President Biden said Thursday that he will not pardon his son Hunter if he is convicted in his ongoing felony gun trial or a separate federal case related to alleged tax evasion.
Biden’s comments came during a rare sit-down interview with ABC News at the Normandy American Cemetery on the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
When anchor David Muir asked Biden if he would accept the outcome of Hunter’s trial in Wilmington, Delaware, the president said yes, according to excerpts released before the interview is set to air in its entirety on Thursday night.
He gave the same response when asked if he would rule out a pardon for the first son.
The younger Biden is currently on trial for three felony charges stemming from allegations that he lied on a federal form while purchasing a gun five years ago.
That four-page indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for Delaware, argues that Hunter “knowingly made a false and fictitious written statement, intended and likely to deceive” a dealer in his effort to acquire a Colt Cobra revolver in October 2018.
The indictment accused Hunter of falsely certifying that he was “not an unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance,” when he filled out a federal Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) form.
Hunter wrote in his memoir that he was smoking crack nearly every 15 minutes around the time he purchased the gun.
He pleaded not guilty last October after being indicted by special counsel David Weiss.
He faces an additional nine criminal charges in California as part of a Department of Justice investigation into his taxes.
Those charges include three felony counts for alleged tax evasion and filing a false return and six misdemeanor charges for alleged failure to pay taxes between 2016 and 2019.
“Hunter Biden engaged in a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019 and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns,” prosecutors wrote in a press release last month.
If Biden were convicted on all charges, he would face up to 17 years in prison.
Meanwhile on Thursday, Biden criticized Donald Trump over the former president’s reaction to his own conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to allegedly cover up an affair he had with porn star Stormy Daniels.
“He’s trying to undermine it,” Joe Biden said. “He got a fair trial. The jury spoke.”