Smil­ing Hunter Biden seen in first pho­tos since receiv­ing pres­i­den­tial par­don

First son Hunter Biden was spot­ted on cam­era for the first time since his father par­doned him, smil­ing for the cam­eras as he picked up a fast-food order in Cal­i­for­nia. 

Hunter Biden was seen Wednes­day after­noon in San­ta Bar­bara sport­ing a T‑shirt, jeans and base­ball cap while pick­ing up food from an Arby’s. 

The pho­tos come after Biden announced Sun­day evening that he would spare his son from being sen­tenced in a pair of sep­a­rate court cas­es in which he was found guilty of ille­gal­ly pur­chas­ing a gun and fail­ing to pay $1.4 mil­lion in tax­es. Biden cit­ed in his state­ment that Hunter Biden’s con­vic­tions were polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and a “mis­car­riage of jus­tice.”

“Today, I signed a par­don for my son Hunter,” Biden wrote in a state­ment. “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.”

2 TIMES BIDEN SAID HE WOULD NOT PARDON SON HUNTER BIDEN 

He went on to say: “It is clear that Hunter was treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. 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, unrav­eled 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,” he con­tin­ued. 

BIDEN PARDONS SON HUNTER BIDEN AHEAD OF EXIT FROM OVAL OFFICE

“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.” 

The par­don stands in stark con­trast to what the pres­i­dent said ear­li­er this years, vow­ing he would not par­don his son both before and after Hunter was found guilty in a June gun tri­al. 

WHO ELSE MIGHT BIDEN PARDON AFTER HE SPARED HUNTER FROM SENTENCING?

“I am not going to do any­thing,” Biden said after Hunter was con­vict­ed in the gun case. “I will abide by the jury’s deci­sion.”

Hunter Biden was found guilty June 11 of lying about his drug use when buy­ing a gun in 2018. He was found guilty on three charges — mak­ing a false state­ment in the pur­chase of a gun, mak­ing a false state­ment relat­ed to infor­ma­tion required to be kept by a fed­er­al­ly licensed gun deal­er and pos­ses­sion of a gun by a per­son who is an unlaw­ful user of or addict­ed to a con­trolled sub­stance. 

Hunter Biden had an exten­sive and well-doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry with addic­tion, which was best cap­tured in his 2021 mem­oir “Beau­ti­ful Things,” which walked read­ers through his spi­rals of crack cocaine use. 

Hunter Biden faced anoth­er tri­al regard­ing three felony tax offens­es and six mis­de­meanor tax offens­es over his alleged fail­ure to pay at least $1.4 mil­lion in tax­es in a Cal­i­for­nia court in Sep­tem­ber. As jury selec­tion was about to kick off in Los Ange­les fed­er­al court, Hunter entered a sur­prise guilty plea.