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President Biden Pardons His Son Hunter. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired December 01, 2024 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[20:00:00]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: Again, our breaking news tonight that President Joe Biden has issued a pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, on both of these cases, both the gun case in Delaware and the tax cases in California. President Biden releasing a lengthy statement, essentially making the case that he didn't believe that this was a fair outcome because his son, he believed, was targeted.

He ended it by saying, "I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision."

Of course, there's going to be much more on this. Thank you so much for joining me on a busy Sunday night. I'm Jessica Dean. Stay tuned, "SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA, THE FINAL FLIGHT PART I" is next. Have a great night.

(CNN ORIGINAL SERIES)

[20:15:08]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

DEAN: And we are continuing to follow breaking news tonight. We have learned that President Biden has now pardoned his son Hunter Biden.

We have team coverage of this. We're going to start first with CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez, who, Evan, you just got the statement from Hunter Biden. I'd also want to touch on the statement from President Biden himself that he issued and really tried to explain himself frankly to the American people, saying that he hopes they understand that he's making -- why he's making this decision that it was something he had wrestled with but that ultimately in his words he believed this was a miscarriage of justice.

What are you learning?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jessica, those are really stark words to be hearing from the president of the United States. I mean, this is a president who ran for office and said he was trying to turn the page on Donald Trump, who had attacked all the institutions and said he was here to restore faith in those institutions. And you see from this statement that it's clear he doesn't believe those institutions have treated his son very well and very fairly. I'll read you his statement and then we can talk a little bit more

about it today. He said, "Today I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. 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 watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted." He goes on to describe some of the aggravating factors in these two twin cases, the gun charges that Hunter Biden faced, as well as tax charges.

And I'll read you just another part where he says, "The charges in this case came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then a carefully negotiated plea deal agreed to by the Department of Justice unraveled in the courtroom, and a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had that plea deal held, it would have been a fair and reasonable resolution of Hunter's case."

And then he goes on to say, really addressing the American public who he knows will be judging this, Jessica. He says, "For my entire career, I have followed a simple principle -- just tell the American people the truth. They'll be fair-minded. Here's the truth. I believe in the justice system. But as I watch, as I wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it has led to a miscarriage of justice." And he said that once he made that decision this weekend, he made -- he decided to go ahead with it.

The president, by the way, Jessica, is leaving for a trip to Africa I think in the next few hours. And, you know, Hunter Biden was facing sentencing in both of these cases in the coming days. First, in Delaware, where he was convicted of three charges, gun-related charges. He's facing 17 years possibly in that case, Jessica. And then in Los Angeles. he was also set to be sentenced later this month on tax evasion charges. Those carry a sentence of up to 25 years.

So this, with this signing of this pardon, President Biden is resolving all of those things, things that have hung over Hunter's head really for about six years.

DEAN: Right. And Evan, I know you covered those trials. And as you note, the sentencing was about to get underway and that December 12th very much a key date. And it was likely based on talking to others and legal experts that he was going to be sentenced to prison time.

PEREZ: Yes. Look, I mean, part of the problem here was, I think as Elie Honig was describing a while ago is that, you know, these cases are a little unusual. You don't see a lot of them in the federal system. Not certainly the gun charges. You don't see it unless there is some other aggravating factor, for instance, you know, if you're -- if someone dies as a result of you buying a gun when you didn't have the right to own it.

So things like that usually are what those cases come about. So it's very unusual and it's hard to judge what would have happened in this case. But yes, I mean he was looking at the likelihood of spending at least some time in federal prison, especially because he had two separate sentencings that were coming up in the next few days. And by the way, Jessica, you know, for Hunter Biden, obviously, you

know, he hopes that this resolves all of this. But the incoming administration has also made clear that they have additional questions. They want to spend more time investigating Hunter and Joe Biden. And you keep hearing rhetoric from Capitol Hill about Republicans who say that they want to take another look at what they say was criminal issues that they say were associated with the Bidens. So this may not be over for those people obviously.

