And what it could mean for the president’s legacy.
Up until three weeks ago, the White House maintained that President Biden had no intention of pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, but that all changed over the weekend.
In what marked an unexpected reversal, Biden announced late Sunday that he had granted him a “full and unconditional pardon,” according to a copy of the executive grant of clemency. The president expressed in a statement that he believes his son’s prosecution on charges of tax evasion and falsifying a federal weapons purchase form was politically motivated.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Biden wrote.
Republicans immediately seized on the news, calling Biden a “liar,” and President-elect Trump even went so far as to call it an “abuse and miscarriage of Justice.” But it’s worth noting that the president-elect can’t dismantle Biden’s pardon of his son’s federal gun and tax crimes even if he tried.
“Presidents over time have sometimes disagreed with choices made by their predecessors, but they cannot undo a pardon,” says Erica Hashimoto, a law professor at Georgetown University. “The president has a lot of discretion in deciding who to grant clemency or pardons to, and as Trump proved with pardoning Jared Kushner’s father, Charles, family members are not off limits at all.”
Now, Democrats are increasingly speaking out, too, so we took a closer look.
What are Democrats saying about Hunter’s pardon?
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who served under former President Obama, was among the Democrats who voiced support for Biden’s decision, saying “pardon warranted.”
“No [U.S. attorney] would have charged this case given the underlying facts,” he wrote in part on X. “After a 5 year investigation the facts as discovered only made that clear.”
Still, other Democrats weren’t so happy with Biden’s pardoning of his son. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis was one of the first Democrats to criticize Biden’s pardon. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation,” he wrote on X.
Multiple Democratic senators and representatives also decried the decision, saying it risks further eroding trust in government. “President Biden’s decision put personal interest ahead of duty, and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all,” Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet wrote on social media.
Michigan Sen. Gary Peters called the pardon “an improper use of power,” while Vermont Sen. Peter Welch deemed it “unwise.” Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez said Biden “made the wrong decision” before adding, “no family should be above the law.”
What are the political implications of Hunter’s pardon?
In a highly polarized political environment, Biden’s decision to pardon his son appears complicated at best. For years, the Democratic Party slammed Trump as a threat to democracy who operates above the law.
“The Hunter Biden pardon seems to be a case where the politics are at odds with what the president thinks is the right thing to do,” political scientist Hans Noel, a Georgetown University professor, tells Katie Couric Media. “Politically, it may be best for the president to err on the side of keeping his distance, but that means letting his son be the target of what Biden sees as politically and personally motivated prosecution.”
While Democratic strategist Brad Howard says the pardon is understandable from a family perspective, it also fuels Trump’s own claims of a politicized justice system. “Biden’s pardon complicates a lot of things, particularly Democrat’s defense of law and order in the U.S., and it plays into Trump’s argument that there are two justice systems in America,” Howard tells us.
Trump has already linked Biden’s pardon to the Jan. 6 rioters, who he claims have been treated unfairly. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” he wrote on Truth Social. “Politically speaking, it has always been kind of complicated for presidents to pardon too many people,” says Hashimoto. “This pardon makes the political stakes for Trump lower now because he can say, ‘the Democrats are saying the system is corrupt. Therefore, all of the people who were defending me [on Jan. 6] who were prosecuted for political reasons should get pardoned.”
There are also concerns that Biden just essentially handed Republicans a pretext to carry through with their sweeping plans to upend the Department of Justice. But Democratic strategist Ally Sammarco pushed back against this notion, saying Trump would never take a cue from Biden in the first place.
“Donald Trump is going to do whatever he wants, regardless of what Joe Biden does,” she tells us. “He’s never been one to follow Joe Biden’s lead or footsteps. And I think it’s just a ridiculous argument to think that he would’ve been restrained in some way had Joe Biden not pardoned his son.”
Is there any historical precedent for this?
While the political implications of Biden’s move may still be uncertain, Hunter Biden joins a long list of controversial presidential pardons, which historian Lindsay Chervinsky says dates back to President John Adams.
Hunter is also not the first relative to be pardoned. In addition to Donald Trump’s pardon of the father of his son-in-law, Bill Clinton granted clemency to his half-brother Roger Clinton, who was sentenced to more than a year in prison after pleading guilty to selling cocaine to an undercover police officer. And it garnered similar outrage as Hunter’s: “An Indefensible Pardon,” read one New York Times headline at the time.
News outlets have pointed out the nepotism. Author, lawyer, and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wrote for The New York Times: “Mr. Biden’s love for his son, as well as his anger about the way he was treated, was understandable, but the president’s consummate act of nepotism has stained the record of the Biden presidency.” He noted, “Mr. Biden’s merciful treatment of his son might be more defensible if he had extended the same kind of grace to others who received rough treatment in the legal system. But to date, he has issued only 26 pardons and 132 commutations. (In eight years, President Barack Obama issued 212 pardons and 1,715 commutations.)”
“There’s not really a traditional reason for commutations and pardons,” Hashimoto says. “Sometimes it’s redemption. Sometimes, it’s an unfair sentence or conviction. And a lot of times, it’s who a person knows or can get the president to pay attention. There’s a lot of injustice that happens, and most such cases are never even considered.”
Regardless of his privilege, Hunter’s pardon ranks low in the history of presidential pardons because his crimes and the motivation behind his prosecution fit within the traditional use of pardons.
“These are crimes that, by all accounts, were heavily influenced by the fact that he had real substance abuse problems and was unable to conquer them, and now he has, in fact, seemingly conquered them and therefore is very unlikely to repeat,” said Jeremy Paul, a law professor at Northeastern University.
Still, some believe Biden’s pardon of his son could tarnish his legacy in the long run. “Biden falls in the category of people held to ‘normal political standards,'” says Chervinsky. “And if the Democratic party is positioning itself as the party to uphold and restore Democratic norms, then it has to uphold and restore Democratic norms.”
