Hunter Biden on pardon from father: ‘Donald Trump went and changed everything’
Hunter Biden said his father would not have pardoned him had President Trump not won the 2024 election.
Former President Biden’s son spoke with Mediaite editor Tommy Christopher on Monday about the recent slew of federal indictments against President Trump’s perceived political enemies.
“Well, look, I think that, and I’ve said this before, is that my dad would not have pardoned me if President Trump had not won,” Hunter Biden told Christopher, saying his father pardoned him because the younger Biden wouldn’t have been confident about having a normal appeals process under a Trump presidency.
“Donald Trump went and changed everything,” he continued. “And it changed everything, and I don’t think that I need to make much of an argument about why it changed everything.”
The younger Biden said he recognized his privilege and “how lucky” he is. But Trump isn’t “even close to being finished with the — with his revenge tour and his absolute obsession with my dad,” he added.
“I think would have made me like kind of the easiest, easiest target to just to intimidate and to not just impact me, but impact my entire family into — into silence in a way that at least he is not, it’s not as easy for him to do,” Hunter Biden said. “Me being pardoned.”
President Biden pardoned his son in December, a month after Trump won the election.
Hunter Biden was found guilty in a federal case on three felony charges over his purchase and possession of a gun in 2018, violating the law by concealing drug use. He pleaded guilty in September 2024 to nine federal tax charges, avoiding a trial.
“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,” President Biden said in a statement at the time.
Trump, who was president-elect at the time, called the pardon “an abuse and miscarriage of justice” in a post on Truth Social.
Some Democrats criticized the pardon.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) called it “unwise,” and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said it was wrong.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said the then-president’s decision put “personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.”