DEAN: Yes.

[20:20:00]

All right, Evan, stay with us. I want to go to our colleague Jeff Zeleny, who is joining us on the phone.

And, Jeff, you've had some reporting tonight about how President Biden arrived at this decision. He has been -- he had been on Nantucket with his family. This tradition -- this Thanksgiving tradition that they have. What more are you learning about how he arrived at this decision after previously saying he would not pardon his son?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (via phone): Well, Jessica, we know that President Biden, this has been weighing on him, there's no question. But just seeing how he has spent the last several days with his family the images of, you know, seeing a Christmas tree lighting in Nantucket with Hunter and his family. He is close, and he has a protective shield over his son Hunter. And that decision was made tonight.

As Evan said before, he's setting off for what is likely to be his final foreign trip of his presidency to basically let this news be known and the consequences will fall into place. I mean, this is a part of his legacy now. There is no doubt about it. And if you really think across an extraordinary five decades of public life, his long rise from the Senate, of course, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman to the vice presidency, to the presidency, he's really acknowledging in his statement that Washington has changed.

He believes politics has changed. And he believes that Hunter Biden has been unfairly treated. Of course others will have a different view of that. But clearly, in his fleeting moments of executive authority, he has it until, you know, January 20th at noon. This is clearly something that he had to do if he was going to do it, had to act now. December 12th is the first sentencing, and clearly chose family over any concerns of his political legacy here.

So we will see in the light of this new day, this new week in Washington, as certainly a new administration is coming in. This certainly will be scrutinized and criticized. But for President Biden, this is something that he still has the power to do. His power is escaping him. But this is something he can do and he clearly did it for his son Hunter.

DEAN: Yes. And again, his last surviving son. His other son, Beau Biden, dying from glioblastoma in 2015 and there has been so much -- they are so close and they spend so much time together and Hunter has advised him on a number of moments and decisions, both as president and before.

Jeff, stay with us.

Let's go to Elie Honig who's joining us as well.

And Elie, I just want to get your legal perspective on all of this because as you and I talked about last hour, but also as Jeff was just talking about there, this idea that President Biden really got at in his statement that this was a miscarriage of justice, that this was not -- that Hunter Biden was prosecuted because of who his father was. What do you make of that?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, we'll never know definitively whether Hunter Biden was given lenient treatment or harsher treatment because of his name. But I can tell you based on my experience he was certainly given different treatment than an ordinary person was.

Now, let's be clear here. There are two pending Hunter Biden federal cases, and they're actually being prosecuted by David Weiss, who has long been the U.S. attorney for Delaware and was made special counsel on his own request to Merrick Garland, which Merrick Garland granted earlier this year.

Now, the first case is for possession of a firearm while an addicted person. It's a very obscure firearm statute in the federal code. I actually never once charged it during all my time as a federal prosecutor. I'm not even sure I knew it existed at the time. It was so rarely charged, but it makes it a crime for a person who's addicted to drugs or alcohol to possess a firearm, which Hunter Biden did.

He wrote about it in his own book, and he lied on the forms that you have to fill out. He said, I am not an addicted person when he was. He went to trial for that in Delaware, and he was convicted by a jury earlier this year. And as Evan said, with his sentencing coming up on that, it's impossible to tell for sure. But the sentencing guidelines for that case likely would have recommended a sentence of somewhere in the range of a year to two years behind bars. Now that's up to the judge.

Separately Hunter Biden was indicted for income tax evasion in federal court in California, and he pled guilty to that crime right on the eve of trial a few months ago. And if you do the federal sentencing guidelines calculation on that case, he was looking at multiple years, three to five years, really depending on how you construe it.

