President Biden on Sunday issued a “full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter, who was convicted by a jury of illegally purchasing a handgun in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax charges in Los Angeles.

Biden and his staff had repeatedly and publicly stated he would not pardon Hunter. But with less than two months remaining in his term and President-elect Donald Trump openly calling for his political enemies to be prosecuted, Biden reconsidered.

In explaining the controversial and extraordinary action, which came weeks before the president’s son was to be sentenced by federal judges on both coasts, Biden claimed Hunter was the victim of unfair political attacks.

“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,” Biden said in a statement released Sunday.

“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 continued in the 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. 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.”

Republicans condemned the move, with Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, accusing the president of lying “from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities.”

“He also lied when he said he would not pardon Hunter Biden,” Comer said in a statement.

“Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

President Biden said he came to the decision after spending the Thanksgiving holiday with his son and other family members in Nantucket.

The pardon covers offenses that Hunter Biden “may have committed or taken part in” from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024. It effectively wiped away the two pending criminal cases in which the younger Biden faced a combined maximum of several years in prison, although he was likely to serve only a few years, at most.

But the pardon also offers immunity for other conduct in that period, when he was active in foreign business dealings, including his seat on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company he joined in 2014 while his father was vice president.

Hunter Biden was paid millions by the company. He denies any wrongdoing.

David Weiss, the special counsel whose office brought both cases against Hunter Biden, did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Late Sunday, Hunter Biden’s lawyers submitted notices of the pardon in federal court, saying both cases are now moot and that the pardon “requires an automatic dismissal” of each.

“I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering,” Hunter Biden said in a statement.

In June, Hunter Biden was convicted of three federal gun crimes, including lying about being drug-free when he purchased and briefly owned a gun while he was addicted to crack cocaine.

The guilty verdict capped a weeklong trial in which prosecutors elicited testimony from Biden’s ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend and his sister-in-law turned lover. All spoke in graphic detail about his addiction to drugs and alcohol, with First Lady Jill Biden often sitting in the front row.

Shortly before the trial testimony began, President Biden told ABC journalist David Muir that he would accept the jury’s verdict in the Delaware case.

“Have you ruled out a pardon for your son?” Muir asked.

“Yes,” Biden replied.

After the verdict, the president said he would continue to “respect the judicial process” while his son considered an appeal.

In September, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to all nine federal tax charges he faced, just as jury selection was about to begin in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

The indictment in the tax case included racy details of Biden’s life between 2016 and 2019 — the period during which now he admits he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes — including the hundreds of thousands of dollars he spent on escorts, a pornographic website, hotels, luxury car rentals and other lavish personal expenses.

As part of his guilty plea, Biden had acknowledged improperly classifying his personal expenses as business expenses.

In both cases, Hunter Biden and his legal team had sought to paint himself as a victim of selective, unfair, and politically motivated prosecution. His lawyers had pointed to a plea deal that was reached in 2023 and would have spared Hunter any prison time. It unraveled under questioning from a judge in Delaware, and after the deal collapsed, Weiss, the special counsel, secured indictments in both cases.

The president referred to the end of the plea deal in his statement Sunday.

“Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases,” Biden said. Instead, he said, politics had marred his son’s cases. “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.”

Hunter’s lawyers had tried to get both criminal cases dismissed, arguing again that the charges were borne out of a selective and unfair prosecution, but neither judge was swayed.

Hunter Biden now lives in Malibu, where he took up a daily ritual of painting.

China’s foreign ministry lashed out at the U.S. and Taiwan on Sunday after the U.S. State Department approved a $385 million arms sale to the island.

Chinese officials also criticized the U.S. for approving Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te to visit Hawaii and Guam, a U.S. territory. China considers Taiwan to be its sovereign territory and routinely objects to any validation of the island’s democratically-elected government.

The arms deal approved late last week sees Taiwan purchasing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of spare parts for F-16 fighter jets as well as components for radars.

Chinese officials said the deal sent the “wrong signal” about relations in the Indo-Pacific. A separate statement said China “strongly condemns” Lai’s travel to the U.S.

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The U.S. has repeatedly signaled its support for Taiwan through military deals, operations and diplomatic interactions with Taiwanese officials.

Recent years have found a cadence of U.S. officials, such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meeting with Taiwanese officials only for Beijing to react with saber-rattling.

Pelosi made a rare trip to the island in 2021, and China reacted by holding live-fire military drills surrounding Taiwan. Those drills occurred again in 2023 when then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime has routinely criticized the U.S. for making friends with Taiwan. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque//File Photo)

President-elect Trump has signaled that his administration will continue America’s strong relationship with Taiwan. Trump’s nominees to serve as United Nations ambassador, national security adviser, and most importantly, secretary of state are regarded by many as “China Hawks.”

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Trump nominated Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., to be secretary of state last month. Rubio has been a leading voice in the Senate for cracking down on China and imposing sanctions.

Trump has nominated Sen. Marco Rubio to lead the State Department. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Rubio has said he will work with Trump to “continue to support Taiwan.” He is also allied with Trump on insisting Taiwan increase defense spending, a view shared by security experts, but not necessarily the majority of Taiwanese people. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

Nearly two weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a special session to fund legal battles against the president-elect, the Democratic leader appeared to be trying to tone down and reframe the California-vs.-Trump narrative he set in motion.

