President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, ending a saga that has lasted for more than six years, with wide-ranging investigations by the Justice Department and both chambers of Congress related to his conduct and business dealings.
Hunter Biden was found guilty of three felony firearm offenses stemming from Special Counsel David Weiss’ investigation. The first son was also charged with federal tax crimes regarding the failure to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. Before his trial, Hunter Biden entered a surprise guilty plea.
The charges carried up to 17 years behind bars. His sentencing was scheduled for Dec. 16.
Here’s a look back at how it all began:
The federal investigation into Hunter Biden began in 2018.
The probe was predicated, in part, by suspicious activity reports (SARs) regarding foreign transactions. Those SARs, according to sources familiar with the investigation, involved funds from “China and other foreign nations.”
Fox News first reported the existence of some type of federal investigation involving Hunter Biden in October 2020, ahead of the last presidential election. It became known then that in the course of an existing money laundering investigation, the FBI had subpoenaed the laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden.
Stories about the laptop were widely panned by Democrats and mainstream media outlets as Russian disinformation. At the time, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe confirmed that the laptop was “not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” but that claim was rejected by Democrats and many in the media.
Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook censored and limited the circulation of stories related to Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 presidential election.
Only in 2022 did media outlets verify that the laptop did belong to Hunter Biden and did hold legitimate records belonging to him.
Twitter, under the new ownership of Elon Musk, released records surrounding the company’s decisions to block the circulation of the Hunter Biden stories – even though he had been under federal investigation at that point for nearly two years.
Hunter Biden confirmed the investigation into his “tax affairs” in December 2020, after his father was elected president.
But Hunter Biden’s business dealings were also, simultaneously, being investigated by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., in 2019. Specifically, the senators were investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings.
Grassley and Johnson released a report in September 2020 saying that Obama administration officials “knew” that Hunter Biden’s position on the board of Burisma was “problematic” and that it interfered “in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine.”
Hunter Biden joined Burisma in April 2014 and, at the time, reportedly connected the firm with consulting firm Blue Star Strategies to help the natural gas company fight corruption charges in Ukraine. During the time Hunter Biden was on the board of the company, Joe Biden was vice president and was running U.S.-Ukraine relations and policy for the Obama administration.
Also in 2019, Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine came into the spotlight during the first impeachment of now-President-elect Donald Trump.
House Republicans wanted to call Hunter Biden to testify in the impeachment proceedings in the fall of 2019.
Trump was acquitted in Feb. 2020 on both articles of impeachment against him — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — after being impeached by the House of Representatives in December 2019.
Trump was impeached after a July 2019 phone call in which he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to launch investigations into the Biden family’s actions and business dealings in Ukraine, specifically Hunter Biden’s ventures with Burisma and Joe Biden’s successful effort to have former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin ousted.
At the same time as that call, Hunter Biden was under federal investigation, prompted by his suspicious foreign transactions.
Trump’s request was regarded by Democrats as a quid pro quo because millions in U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been frozen. Democrats also said Trump was meddling in the 2020 presidential election by asking a foreign leader to look into a Democrat political opponent.
Republicans had been investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings, specifically with regard Burisma. House Republicans, who were in the minority at the time, made several requests to subpoena Hunter Biden for testimony and documents related to the impeachment of Trump and his business dealings that fell at the center of the proceedings.
Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma and Hunter Biden had a highly lucrative role on the board, receiving thousands of dollars per month. The then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin were not fired.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ … I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Biden recollected the conversation during an event for the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018.
Meanwhile, once President Biden took office, the House Oversight Committee led by Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., began investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the business dealings of the Biden family. Comer ultimately found that the Biden family and its associates had received more than $27 million from foreign individuals or entities since 2014.
But it wasn’t until 2023 that whistleblowers from the IRS, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, brought allegations of politicization in the federal probe of Hunter Biden to Congress.
The two alleged that political influence had infected prosecutorial decisions in the federal probe, which was led by Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who they said had requested to become a special counsel.
After Shapley and Ziegler testified publicly, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss as special counsel to continue his investigation of the first son and, ultimately, bring federal charges against him in two separate jurisdictions — Delaware and California.
House Republicans continued to investigate allegations of politicization brought by Ziegler and Shapley, as well as findings related to the Biden family’s business dealings from Comer’s probe.
Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith came together and launched an impeachment inquiry against President Biden to determine whether he had any involvement in his son’s business dealings. Biden repeatedly denied having any involvement, despite evidence placing him at meetings and on phone calls with his son and his foreign business partners.
In August, House lawmakers released their final report, spanning 292 pages, saying that Biden had engaged in “impeachable conduct.” They said he had “abused his office” and “defrauded the United States to enrich his family.”
Republicans said there is “overwhelming evidence” that Biden had participated in a “conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family.” They alleged that the Biden family and their business associates had received tens of millions of dollars from foreign interests by “leading those interests to believe that such payments would provide them access to and influence with President Biden.”
In the summer of 2023, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to federal gun charges as part of a plea deal that collapsed before a federal judge in Delaware. In a stunning reversal, Hunter Biden was forced to plead not guilty and sat for a trial this year.
Before his trial for federal tax crimes, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty.
President Biden’s pardon of his son came after months of vowing to the American people that he would not do so.
But on Sunday, the president announced a blanket pardon that applies to any offenses against the U.S. that Hunter Biden “has committed or may have committed” from Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 1, 2024.
“From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” Biden said. “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 added, “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.”
