Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s last-minute pre-emptive pardons to five family members came after years of scrutiny from Republicans.
Mr. Biden issued full and unconditional pardons on Monday to James Biden, his brother; Sara Biden, James’s wife; Valerie Biden Owens, the former president’s sister; John T. Owens, Ms. Owens’s husband; and Francis W. Biden, the youngest of the former president’s siblings.
None of those five family members of the former president has been charged with any crimes, but congressional Republicans have claimed that some of the Bidens profited from Mr. Biden’s long tenure in government.
On the campaign trail, President Trump had signaled that he had plans to use the Justice Department to “go after” members of the Biden family.
In a statement announcing the pardons, made public 21 minutes before the end of his presidency, Mr. Biden declared that the pardons “should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”
He lamented the “unrelenting attacks and threats,” on his family, adding, “unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.”
Paul J. Fishman, a lawyer for James and Sara Biden, said in a statement that they “did not seek this pardon because they have never committed any crimes.” But, he added, they accepted the pardons for the reasons described by the former president.
The reaction from congressional Republicans seemed to prove Mr. Biden’s hypothesis.
Representative James Comer of Kentucky, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, decried the pardons in a statement as “a confession” of the Biden family’s corruption “as they sold out the American people to enrich themselves.”
Mr. Comer had helped lead an impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden that focused on his family’s business dealings, particularly those of the former president’s son Hunter Biden.
While his father was vice president and in some cases afterward — but before Mr. Biden became president — Hunter Biden accepted millions of dollars linked to businesses in China, Romania and Ukraine, some of which had interests that intersected with those of the U.S. government.
Prosecutors investigated whether the younger Biden had violated foreign lobbying laws and hinted that they had evidence that might have supported such charges, but they ultimately charged him only with evading taxes on his foreign income and buying a gun illegally.
He was found guilty of the gun charges and pleaded guilty to the tax charges last year.
Last month, despite repeatedly pledging that he would not do so, his father pardoned him for those offenses, as well as other offenses he “may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.”
The sweeping amnesty, which troubled experts, seemed to be intended to preclude a prosecution for foreign lobbying or other violations.
His uncle, James Biden, was involved in some of the foreign ventures.
He had been questioned about the subject by the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. in 2022. He was not charged with wrongdoing.
James Biden also had come under scrutiny for his involvement with Americore, a health care company that turned to him to help increase business, according to testimony he gave to the congressional Republicans last year as part of their impeachment inquiry into the former president.
Americore filed for bankruptcy in 2019 amid lawsuits and a reported federal investigation.
A trustee overseeing the company’s liquidation sued James Biden in 2022, accusing him of failing to repay more than $600,000 in loans. He later agreed to pay $350,000 to the trustee to settle the lawsuit, according to a court filing.
The lawsuit asserted that James Biden secured the loans “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”
Republicans had sought information about that deal, and his work with his nephew Hunter.
According to congressional Republican impeachment investigators who subpoenaed Biden family bank records, in the months after Mr. Biden left the vice presidency Hunter Biden received $1 million from a company linked to the Chinese government, then transferred a portion of it to James Biden. Other transactions spotlighted by Republicans involved a company owned by James and Sara Biden.
Some of the transactions were detailed by prosecutors in their tax indictment of Hunter Biden, though they did not identify James Biden by name.
In June, Mr. Comer and other congressional Republicans formally requested that the Justice Department charge James Biden and Hunter Biden with lying to Congress in their testimony. Lawyers for Hunter and James Biden denounced the referrals as a political stunt.
But last week, Mr. Comer requested that Mr. Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, take up the matter with regard to James Biden.
Mr. Comer’s committee staff in 2022 issued a report accusing other family members of Mr. Biden of capitalizing on his presidency. It said that Valerie Biden Owens, a longtime political adviser to her brother, signed a book deal after he was elected president, and that the law firm that employed Francis W. Biden had run a newspaper advertisement on Inauguration Day in 2021, highlighting his relationship to the new president.
Neither has been accused by law enforcement of wrongdoing, nor has Ms. Owens’s husband.
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