President Biden Pardons His Son Hunter Biden After Pledging Not To

In a decision apparently reached over the Thanksgiving holiday on Nantucket, President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who was facing a jail sentence on federal tax evasion and gun charges.

"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 released Sunday night. "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. 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."

President Biden's family discussed whether to pardon Hunter Biden during their time on Nantucket for the Thanksgiving holiday, a source confirmed to ABC News.

Hunter Biden, who was just a featured speaker at the annual Nantucket Project event in October, recently pleaded guilty in the federal tax evasion case against him and in June was found guilty of firearms-related charges. He was scheduled to have sentencing hearings in both cases this month and faced a maximum of 42 years in prison.

In granting his son a full and unconditional pardon for any offenses between 2014 and 2024, Biden went back on his repeated pledge not to use his executive powers to keep Hunter Biden out of jail.

"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 – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further," Biden stated. "I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision."

NBC News was the first to report the pardon Sunday night. 

Read Biden's full statement below: