As one of his final acts in office, President Joe Biden pardoned several members of his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The White House announced the pardons in a last batch of clemency decisions just minutes before Donald Trump took the oath of office, saying they were intended to prevent \u201cbaseless and politically motivated investigations\u201d against his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden had already issued a sweeping pardon in December for his son Hunter, who was facing sentencing in two criminal cases. The pardons for his other family members, signed Sunday, were similarly sweeping and covered all of their \u201cnonviolent\u201d actions dating back to 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pardon, which includes the president\u2019s siblings James Biden, Francis Biden and Valerie Biden Owens, as well as brother-in-law John Owens and sister-in-law Sara Jones Biden, is one of the most extraordinary \u2014 and directly personal \u2014 clemency actions ever taken by an outgoing president. Biden attributed the decision to fear that his family would be targeted by the Trump administration and said their acceptance should not be \u201cmisconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pardons contradict Biden\u2019s comments in 2020 criticizing Trump amid reports \u2014 which turned out to be untrue \u2014 that he might pursue \u201cpreemptive\u201d pardons for family members and close allies at the end of his first term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, it concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice,\u201d Biden said in a CNN interview shortly after winning the 2020 election. \u201cNow in terms of the pardons, you\u2019re not going to see in our administration that kind of approach to pardons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Republicans quickly decried the Biden family pardons as a shocking abuse meant to cover up evidence of influence peddling and corruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As one of his final acts in office, President Joe Biden pardoned several members of his family. The White House announced the pardons in a last batch of clemency decisions just minutes before Donald Trump took the oath of office, saying they were intended to prevent \u201cbaseless and politically motivated investigations\u201d against his family. Biden…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,118],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-joe-biden","tag-pardons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246,"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions\/246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hkg01.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}