Biden is hardly the first president to deploy his pardon powers to benefit those close to him.
President Joe Biden had made a commitment not to grant his son, Hunter, a pardon despite Hunter facing imminent sentencing for gun and tax offenses. Nonetheless, President Biden ultimately decided to pardon his son on Sunday.
The sweeping pardon covers not only Hunter Biden’s convictions in two cases in Delaware and California, but also any other “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”
Biden is hardly the first president to deploy his pardon powers to benefit those close to him. But it was still a surprising reversal for a man who pledged to restore norms and respect for the rule of law.
What’s a pardon, anyway?
The U.S. Constitution says that a president has the power to grant clemency, which includes both pardons and commutations. A pardon forgives federal criminal offenses; a commutation reduces penalties but isn’t as sweeping. The power has its roots in English law — the king could grant mercy to anyone — and it made it over the ocean to the American colonies and stuck around. The U.S. Supreme Court has found the presidential pardon authority to be very broad. And presidents use the power a lot: Donald Trump granted 237 acts of clemency during his four years in office and Barack Obama granted clemency 1,927 times in his eight years. Presidents have forgiven drug offenses, fraud convictions and Vietnam-era draft dodgers, among many other things.
But a president can only grant pardons for federal offenses, not state ones. Impeachment convictions also aren’t pardonable.
What are the crimes Hunter Biden was accused of committing?
Hunter Biden was convicted in June of lying on a federal form when he purchased a gun in 2018 and swore that he wasn’t a drug user. Just months later, he pleaded guilty to charges accusing him of a scheme to avoid paying at least $1.4 million in taxes. Prosecutors alleged he lived lavishly while flouting the tax law, spending his cash on things like strippers and luxury hotels — “in short, everything but his taxes.”
Both cases stemmed from a period in Hunter Biden’s life in which he struggled with drug and alcohol abuse before becoming sober in 2019.
After the gun trial aired salacious and unflattering details about Hunter Biden’s life, the president’s son said he agreed to plead guilty to the tax charges to spare his family another embarrassing criminal trial.
The tax trial was also expected to showcase details about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, which Republicans have seized on to try to paint the Biden family as corrupt.
Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month in the two cases by judges in California and Delaware who were nominated to the bench by Trump.
Special counsel David Weiss’ office had not said whether prosecutors had planned to seek prison time. The tax charges carried up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges were punishable by up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible the younger Biden would have avoided prison time entirely.
Didn’t Biden say he wouldn’t pardon his son?
Yes. Hunter Biden has been under federal investigation since 2020. He reached a deal with federal prosecutors and was supposed to plead guilty last year to misdemeanor tax offenses and would have avoided prosecution in the gun case as long he stayed out of trouble for two years.
But the plea hearing quickly unraveled when the judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. He was subsequently indicted in the two cases, and he’s claimed that he was singled out because he is the president’s son.
The president told reporters earlier this summer that he would not pardon his son.
“I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter. He has overcome an addiction. He is one of the brightest, most decent men I know,” he said. “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said as recently as Nov. 8 that Biden would not pardon his son.
Why did Biden break his promise?
In his statement Sunday, Biden said that his son had been “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.” Biden has been concerned — as Hunter Biden was — about his political adversaries.
Also, the president is no longer running for office. He made his no-pardon pledge before he dropped out of the presidential race in June.
In his statement, the president said it was clear that his son was treated differently from other defendants in similar predicaments. The plea deal unraveled and Biden’s political opponents took credit for pressuring the process, he said.
“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. There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”
Have other presidents pardoned their family members or friends?
Yes. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner. He also pardoned multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump over the weekend announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the U.S. envoy to France in his next administration.
President Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger Clinton in 2001, after he had completed a prison term for drug charges. Clinton also pardoned his former business partner Susan McDougal, who had been sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the Whitewater real estate deal.
