Joe Biden has pardoned his son Hunter despite repeatedly denying he would do so before leaving office.

The US president’s son, 54, was due to be sentenced on firearms charges in early December.

In a statement, Mr Biden said he was making the decision because his son had been unfairly prosecuted.

As recently as November 7, the White House insisted Mr Biden had no plans to pardon Hunter.

But in a statement on Sunday night, the US president 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 have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.”

He went on to suggest his son was “treated differently” because of his father’s status.

“The charges in his cases 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, unravelled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.”

Under the plea deal, Hunter would have been spared jail in return for pleading guilty to two minor tax offences. However, in July last year, a judge angrily rejected the proposal which had been branded a “sweetheart” deal by Republicans.

In his statement on Sunday, the president said: “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.”

He said his political opponents had tried 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.”

Attempting to explain the U-turn, Mr Biden continued: “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 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.

“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”

Mr Biden said he had made the decision over the weekend. The president, his wife, Jill Biden, and their family including Hunter, spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Massachusetts and returned to Washington on Saturday night.

Hunter was convicted in June in Delaware federal court of three felonies for purchasing a gun in 2018 when, prosecutors said, he lied on a federal form by claiming he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.

He was set to stand trial in September in the California case accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. But he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges in a surprise move hours after jury selection was set to begin.

Hunter said he was pleading guilty in that case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after the gun trial aired salacious details about his struggles with a crack cocaine addiction.

The tax charges carry up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible he would avoid prison time entirely.

Hunter said in an emailed statement that he will never take for granted the relief granted to him and vowed to devote the life he has rebuilt “to helping those who are still sick and suffering”.

“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” he said.

A spokesperson for special counsel David Weiss, who brought the cases, did not respond to messages seeking comment on Sunday night.

Pardon met with backlash

Republicans slammed the president’s pardon late on Sunday night, with Donald Trump calling it a “miscarriage of justice”.

Mr Trump, who has pledged to dramatically overhaul and install loyalists across the Justice Department after he was prosecuted for his role in trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, said on Truth Social that Hunter Biden’s pardon was “such 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?” Mr Trump asked, referring to those convicted in the violent Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol.

Rep. James Comer, one of the Republican chairmen leading congressional investigations into Mr Biden’s family, said the evidence against Hunter was “just the tip of the iceberg”.

“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,” Mr Comer said on X.