So, Joe Biden's pardon here of his son in all likelihood to a virtual certainty did spare Hunter Biden from having to go to prison. With respect to how he was treated, there is a case to be made that he was given leniency. There were IRS whistleblowers who worked on this case, who testified in Congress that certain avenues of investigation were cut off and limited. They believe they were artificially limited, but on the other hand, as I said before, it is almost unheard of to see someone charged with an addict in possession of a firearm case in circumstances like Hunter Biden.

[20:25:08]

The tax case he did repay it. He paid it late. He paid it after he was in trouble. But there's a case to be made that that would ordinarily have been handled as a misdemeanor or even a civil offense. In fact, at one point, DOJ had agreed to give it away to Hunter Biden for basically a misdemeanor and a slap on the wrist. So I think what happened in this case is the pendulum sort of swung from one extreme to the other, and you ended up with an outcome that the president felt necessary to issue a pardon on.

DEAN: All right, Elie, stay with us. We're going to take a quick break. We're going to have much more on this breaking news.

President Biden issuing a pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, in just a moment.

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DEAN: Welcome back to our breaking news coverage of the news tonight that President Biden has issued a pardon for his son Hunter Biden, that covers both of the cases, the one in Delaware and also the one in California. We know that sentencing was on the horizon for both of those cases. And that President Biden came to this decision over the weekend. He said that once he made that decision, he didn't see any necessity in waiting any longer and wanted to do this now.

President Biden is headed to Africa for what is most likely going to be his last trip abroad as president.

[20:30:01]

And you're looking there where he was over the weekend, and that was with his family on Nantucket. You see Hunter Biden, his wife, and his son, Joe Biden's grandson, there with him walking on the streets of Nantucket. And a lot of the reporting that we're getting is indicating that the final decision was made over this weekend as the Biden family spent time together.

Hunter Biden is Joe Biden's last remaining son, last surviving son. Beau Biden died in 2015 from glioblastoma and we know that Hunter and Joe Biden have shared quite a close relationship through the ups and downs of Hunter Biden's addiction which he says is at the root of why a lot of these things transpired, that he has been prosecuted for. And in the end, in a lengthy statement that President Biden put out today on this pardon, he said, for my entire career, I've followed a simple principle, just tell the American people the truth. They'll be fair minded.

Here's the truth. I believe in the justice system but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice. He went on to say, I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision. I want to go now to MJ Lee, a senior White House correspondent, who

joins us on the phone.

And MJ, you have been getting some new reporting that really centers around that last sentence in the statement there, which is, I'm doing this as a president and a father. Tell us more about that.

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (via phone): Yes, and keep in mind, Jessica, you know, since the president ended his 2024 campaign over the summer, the context here, of course, is that President Biden and White House officials have been asked multiple times whether the president would pardon his son now that his time as president was limited to a handful of months. And he and his aides repeatedly said he wouldn't do that because of his deference to the judicial system.

The reason he was asked that question repeatedly, though, is because in many ways it was a difficult thing for folks to understand this idea that as president of the United States, you are uniquely positioned to save your son from spending time behind bars of, you know, being able to clear your son's name, so why not, I think was essentially the question that a lot of folks were curious to have answered as the president continued to insist that he wouldn't do this.

And if you look closely at the statement the president released tonight and in my conversation with the White House official this evening two things I think are abundantly clear. You know, one, as he has said all along, the president very much believes that his son, Hunter, was targeted by raw politics and that his, the president's, political opponents had wanted to hurt his son. As one official told me tonight the president believed that this was cruel and that his son had endured enough.

And the other thing is that, you know, what particularly angered and swayed the president in the end is the belief that his political opponents were trying to break Hunter, his son, even as he was recovering from addiction. I think this is particularly what the president saw as cruel.

So ultimately, Jessica, this was a decision that the president obviously made as president, but also as a father. It is one that, as he said in his statement he very much wrestled with and went back and forth on but he came to this final decision as you said over the weekend, as he was gathered with his family for Thanksgiving. Maybe not surprising that this would be the moment when he would make that final decision, such an important decision for his son one again that he ultimately made both as president and as a father.

