Hunter Biden, the 56-year-old son of former President Joe Biden, is now publicly questioning how President Trump uses the pardon power, even as he acknowledges he is "uniquely situated" as the beneficiary of one of the broadest presidential pardons in modern American history, the New York Post reported.
The former first son made the comments in an interview with MeidasTouch, a left-leaning media outlet, when asked whether the presidential pardon power needs reform. His answer managed to be both self-aware and tone-deaf at the same time.
Hunter Biden told the interviewer:
"I'm completely biased as it relates to what my dad did for me. I fully understand how uniquely situated I am in being privileged enough to have received a pardon from my father."
He then pivoted to Trump, claiming the Founders never anticipated a president like him. "I don't think that the founders ever imagined Donald Trump. I don't think they ever imagined the Trump family," Hunter Biden said. He went on to compare his father's clemency record with Trump's: "I think my dad gave 80 or so pardons over a four-year period of time. Donald Trump has given over 1,500 pardons in the first year alone."
He added a brief caveat: "But I'm obviously, I'm not the one to be, I don't think, fairly or unbiasedly talking about the presidential pardon power."
On that last point, at least, he is correct.
To appreciate the full weight of Hunter Biden's commentary, you have to remember what preceded it. White House officials insisted dozens of times that Joe Biden would not pardon his son. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was emphatic. The Washington Free Beacon documented her repeated assurances to reporters: "It is a no. It will be a no. It is a no, and I don't have anything else to add." On another occasion she said flatly, "Will he pardon his son? No."
Then, shortly after Thanksgiving, Joe Biden reversed course and granted Hunter a "full and unconditional pardon" covering all crimes his son may have committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024. That is not a pardon for a specific conviction. It is a blanket shield stretching across a full decade of potential federal criminal liability.
The elder Biden justified the move by arguing his son had been "selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted." A new book on the Biden presidency, as Newsmax reported, quotes Biden saying: "Enough is enough." The former president also said he believed "raw politics has infected this process, and it led to a miscarriage of justice", a striking claim from a man who had previously resisted suggestions that the justice system had been weaponized.
The pardon spared Hunter Biden possible prison time. A jury found him guilty in June 2024 of illegal possession of a firearm while addicted to illegal drugs. Three months later, he pleaded guilty to bilking taxpayers out of $1.4 million in unpaid taxes. Sentencing in both cases was approaching when the pardon arrived.
Hunter Biden's legal and financial troubles have continued to generate headlines. His mounting debts and unpaid legal bills have been the subject of extensive reporting.
Hunter Biden's comparison of his father's clemency record to Trump's deserves a closer look, because the numbers, while technically in the ballpark, omit important context.
Justice Department clemency statistics show that by the conclusion of his presidency, Joe Biden issued 4,165 commutations and 80 pardons. That commutation figure is enormous, more acts of clemency, by the Department's own count, than any of Biden's predecessors, as Pew Research Center data cited in the reporting confirms.
Trump granted clemency to some 1,600 individuals connected to the January 6, 2021, Capitol cases. Outside of that single action, Trump has issued 120 pardons and commutations, according to the Justice Department's clemency grants page.
So when Hunter Biden says his father gave "80 or so pardons," he is citing only the pardon number and ignoring the more than 4,000 commutations. And when he says Trump has given "over 1,500 pardons in the first year alone," he is folding the January 6 clemency action into a single headline figure without distinguishing it from routine clemency grants.
Both men used the pardon power aggressively. The difference is that only one of them used it to shield his own son from prison, after promising the country he would not do so.
The pardon did not land quietly. Top Democrats in Congress criticized the move and warned it would embolden Trump to use his own clemency power more broadly. That warning proved prescient, but it also exposed a contradiction: the same party that spent years insisting no one is above the law watched its outgoing president place his own family member above the reach of federal prosecution, retroactively, unconditionally, and across a decade of potential offenses.
Hunter Biden himself has offered a revealing explanation for the timing. National Review reported that Hunter said his father would not have pardoned him if Trump had not won the 2024 election. "My dad would not have pardoned me if President Trump had not won," he said. "Donald Trump went and changed everything."
In other words, the pardon was not about justice. It was about politics. Hunter Biden admits as much. His father feared what a second Trump administration might mean for his son's legal exposure, and acted accordingly.
That candid admission makes Hunter Biden's current posture all the more difficult to take seriously. He received a pardon that covered not just his convictions but any federal crime he might have committed over a ten-year window. He received it from his own father. He received it after the White House lied to the press corps about it for months.
Meanwhile, the broader fallout from Hunter Biden's legal entanglements continues. A law firm recently demanded access to his communications with donors who were asked to help cover his legal bills, raising fresh questions about who bankrolled his defense and what they expected in return.
Hunter Biden's interview is a case study in how Washington insiders repackage personal advantage as high-minded concern. He acknowledges his bias. He concedes he is "privileged." He even admits he is not the right person to discuss the pardon power fairly.
And then he discusses it anyway, to criticize the sitting president.
The 56-year-old was convicted by a jury of his peers on a federal firearms charge. He admitted to cheating the IRS out of $1.4 million. His father's pardon erased the legal consequences of both. It also preemptively covered any other federal offenses that might have surfaced from a decade of conduct that included foreign business dealings, tax disputes, and personal behavior that generated years of public scrutiny.
Court filings have also revealed the extent of Hunter Biden's mounting personal debt, a reminder that the pardon resolved his criminal exposure but not the financial wreckage surrounding it.
Joe Biden, now 83, left office having granted more acts of clemency than any predecessor. But it is the single pardon he swore he would never issue, the one for his own son, that defines his clemency legacy. And it is that pardon that makes Hunter Biden's criticism of anyone else's use of the power ring hollow.
There have also been claims that Big Tech platforms suppressed coverage of whistleblower allegations related to the Biden family, a pattern that kept many voters from hearing the full story before it mattered most.
Presidential pardon power is broad. The Constitution grants it without many restrictions. Presidents of both parties have used it in ways that drew criticism. That is not new.
What is new is the spectacle of a man who avoided prison only because his father occupied the Oval Office stepping forward to lecture the country about how someone else wields the same authority.
Hunter Biden said the Founders never imagined Donald Trump. Maybe not. But they probably never imagined a president pardoning his own son for a decade's worth of potential crimes after his press secretary told the American people, over and over, that it would never happen.
If there is a case for reforming the pardon power, Hunter Biden is the last person in America with the standing to make it.
