Shaun Maguire, a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia, reacted to news of the pardon on social media, claiming that the president’s son has accumulated substantial unpaid rent debts amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“So what happens to the $300k+ in back pay rent that Hunter Biden owes my family from 2019-2020? Is that pardoned now? Thanks Joe,” Maguire wrote in a post on X.
On Sunday, President Biden issued a “full and unconditional pardon” for his son Hunter Biden, covering any federal crimes committed or potentially committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024. Hunter Biden has faced federal charges related to tax violations and allegations of providing false information about his substance abuse issues on a firearm background check form. The move marks a shift from President Biden’s earlier statements that he would not pardon his son.
“Hunter was our tenant in Venice, CA. Didn’t pay rent for over a year. Tried to pay w/ art made from his own feces. Absolute s– bag,” Maguire wrote, adding in a follow-up post that the rent was $25,000 a month for the house, which is located on the canals in the city, Fox Business reported.
He also said that Hunter “changed the locks and used secret service to enforce. We had no access to the property.”
When a social media user asked if Maguire and his family had tried to evict Hunter Biden over the unpaid rent, Maguire responded by saying that the Bidens are “kind of a scary family to go after.”
Maguire’s allegations of unpaid rent would be a civil matter and are not covered by a presidential pardon, which applies exclusively to federal crimes. Maguire’s claim follows a previous allegation that Hunter Biden failed to pay a landlord tens of thousands of dollars in rent.
Last year, DailyMail.com reported, citing sources familiar with the situation, that Hunter Biden owed Sweetgreen CEO and co-founder Jonathan Neman $80,000 in back rent—equivalent to about three months’ rent for a $25,000-a-month house in Venice.
A federal judge has officially ended Hunter Biden’s tax case after Joe Biden pardoned his son, but not before harshly criticizing the president’s announcement about the clemency as misleading.
In a five-page order, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi of the Central District of California, a Trump appointee, said that “representations contained” in the president’s news release about the pardon “stand in tension with the case record.”
The judge also said he didn’t agree with the president’s statement because it was hurtful to many public officials. He said that the pardon itself covered hours of unacceptable behavior in the future without permission.
“The President asserts that Mr. Biden ‘was treated differently’ from others ‘who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions,’ implying that Mr. Biden was among those individuals who untimely paid taxes due to addiction,” Scarsi wrote. “But he is not.”
He added that also Joe Biden’s claim that his son was “singled out” and “treated differently” made it sound like many people in the legal system, including Scarsi and the president’s own DOJ workers, did something wrong.
“Two federal judges expressly rejected Mr. Biden’s arguments that the Government prosecuted Mr. Biden because of his familial relation to the President,” Scarsi wrote. “And the President’s own Attorney General and Department of Justice personnel oversaw the investigation leading to the charges. In the President’s estimation, this legion of federal civil servants, the undersigned included, are unreasonable people.”
Finally, Scarsi said that it wasn’t his job to say whether or not Joe Biden’s pardon was legal, but the fact that the president signed it on December 1 and included action “through” that same day meant that the president was breaking the Constitution by letting Hunter Biden get away with future crimes.
