By Marshall Cohen and Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — President Joe Biden recently made several false and inaccurate claims to defend his controversial decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden.

In a wide-ranging interview with USA Today, the president also made a false claim about inflation. A full transcript of the interview was released Wednesday.

Biden issued the unconditional pardon to Hunter in December, sparing his son from a potential prison sentence for tax and gun convictions. The far-reaching pardon also shielded Hunter from future prosecution by the incoming Trump administration.

Here’s a breakdown of Biden’s comments on his son’s case, the rationale behind his clemency decision, and his other remarks on the economy.

Biden’s claims about pardoning his son

In the interview, Biden provided his most extensive comments yet about his controversial decision to pardon his son, after repeatedly promising not to grant clemency.

Biden insisted, according to USA Today’s transcript, “I meant what I said,” about his pledge not to pardon Hunter, “but then I found out about two factors.” Before examining that, it’s crucial to note that both factors were widely known long before Biden issued the pardon on December 1. But Hunter’s team raised the same points in a post-election “white paper” that may have caught Biden’s eye.

The first factor pertained to Hunter’s federal tax indictment. (He pleaded guilty in September to charges including tax evasion, filing false tax returns, and failing to file and pay his taxes on time.) Biden said he learned that Hunter “had paid all his taxes,” “paid it all,” and “paid the back taxes.”

It’s true that Hunter belatedly paid $2 million in taxes, including penalties and fees.

But the judge ruled that this didn’t impact whether Hunter broke tax laws, saying, “Evidence of late payment here is irrelevant to (Hunter’s) state of mind at the time he allegedly committed the charged crimes.” He barred Hunter from telling jurors about the $2 million because they could “improperly construe late payment as a defense to the charged crimes.”

Special counsel David Weiss’ prosecutors have also vehemently pushed back on the idea that the $2 million made the IRS whole, as Biden suggested to USA Today. That’s because it covered the taxes Hunter owed, as reported on his federal tax returns. But he has since admitted to lying on some tax returns to reduce his bill with fraudulent business deductions.

The second factor Biden raised was he said Hunter was unfairly prosecuted for lying about illegal drug use on an ATF background check form, and for possessing a gun while addicted to illegal drugs. Biden said: “On this purchasing a gun, at the time, you have to sign a form if you’re under the influence of anything. Well, I don’t even know whether they got straight on the signing of the form. But the point was, no one’s ever been tried on that. Nobody.”

The ATF form does not ask “if you’re under the influence of anything,” while signing the paperwork, as Biden suggested. The form says, “are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to” marijuana or other controlled substances. In fact, prosecutors told jurors they didn’t need to find that Hunter was under the influence when he filled out the form, in order to reach a guilty verdict.

Regarding Biden’s claim that “nobody” in US history has “ever been tried” on addiction-related paperwork charges like these – even Hunter’s own legal team hasn’t even made that argument. In their November “white paper,” Hunter’s attorneys more narrowly asserted that “no one has ever been charged in Delaware” under these same circumstances.

Legal experts have said Biden has legitimate gripes, though, because charges of drug addicts lying on the form are usually brought in tandem with more serious offenses, like using the gun in a violent crime, or with aggravating factors, like if the suspect is a felon.

“When those statutes are charged, they typically are accompanied by some other crime, like a drug offense or a violent crime,” CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig said about the statutes used against Hunter. “It is exceedingly rare – I can’t say never – but it’s exceedingly rare to see those addiction-related charges brought in isolation.”

In the USA Today interview, Biden spoke about the gun at the center of his son’s case – a revolver Hunter bought in 2018 and possessed for 11 days. Biden claimed, “it got returned,” which is provably false, based on testimony and evidence from Hunter’s trial last June.

Witness testimony, documentary evidence, and surveillance footage presented at trial demonstrated that Hunter’s sister-in-law and romantic partner, Hallie Biden, took the firearm from his car and threw it in a trash can outside a Delaware grocery store. A random elderly man later found the gun and took it home. The police got involved and eventually tracked down the man and recovered the weapon. It wasn’t “returned” by anyone tied to Hunter.

Finally, while defending his son, Biden claimed, “He got former Attorneys General and former leaders in both parties, not office holders saying, ‘It’s not done, it’s not been done.’”

Plenty of Democrats have argued that this case wouldn’t have been filed against Hunter if he wasn’t a Biden – including former Attorney General Eric Holder. But the White House couldn’t provide evidence backing up claims that Republican leaders have said the same.

Biden’s claim about the inflation rate

Asked about his handling of inflation, Biden touted the economic impact of major legislation he signed. He said, “We spent money doing it. But the fact is that we had a soft landing, no recession, and the interest rate was 9% when we came into office in the beginning. It was down to 2.34% now.”

The White House made clear Biden meant to repeat his past claim that “the inflation rate” was 9% when he came into office, not say that “the interest rate” was 9%. But that’s still false – as CNN has pointed out when Biden made the claim last year.

The year-over-year inflation rate in the pandemic-era month Biden became president, January 2021, was actually about 1.4%, not “9%.” It only hit 9% in June 2022, after Biden had been president for more than 16 months.

In addition, the most recent year-over-year inflation rate that is currently available, for November 2024, was about 2.7%, not “2.34%.”

Biden would be closer to correct about the current rate if he was speaking of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, which rose about 2.4% year-over-year in November. But that rate was about 1.6% in pandemic-era January 2021, so it still wouldn’t be accurate to say it was 9% when he took office. And that index never hit 9% under Biden, peaking at about 7.2% in June 2022.

On Wednesday, a White House official emailed CNN the same comment the administration provided when Biden inaccurately said in 2024 that inflation was 9% when he became president.

“The President was making the point that the factors that caused inflation were in place when he took office. The pandemic caused inflation around the world by disrupting our economy and breaking our supply chains,” the official said.

The-CNN-Wire
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