US President Joe Biden has issued a presidential pardon for his son Hunter, who was facing sentencing for two criminal cases. The move has proven controversial, since Biden senior previously ruled out such a move.

Joe Biden had repeatedly denied that he was going to pardon his son Hunter for his gun and tax evasion convictions or commute what was shaping up to be a substantive prison sentence. On the Sunday evening after Thanksgiving – at a moment when the American public’s attention was decidedly elsewhere – he announced he had changed his mind.

What the president said: "Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter," Biden said in a statement on Sunday. "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."

While controversy over presidential pardons has a long history — from George Washington absolving instigators of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1795 to Gerald Ford pardoning Richard M. Nixon after the Watergate scandal forced his resignation — few have used the constitutionally vested power to pardon family members.

President Biden and President-elect Donald Trump now agree on one thing: The Justice Department has been politicized.

President Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, is set to reverberate on Capitol Hill this week, as lawmakers react to the news after years of GOP investigations targeting the younger Biden’s business dealings.

President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, on Sunday just days before he was scheduled to be sentenced in separate federal gun and tax cases—marking an about face for the lame-duck president. “From the day I took office,

The “full and unconditional” pardon is aimed at protecting the president’s son from future prosecution by the Trump Justice Department.