“It’s not a resistance brand,” Newsom said in an interview with The Times. “It’s around pragmatism. It’s about preparedness. We would be fools not to get on top of this before January.”

The subtle shift signals the governor may be revising his role as a liberal champion in the nation’s culture wars in the wake of Donald Trump’s defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris.

But as he set out on a “California jobs first” tour to talk about the economy in the Central Valley, Newsom couldn’t resist the gravitational pull back into the fight over progressive values with Trump.

Despite the state budget crunch, he announced Monday that California will offer rebates for those who purchase zero-emission vehicles if Trump follows through with a threat to end federal subsidies for clean cars. Tesla could be excluded from the state rebates under a plan to restrict the credits to manufacturers with lesser market share, a jab at Trump ally and Newsom critic Elon Musk, Tesla’s owner.

The seesaw underscores Newsom’s challenge as he tries to strike a delicate balance between the political brawler that his Democratic base admires and a more measured national leader capable of winning back disenfranchised voters across the country who backed Trump in the election.

“He’s caught between this old way of being the tip of the spear and just being pure resistance and now considering a presidential run,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant.

Madrid said Newsom isn’t alone. The governor’s shuffle, in Madrid’s view, personifies a reckoning happening within a Democratic Party focused on identity politics in 2024 without realizing that Trump was winning over voters on economic issues.

“Gavin Newsom has led the Democratic Party into a place where they can win these cultural battles, but that’s not what this election was about,” Madrid said. “The battle is about affordability, and California’s got a huge weakness there.”

The presidential election showcased the Republican strategy of typecasting California and the Democratic Party as left of most of the country. California leaders are preparing to defend against mass deportations, a reversal of LGBTQ+ rights and efforts to weaken climate change policies when Trump takes office.

Embracing electric vehicles is another Democratic litmus test that runs afoul of Trump’s agenda. Newsom has led the way with a mandate to transition all new car sales in California to zero-emission vehicles by 2035. New state subsidies, he argued, seek to protect the electric vehicle market and industry jobs based here.

To his Republican foes in California, the proposed electric vehicle credits are another example of the liberal governor being “out of touch.”

Nationwide only about 3 in 10 Americans would consider buying an electric vehicle, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center. In the Golden State, electric vehicles account for about 25% of all new car sales — a rise that Newsom touts but which shows most Californians aren’t yet making the switch.

“The reality for most working people is they need their gas-powered vehicle, they can’t afford an electric vehicle, nor do they want one,” said Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City). “When you’re talking about greater tax credits for Hollywood and money for people who want to buy EVs, you’ve missed the memo, bud.”

David McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State University, said subsidies for electric vehicles are a “limousine liberal” issue that wealthy college-educated voters care about, while the working-class voters the party is losing are more worried about the cost of gasoline and the rent.

“Wokeism gives him a platform, but wokeism also exposes his political weaknesses,” McCuan said. “The culture war issues that provide his exposure also are somewhat of an Achilles’ heel for delivering the vote.”

If Newsom has aspirations for the White House, the governor needs to demonstrate more discipline than “knee-jerk” reactions to Trump that draw headlines across the country, and he should craft an inclusive message about the way forward, McCuan said.

“He needs to be front and center in voters’ minds and when they cast their ballot, and that’s the political maturity test that I think he has yet to meet,” McCuan said.

As lawmakers prepare to return to the state Capitol to begin the special session Monday, Newsom and legislative leaders have repeated the message that they’re ready to work with the incoming president. The special session seeks to increase legal funding for the California Department of Justice to protect abortion access, climate change policies, LGBTQ+ rights and disaster funding to make sure California isn’t caught off guard if Trump carries out his agenda as expected, they said.

“It goes without saying if there are opportunities to be able to work together with the new administration that benefit California, of course, we’re all in,” state Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) said. “But let’s be clear, if the president-elect tries to undermine our state, undermine our freedoms or our democracy, he’s going to quickly see how determined the people of California truly are.”

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) said he told his caucus a few days after the election that this isn’t 2016, when legislators introduced a flurry of bills to “Trump-proof” California, because so much of that work is already done. Lawmakers, he said, should focus on helping California residents who stand to lose under the incoming president.

The message voters sent in the election also provides an opportunity for his caucus to advance its priorities around housing affordability and making families feel as though future generations will be able to afford to live here.

“For me as a member of the Assembly and as speaker of the Assembly, I obviously feel a great sense of responsibility because it falls to us to ensure that we’re making progress on these issues, and we just clearly have not convinced residents that we’re doing that,” Rivas said.

Madrid said it’s common for any party to reassess after losing an election. But more tests await Newsom and Democrats on immigration and other issues after Trump is inaugurated.

Their attempts to restrain themselves in the national fight and focus on the cost of living could be out the window by mid-January, he said.

“The chances of the affordability problem being resolved is very minimal because the problem, essentially, is about housing, and that’s not something you solve overnight,” Madrid said. “It’s something that we have neglected for decades and particularly in this administration.”

Staff writer Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.