On Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that he had issued a pardon to his son, Hunter Biden, who was set to face sentencing on federal tax and gun charges later this month. President Biden, who had repeatedly insisted that he had no plans to pardon Hunter, said in a statement that his son had been politically targeted, describing his legal strife as a “miscarriage of justice.”
The president’s personal use of the office’s substantial pardoning powers was met with strong reactions from many quarters, with some criticizing the move as irredeemably corrupt while others argued that it was justified, considering President-elect Donald Trump’s looming return to the White House. Here’s a look at some of the most notable opinions.
Biden’s pardon was dead wrong
Donald Trump, who bestowed his share of questionable pardons during his first term, was unsurprisingly not a fan of Biden’s decision. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” he wrote on TruthSocial.
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens denounced Biden’s pardon and said its “rank mendacity, political hypocrisy, naked self-dealing and wretched example” show why Americans have grown tired of politics as usual:
It was always a good bet that the president would break his word as soon as it was politically safe to do so. But he doubled down on dishonesty in his statement about the pardon, claiming Hunter’s prosecution was a result of “political pressure” on the judicial process. Nonsense. The charges stem from Hunter’s reckless lifestyle, abetted and financed by his willingness to trade shamelessly on the family name. A previous plea agreement between Hunter and federal prosecutors fell apart last year under scrutiny from a federal judge.
More obnoxious is the hypocrisy. Every year, federal prosecutors file hundreds of cases against persons charged with lying on the Firearms Transaction Record, or Form 4473, which is required from anyone buying a firearm from a licensed gun dealer. In 1993, then-Senator Biden made that form a key part of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. How is it that the same president who made both gun control and stricter tax enforcement key parts of his political message suddenly sees his own son’s transgressions as nuisance offenses?
The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait wrote that Biden broke his promise that he wouldn’t intervene in Hunter’s legal troubles and that his pardon suggests a double standard for his son:
President Biden’s complaint about the higher standard applied to his son reflects the perspective of myopic privilege. Crimes by family members of powerful public officials are far more damaging to public confidence than similar crimes by anonymous people. Holding them to account through strict enforcement of the law is good and correct.
On social media, Colorado governor Jared Polis wrote that Biden put family over party. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation. When you become President, your role is Pater familias of the nation. Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not a President and not a President’s son,” he said.
Representative Greg Stanton of Arizona is one of the only congressional Democrats to criticize the pardon. “I respect President Biden, but I think he got this one wrong. This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers,” Stanton wrote.
Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado was also critical of the decision. “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,” he said.
The Washington Post editorial board argued in a new piece that Biden’s pardon gives Trump the ability to use the act in his favor:
To be clear: Mr. Biden had an unquestionable legal right to pardon his son Hunter. But in so doing on Sunday, he maligned the Justice Department and invited Mr. Trump to draw equivalence between the Hunter Biden pardon and any future moves Mr. Trump might take against the impartial administration of justice. He risks deepening many Americans’ suspicion that the justice system is two-tiered, justifying Mr. Trump’s drive to reshape it — or, because turnabout is fair play, to use it to benefit his own side.
Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, wrote, “President Biden’s decision to pardon his son was wrong. A president’s family and allies shouldn’t get special treatment. This was an improper use of power, it erodes trust in our government, and it emboldens others to bend justice to suit their interests.”
Ohio Democratic representative Greg Landsman said he empathized with Biden’s position as a father but still opposes the move. “As a father, I get it. But as someone who wants people to believe in public service again, it’s a setback,” he wrote.
Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas wrote on social media, “Most Americans can sympathize with a father’s decision to pardon his son, even if they disagree. What they can’t forgive is Biden lying about it repeatedly before the election.”
James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee that has investigated both Bidens, criticized the president’s pardon. “The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people. It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” he wrote in a statement.
Nate Silver, the prominent political statistician, railed against Hunter’s pardon, calling Biden a “selfish and senile old man.” “The White House consistently lied about this. Biden’s stubborn insistence on running for reelection was perhaps the singular most important factor in Trump 2.0, and now he’s kicking salt in the wound of the party brand he helped to destroy,” he wrote on X.
Journalist Josh Barro rejected Biden’s arguments for pardoning his son. “We can and should expect presidents to rise above the human temptation to abuse the office’s powers toward personal ends, such as by immunizing their children from criminal liability,” he wrote.
Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark said that Biden’s pardon was bad, but pushed back on the argument that the president’s actions will embolden Trump. “Will pardoning Hunter contribute to further norm breaking by politicians X, Y, and Z? It is hard for me to imagine how that might be the case. The barn door is wide open. The horses haven’t been seen for weeks,” he wrote on Bluesky. “And in any case, the American voting public has told us—over and over—that they DO NOT CARE about our precious norms. That’s not a Biden problem. That’s a The People problem.”
The circumstances support Biden’s pardon
Kim Wehle, an ABC News legal contributor, wrote in defense of Biden’s pardon in The Bulwark, citing Trump’s recent Justice Department appointees who have vowed to use the agency to go after the president’s opponents:
The landscape has changed considerably since June when he ruled out a pardon for Hunter. Not only did Trump — rather than Biden or his vice president, Kamala Harris — win the White House, but the president-elect is clearly hellbent on following through on his promises of retribution and revenge, indicating through his nominations an intention to weaponize the FBI and the Justice Department, even going so far as to say he’ll fire the sitting FBI director before his term is up and replace him with Kash Patel, who has pledged to “go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media.” Trump’s choice for attorney general — after his first awful pick, Matt Gaetz, dropped out — is Pam Bondi, who has promised to investigate the “bad” prosecutors who attempted to bring the rule of law to bear on Trump for his role in the post-2020-election debacle.
The breadth of Hunter’s pardon suggests that his father knows that a Bondi-led DOJ and Patel-led FBI could throw the proverbial book at him on additional charges if given the chance. And should Hunter have faced jail time at sentencing (unlikely, though the possible sentencing range climbs to 25 years), Trump would have sat atop the day-to-day fate of Joe Biden’s son under the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Ghastly.
New York Times opinion writer Michelle Goldberg suggested on social media that the nation’s embrace of Trump shows that its moral norms have changed. “I can’t bring myself to be even a little mad about Biden pardoning Hunter. The values and norms he’d been trying to uphold were obliterated by American voters last month. Why sacrifice your son to a dead god?” she wrote.
While California representative Eric Swalwell did not explicitly defend Hunter’s pardon, he suggested that many of the president’s critics were being hypocritical after defending Trump’s own actions. “If you defended the 34x felon, who committed sexual assault, stole national security documents, and tried running a coup on his country … you can sit out the Hunter Biden pardon discussion,” he said.
Biden was right
Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general who served alongside Biden in Obama’s administration, defended Biden’s decision. “No USAtty would have charged this case given the underlying facts. After a 5 year investigation the facts as discovered only made that clear,” he wrote on social media. “Had his name been Joe Smith the resolution would have been — fundamentally and more fairly — a declination. Pardon warranted.”
California Democratic representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove praised the move in an interview with Semafor. “If he hadn’t, I would have told him to do so. In the words of Lizzo, it’s about damn time,” she said.
Katie Phang, an attorney and MSNBC host, wrote that Hunter’s pardon was warranted because others facing similar charges received less severe penalties. “But perhaps the most obvious evidence that Hunter Biden was a selective criminal prosecution is that other individuals were able to resolve their cases with administrative or civil penalties or judgments. They weren’t prosecuted. But, then again, their last name wasn’t “Biden,” she said.
Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat, told Politico that Hunter’s prosecution was political, notably comparing it to Trump’s hush money case in Manhattan. “Those cases were clearly weaponized against them for political gain. That’s undeniable,” he told the outlet. “That was always inappropriate in my opinion. And a pardon in both are appropriate. And, for me, that collectively has damaged America’s trust in these institutions.”
Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett from Texas commended the president for his action during an appearance on MSNBC. “Way to go Joe! Let me be the first to congratulate the president for deciding to do this, because at the end of the day, we know that we have a 34-count convicted felon about to walk into the White House,” she said.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote that he would’ve likely made the same decision as Biden if he was in his place:
If I were President Joe Biden, I would have done the same thing. I would have pardoned a son who faced possible federal prison time not because of the crimes he committed, but because of me.
The president’s decision to absolve his son Hunter reneges on a campaign promise and can certainly be described as hypocritical. It creates a political problem for the Democratic Party and will be seen by many as a stain on Biden’s legacy. Obviously, Biden is prepared to accept those consequences. I would be, too.
