Former president Donald Trump would not rule out a pardon for President Joe Biden’s troubled son Hunter during a radio interview Thursday morning.
Asked by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt whether he would consider pardoning the younger Biden, Trump said “I wouldn’t take it off the books.”
“See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously, despite what, and Hunter’s a bad boy. There’s no question about it. He’s been a bad boy. All you had to do is see the laptop from hell. But I happen to think it’s very bad for our country,” Trump said of the continued prosecution of political figures and their family members.
Trump referred to New York Post columnist Miranda Devine’s book about Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop archive. The laptop contained evidence that Hunter Biden traded off his family name with foreign business associates and featured explicit images of Biden’s drug-fueled sexual deviance of last decade.
The New York Post first reported on the laptop’s emails ahead of the 2020 presidential election, a story Facebook and Twitter suppressed under false pretenses. A group of 51 former intelligence officials proceeded to write a discredited letter falsely claiming the laptop story resembled a Russian disinformation campaign, which gave then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden a talking point to deflect from his son’s behavior.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June on three federal gun charges in Delaware for making false statements about his drug usage on gun paperwork and possessing a firearm during a time when he suffered from a crack cocaine addiction six years ago. His sentencing for the gun charges is set to take place in the coming weeks.
Last month, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges connected to his failure to repay over $1.4 million of taxes in a timely manner over a four-year period last decade. By pleading guilty at the last second, Biden avoided what would have been a lengthy and possibly humiliating trial for the Biden family. The sentencing for Biden’s tax charges is scheduled to occur in December.
President Biden has said that he will not pardon his son or commute his sentence. Democrats have pointed to the Hunter Biden prosecution to counter Trump’s assertions that the Justice Department is waging politicized lawfare against him through special counsel Jack Smith’s cases against the former president.
Special counsel David Weiss and his team prosecuted Hunter Biden on the tax and gun charges after Biden’s sweetheart plea deal in Delaware for two tax misdemeanors and a single gun charge collapsed under scrutiny from judge Maryellen Noreika.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss special counsel after he lead the years-long investigation into Biden as Delaware U.S. Attorney. Weiss’s elevation to special counsel happened during a House Republican investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and IRS whistleblower allegations of misconduct among Justice Department officials on the Biden case.
The House GOP’s impeachment inquiry uncovered $27 million of payments to Biden and his business associates from foreign entities, and it detailed Joe Biden’s contacts with his son’s business partners. The wide-ranging investigation largely confirmed the whistleblower allegations that DOJ officials slow-walked and obstructed investigative steps during the criminal probe into Biden’s taxes.