President-elect Donald Trump criticized President Joe Biden on Sunday after it was announced that Biden would be pardoning his son, Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden, a controversial figure in the Biden family, has found himself the target of the GOP over his past actions and wrongdoing. Over the summer, he was prosecuted and found guilty in two cases, one that involved the illegal possession of a firearm and another for federal tax evasion.
Biden’s pardon for his son comes in the eleventh hour, as he was set to be sentenced for both crimes this month, the first on Dec. 12.
Now, President-elect Trump is making it known that he feels Biden’s pardon for his son was “an abuse and miscarriage of justice.”
“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” the president-elect said in a post on Truth Social.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung also issued a statement on the pardoning.
“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,” Cheung said. “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.”
Biden also shared a similar sentiment about his son, saying his prosecution was the result of political persecution.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Biden said in a statement.
“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,” he added. “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.”
The move from Biden appears to have ruffled feathers, as members of Congress have also spoken out, including Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the chair of the House Oversight Committee.
“Joe Biden has lied from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities. Not only has he falsely claimed that he never met with his son’s foreign business associates and that his son did nothing wrong, but he also lied when he said he would not pardon Hunter Biden,” Comer said in a statement. “The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people. It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.”
Despite his criticism of Biden, Trump had said late last month that he would consider a pardon for the president’s son if he won the election.