DEAN: Yes, no doubt about it. I want to go to Evan Perez.

Evan, we're learning that Hunter Biden has officially accepted this pardon? What does that mean?

PEREZ: Yes, it's a formality because this is something, obviously it's now in the hands of a judge. And a judge has to formally dismiss these charges. And that's something that has to happen after receiving this pardon. And you know, we anticipated that this is how it was going to go. And frankly, we've been waiting to see whether Joe Biden would issue this pardon before the sentencing, which was due in the next week or so for the Delaware case.

And then in Los Angeles later this month, Jessica, we were anticipating that this was going to come either in the form of a commutation or a pardon, and so it was just a matter of time that we were going to see this show up in the docket. So now what this means is the judges that are overseeing these two cases will formally under almost certainty here will dismiss these charges and that means that the Justice Department cannot refile these, you know, these charges again, under this under these format.

[20:35:13]

So whether this means the Republicans will give up on investigating aspects of this is obviously something that we'll have to see next year.

DEAN: Yes, for sure. All right, Evan, stand by.

I want to go back to Elie Honig for a minute. And Elie, just going -- Evan just explained that this dismisses all these charges, these specific charges. For people watching what might this mean, though, moving forward? Because we're also getting this reporting that there is concern from the Biden family that the Trump administration may zero in on Hunter may come back and try to investigate him further or prosecute him further. What does the pardon mean going forward? Anything?

HONIG: Yes, Jessica. So in terms of scope, we have to look at the specific language of the actual pardon documents that come out. If they just say Hunter Biden is hereby pardoned for case number, whatever it is, the federal case in Delaware for guns and case number whatever it is in federal case in California for taxes, then that's the only coverage that Hunter Biden has. And if the next Justice Department decides it wants to keep on investigating Hunter Biden and look at other areas, then it can do that if the pardons are narrowly crafted.

However, if the pardon is broader, if it's a blanket pardon and Joe Biden can issue a pardon if he wants, it says, I hereby pardon Hunter Biden for everything that has happened from the beginning of time until today, until December 1st, 2024. If that's the way the pardon reads, then Hunter Biden's coverage is much, much broader and essentially blocks out the possibility of any other federal charge.

We have seen blanket pardons before. Richard Nixon was given essentially a blanket pardon by Gerald Ford. So we need to look at the specific language of that pardon. One thing that cannot happen from a pardon is a president cannot issue a pardon that works forward in time. In other words, a pardon can only excuse someone for everything they've done up to this point. But you can't say, I hereby issue a pardon for anything the person might do in the future. Might do from December 2nd of 2024 on. So the scope and the coverage here are going to be really important.

And if Joe Biden wants to ensure that Hunter Biden cannot be continually federally investigated moving forward, then his move would be to issue a very broad blanket pardon as opposed to just a narrow pardon focusing on the two specific cases.

DEAN: Yes, all right. That's very helpful. Elie Honig, thank you so much.

Stick with us. We're going to have much more after the break, including we're starting to get some congressional reaction to this as well. We're going to sort through that. We'll be right back.

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[20:41:26]

DEAN: Welcome back to our breaking news coverage of what we have learned this evening is a pardon from President Joe Biden for his son Hunter Biden.

I want to go now to Isaac Dovere who has covered President Biden for years now, and Isaac I want to play a clip from First Lady Jill Biden, kind of her thoughts on what the prosecution of Hunter Biden had been like for their family. Let's play that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JILL BIDEN, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: I think what they are doing to Hunter is cruel and I'm really proud of how Hunter has rebuilt his life after addiction.

You know, I love my son and it's had -- it's hurt my grandchildren. And that's what I'm so concerned about that it's affecting their lives as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: So, Isaac, here we have obviously what has been a very difficult situation for the Biden family. This has clearly weighed very heavily on them. At the same time, for months, President Biden and the rest of his family said he would not be doing the one thing that he did today.

