Joe Biden's son walked out of federal court a convicted felon in 2024.
Then his father erased it – every charge, every conviction, a decade of potential offenses – with a single presidential pardon.
Now Hunter Biden is publicly lecturing the country about presidential pardon abuse, and what he said would be funny if it weren't so revealing.
Joe Biden Promised He Would Never Pardon Hunter Biden and Then He Did It Anyway
Hunter Biden sat down with the liberal outlet MediasTouch and volunteered that he is "completely biased" and "uniquely situated" as someone "privileged enough to have received a pardon from my father."
Those are his words. Remember them.
https://twitter.com/lukeradel/status/2044171321420956132?s=20
He then argued that Joe Biden issued about 80 pardons across his entire presidency, while Trump has topped 1,500 in year one – framing the comparison as evidence of Trump's abuse of power.
The numbers are real.
The messenger is the problem.
Hunter pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges for hiding more than $1.4 million in income while spending freely on drugs, escorts, and personal luxuries.
A Delaware jury convicted him of lying on a federal firearms form – checking "no" to drug use when purchasing a handgun in 2018.
Two separate federal cases. Two rounds of criminal exposure.
Joe Biden wiped both of them out – plus any offense Hunter "has committed or may have committed" from January 2014 through December 2024 – in the broadest pardon language a president has used for a family member in modern history.
Hunter is free to give interviews because his father made him free.
For three years, Joe Biden told reporters, told television cameras, told his own press secretary to tell the country: he would not pardon Hunter.
It was one of his most repeated commitments.
https://twitter.com/mazemoore/status/2044062926881878365?s=20
Democrats used it as proof that the Bidens respected the rule of law – that even the president's own son would face accountability like everyone else.
Then in the final weeks of the presidency, Biden reversed course and issued the pardon.
Then he pardoned Hunter's uncle James Biden.
Then his sister Valerie, his sister-in-law Sara, and his brother Francis.
The whole family walked out clean on the way out the door.
The White House fired back Tuesday with the sharpest line anyone has put on paper about this story: Biden's own team called him "President Autopen" and noted that his pardons covered violent criminals including child killers and mass murderers – then asked which pardons, exactly, anyone should be criticizing.
Biden spent four years as the "no one is above the law" party.
He spent his last month in office proving he didn't believe it.
Trump Never Pardoned His Own Children and the January 6 Defendants Actually Went Through the System
Trump did not pardon a single member of his family during his first term.
Not one.
The one family-adjacent pardon Trump issued was Charles Kushner – his son-in-law's father – who had already served federal prison time for tax evasion, witness retaliation, and campaign finance violations.
That's a pardon for a man who did his time.
Hunter Biden's pardon covered crimes he was never even charged with, written across a decade, issued by his own father, after his father publicly promised he wouldn't do it.
The January 6 defendants Trump has pardoned didn't skip the process – they were arrested, charged, prosecuted, and in many cases convicted before receiving clemency.
Hunter received a pre-emptive sweep before any of his remaining exposure ever saw a courtroom.
And he is now the man explaining to America how pardons are supposed to work.
What Democrats destroyed in December 2024 wasn't just their credibility on equal justice.
They destroyed the one argument they had against Trump using presidential power aggressively: that they wouldn't.
Hunter Biden just reminded everyone why nobody believes them anymore.
Sources:
- Ashley J. DiMella, "Privileged Hunter Biden, spared by dad's pardon, blasts Trump's clemency power," Fox News, April 15, 2026.
- "President Biden Pardons His Siblings Just Minutes Before Leaving Office," Fox News, January 2025.
- "David Axelrod questions Biden's masculinity after last-second family pardons: 'Man up,'" Fox News, January 2025.