White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre shot down the possibility that President Biden would consider pardoning his son Hunter over felony gun and tax misdemeanor charges.
The younger Biden was charged in June with felony gun possession and two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay taxes in 2017 and 2018. He had been set to agree to a plea deal that included a recommendation of probation for the tax violations. Under the deal, the gun charge would have been dropped and potentially wiped from Biden’s record if he met certain conditions.
However, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor tax charges in federal court on Wednesday after U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika put the plea deal on hold.
Asked on Thursday whether President Biden would consider a pardon in the case, Jean-Pierre told reporters, “No.”
Jean-Pierre also dodged a question during the press briefing on Thursday about whether Biden had spoken to his son since the plea deal was put on hold.
“I’m really not gonna say anything more than what I shared yesterday – this is a personal matter for Hunter Biden, this is a personal issue,” she said. “And as you know, this has been done in an independent way by the Department of Justice, it has been led by a Trump-appointed prosecutor, and I’m just not going to comment beyond what I said yesterday.”
Judge Noreika said Wednesday that the plea deal Biden’s lawyers reached with Delaware U.S. attorney David Weiss was “unusual” and questioned why the deal contained some “non-standard terms,” such as “broad immunity” from other potential charges. Prosecutor Leo Wise acknowledged there was no precedent for the kind of deal that had been proposed.
After a discrepancy over whether the younger Biden would be immune from prosecution for possible crimes including violations related to representing foreign governments without registering, the prosecution and defense reached a revised agreement that would only cover the period from 2014-2019 and would only include conduct related to tax offenses, drug use and gun possession, CNN’s Manu Raju reported.
The judge chose to delay a decision on whether to accept the revised deal.
IRS whistleblowers have testified before Congress that the IRS, DOJ and FBI interfered in the investigation into the president’s son. IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified last week that the U.S. attorney for D.C., who was appointed by President Biden, had final say over whether charges would be brought against Hunter Biden and that the Biden appointee was the one who made the call not to charge the younger Biden with a felony.
Shapley and another whistleblower have said they pushed for felony charges against Hunter Biden in the tax probe and that Weiss wanted to bring charges against the younger Biden in the District of Columbia and Southern California last year but was denied by DOJ officials both times.
The gun charge against Biden centers on his acknowledgment in his recent autobiography that he was using crack nearly every 15 minutes around the time he purchased a handgun in 2018, despite claiming on a federal background check that he was not using illicit drugs.