What do you know about the family dynamics between behind all of this and what gets us from? I will not be pardoning my son until today where he has issued that pardon.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Well, some of it, Jessica, you think about the context of where he was this past weekend. He was in Nantucket. The reason why Joe Biden was in Nantucket for Thanksgiving, why he's been there every Thanksgiving of his presidency, is that that's where he's gone with his family every year since 1972, when his wife and his baby daughter were killed in a car crash, which Hunter Biden and Beau Biden were in the car, too. And they were very seriously hurt. And so they were on their way to buy a Christmas tree. For those who

don't know the whole story of it, and there was a feeling of, OK, let's go away from the home, let's go to Nantucket and just have a family retreat there. That is so core to the Biden identity and being there this weekend with the family obviously now in the context of his presidency coming to a close and coming to a close thinking about what will the consequences potentially continue to be for his family not just for Hunter Biden and these crimes that he is -- was going to be sentenced for.

But for other things that he is very much thinking about, will there be a situation where a Trump Justice Department decides to target Hunter Biden to make a point of it, and I think it's important to point out what the way the pardon reads in the thinking of all this, and Elie is -- I'm not a lawyer at all. Elie is a good lawyer and he was talking about whether it's a blanket. Pardon. It is a blanket pardon. It reads for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1st, 2014 through December 1st, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted and the ones that he was due to be sentenced for.

So this is saying for a -- from 2014 through the end of this year 2024, anything that Hunter Biden did during that time, he is pardoned for. I suppose that you could see a situation where a prosecutor would look for something before 2014 to go after Hunter Biden for. But that is a very protective shield that Joe Biden has put around his son here.

[20:45:02]

And of course, the focus on Hunter Biden has been related to the politics of Joe Biden for a long time now. I'm thinking back to 2020, when Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary and turned around his whole presidential campaign. It was a Saturday, the primary. The Sunday morning, on a Sunday, Ron Johnson, the senator from Wisconsin who was the chair of the homeland security committee at that point, issued a request for all sorts of paperwork related to Hunter Biden on unrelated things to these charges that he's facing or he was facing now. But about his work with a Ukrainian gas company.

So there -- it has all been intertwined. The focus on Hunter Biden and the politics of Joe Biden. That said, these were prosecutions that were being, that were brought through courts and by a Justice Department that was under Joe Biden's administration. So in addition to the change in position himself that he's facing here and saying that he wouldn't pardon Hunter Biden -- he is saying that he found that politics had infected his own Justice Department.

DEAN: Yes, it is fascinating to hear him saying that just -- if you broaden it out, just because President Trump has also been making accusations, obviously, that he's been targeted unfairly as well and Democrats had sought so hard to not let -- you know, to really defend the Justice Department. And yet here we are now.

DOVERE: Yes, and of course, we know that more will be coming when Donald Trump becomes president again. And we don't know where it will lead, whether it will be the pardons that he had promised has recently not been talking about as much of the people who were convicted in crimes related to January 6th or other things.

DEAN: Yes.

DOVERE: But this puts the situation where Donald Trump will be able to point to Hunter Biden's pardon for any pardons he may issue, or for any questions he has about the Justice Department and say, hey, look at that, Joe Biden had his own questions about it. Joe Biden pardoned his own son. So that's the standard that now Joe Biden has in the process of protecting his son from the charges that he was facing and the jail time that he was likely facing because of he feels like political retribution for him and thinking about what might be coming down the road. He's also given Donald Trump a talking point here. There's no question about it.

DEAN: Yes, yes. No. There's a lot of political implications.

OK. Let's take a quick break. We are getting a statement from President-elect Trump on this, which we are going to bring you as soon as we come back.

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[20:51:43]

DEAN: Welcome back to our breaking news coverage of President Biden pardoning his son Hunter Biden. This coming after he said for months that he would not be doing that.

We are getting a statement from the Trump team via spokesperson Steven Cheung. It reads, quote, "The failed witch hunts against President Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponizing the justice system. That system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what President Trump will do as he returns to the White House with an overwhelming mandate from the American people."

