultimately convicted him of illegally purchasing a handgun.
The current status of the documentary project is unclear.
In recent years, Hunter wrote in her memoir that she was focused on “trying to pay off my debts — figurative and real,” as well as her sobriety. She relies on Morris and others in the rescue community for guidance.
“We make sure that our communication is active in our daily life so that it is fully available in times of crisis,” Hunter wrote in his memoir.
Legal proceedings and public scrutiny have hit the family hard. Geragos, his prosecuting attorney, noted that the tax trial that would follow the Delaware case with “a show of witnesses that would be no more than a serial killer” was too difficult. It was also among the reasons Hunter pleaded guilty.
“I don’t think Hunter wanted to put his family through that again,” Geragos said. “People don’t understand how strange and traumatic and how challenging it is for someone who has been sober for five years.”
‘The threat against Hunter is real’
Biden has said he will not pardon his son and that he will respect the legal and judicial process in Hunter’s criminal cases, including the jury’s decision. His press secretary repeated that promise last month.
But Biden and his aides said he reconsidered the Thanksgiving vacation in Nantucket, which he spent with Hunter and his grandchildren.
The pressure came from the court’s calendar: There were days before the jury was to sentence Hunter, and his lawyers had gathered letters from his loved ones to take to court, pleading for mercy and attesting to his humanity.
To this mix, his lawyers added another trick.
On Saturday, the legal team publicly distributed a 52-page “white paper” arguing that President-elect Trump and his allies turned Hunter into a “political tool” and how his prosecution was intended to influence the 2020, 2022 and 2024 elections. The document documented a series of events dating back to 2017 in which Trump or his associates used Hunter to “attack and harm his father.” It revealed how the effort to criticize President Biden for focusing on Hunter hinged on Russia’s intelligence.
“With the election now decided, the threat against Hunter is real,” said the white paper, released by Winston & Strawn LLP, the law firm of Hunter’s attorney, Abbe Lowell. “It is clear that Trump and other Republicans seem intent on seeing Hunter and his family members prosecuted.”
A few hours after the document was made public, Biden informed aides that he planned to pardon his son. The President’s statement on Sunday echoes the theme of political abuse – and abuse – laid out by his son’s lawyers.
“As I struggle with this, I believe that green politics has infected this process and led to a miscarriage of justice,” Biden said in a statement. “In trying to break Hunter, they tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it’s going to stop here. Enough is enough.”
Critics jumped on Biden’s reasons — and the lack of amnesty
The move drew scorn from both sides of the aisle. Republicans have painted President Biden as a liar for reneging on his public vows to stop pardoning Hunter.
For Democrats, the amnesty was criticized as a political gift to the incoming administration.
Jon Lovett, Obama’s former speechwriter turned podcaster, questioned whether Biden’s thinking did not say anything about Trump but instead highlighted his son’s sobriety.
“There are a lot of people who have turned the gears of justice on themselves while trying desperately to stay sober — and there’s no reprieve for them,” Lovett said on Pod Save America. Co-host Jon Favreau apologized as Biden’s “ego” sometimes, time and time again, got in the way.
NYU law professor Rachel Barkow, who specializes in criminal and constitutional law and served as a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, discovered a different problem: thousands of unsigned clemency petitions.
“Biden didn’t do anything about those,” Barkow told The Times. “It is a tale of two cities. You can’t do this to your own son and ignore everyone else – other people’s children are important too.”
Barkow said that not increasing his amnesty powers and extending power to his son was a blot on his history.
“If he was always using this to always give people a remedy for injustice, it wouldn’t be as prominent as it is. But because he has a low empathy rating, he sticks out like a sore thumb.”
What’s next
Looking at the pardon and its impact, Fox News host Sean Hannity asked two top Republican lawmakers on Monday if the pardon meant the end of criminal exposure for Hunter Biden and his family.
“Is this over? Is it over with Joe Biden?” Hannity pressed.
“I think the new Trump Justice Department will have a lot more in its pipeline,” Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, indicating that some of Biden’s relatives, including President Biden’s brother, James, will stay in the country. his committee members and incoming managers.
Both Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan predicted that James will receive a pardon before the end of the president’s term.
For Hunter, the path is clear. He will remain out of prison in the twilight of his father’s life and the arrival of his first grandchild next year; daughter Naomi announced her pregnancy last month.
“I am no longer afraid of the future. … this story already has a happy ending,” Hunter wrote near the end of his memoir, which detailed how a crack addict took him from the rooms of the Chateau Marmont to the corners of Skid Row, looking for his next fix.
Sager said he’s happy that Hunter will remain in his children’s lives and hopes that critics will see Hunter’s admitted looseness as a chick in a happy life.
“This is a brilliant student from Yale Law School who is a caring and talented person,” Sager said of Hunter. “He is an artist, he wants to do his art, and he wants to be a person who really contributes to the welfare of society.”
His art dealer, Georges Berges, suggested in a statement on Instagram on Monday that he had pardoned and offered a book to write the proverb. He pointed out that his gallery has endured “political and other attacks” and a Congressional subpoena.
“This has always been true about art and I have always believed that only a person with his own history can create the art he does and I knew from experience that with focus and friendship his work can be the result,” said Berges. “I said something then, as I do now.”
Referring to Hunter’s journey from lawyer to lobbyist to full-time crack addict to right-wing whipping boy, Berges concluded that “Hunter Biden’s story was an American story.”
“The story that the past doesn’t need to define your future,” he said, “is that tomorrow is a new day.”
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