Again, that is a statement on behalf of President Trump.

I want to go to Ron Brownstein, who is with us.

And Ron, you hear that and then I'm starting to see, we're starting to get reaction from members of the Senate -- of Republican senators. Tom Cotton kind of stuck out to me, which he had several points. But he said, lastly Democrats can spare us the lectures about the rule of law when, say, President Trump nominates Pam Bondi and Kash Patel to clean up this corruption.

The politics of this is pretty dynamic.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, well, look, I mean, Democrats, I think, you know, started the Biden presidency with the idea that if they stood for norms, they would make it harder for Republicans to depart from those norms. And, you know, you got Merrick Garland and all the hesitancy in the Justice Department about taking on Donald Trump for years.

And then Donald Trump nominated Matt Gaetz and Kash Patel to the FBI. I mean, the idea that, like, there's a forbearance on the part of Democrats that will kind of embarrass Trump into upholding norms, just seems to me nonsensical. So, you know, what you're talking about here is, you know, Biden taking a step that is going to be very controversial, even with his own party to protect his son, but is certainly in line with what we have seen from Trump in the past with all of his senior campaign aides and advisers.

Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, yesterday, you know, the pardon for Jared Kushner's father, who he's now sending to France, wants to send to France as the ambassador. I actually think that, you know, there's going to be obviously a lot of uproar about this, but some of the question is going to be, should Biden go further, given how Trump has overtly threatened to prosecute people who are involved, for example, in his, you know, in the special counsel's investigation of his role in January 6th? Is that something Biden should consider?

DEAN: Yes. All right, Ron, stay with us. Thank you so much.

I want to go to John Dean quickly.

And, John, we've only got about two more minutes left. But I certainly wanted to hear your thoughts on this because, listen, you've lived another chapter of American history that I feel like involved pardons and other things. What are your thoughts just to close us out here?

JOHN DEAN, FORMER NIXON WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: Well, I'm not surprised. It certainly was a father-son arrangement. It would be hard if he had not done so. And it looks like he did it just before sentencing was about to happen. I'm very interested to hear what's in the Abbe Lowell memo. Apparently a very lengthy 60 plus-page memo that was discussed by the family, the Biden family, over the Thanksgiving holiday. And it sounds like that is what turned the president to make this decision and pardon his son.

[20:55:04]

DEAN: And how do you think? Again, just the politics as we were talking about with Ron Brownstein, the politics of this, you have the familial piece of it, but the politics of this very interesting as we get ready for a second Trump presidency.

J. DEAN: Very interesting. I think Ron is right on when he says that the Democrats have been trying to play by the norms and then here we have Trump coming in with norm busting nominees for cabinet posts, particularly at FBI and the Department of Justice. So that isn't going to play. I mean, you can't really argue norms in these situations. This is a norm buster, too, but I think it will be probably heatedly debated for some time.

DEAN: And even within the Democratic Party. J. DEAN: Yes. Absolutely. Because Biden said he wasn't going to do it.

And a lot of Democrats like that, the fact that he was not but as a father, it was probably pretty difficult not to proceed.

DEAN: Right. And there is, and it's interesting you note that because in that last part of his statement, he says that he hopes Americans will understand that he made the decision as a father and a president.

J. DEAN: Yes.

DEAN: Yes.

J. DEAN: I think it will play in the long run correctly. But in the short run, it's going to be hot politics.

DEAN: All right, John Dean, as always, we really appreciate your thoughts, your analysis on that. Our thanks to Ron Brownstein as well.

Thank you for joining us. Again we've been covering breaking news tonight that President Joe Biden has issued a pardon for his son Hunter Biden. CNN will return to our regularly scheduled programing, "THE SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA, THE FINAL FLIGHT" in just a few minutes.

But thank you again for joining us. Have a great night. We'll have more coverage for you tomorrow.

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