Hunter Biden acknowledged in an interview that aired Friday that his father’s presidential pardon of him tarnished his reputation as commander in chief and demonstrated that “he chose me over his legacy.”
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“That’s how much you know my dad loves me,” the younger Biden told California Gov. Gavin Newsom in an interview on his podcast.
Then-President Joe Biden had repeatedly vowed not to interfere in the federal tax and gun cases against his son, but wound up granting him a “full and unconditional” pardon in December 2024, shortly before the scheduled sentencing in the two criminal cases and not long before the president left office.
“My dad said that he wouldn’t give me a pardon and he was absolutely 100% genuine about it,” but “he said it at a moment in time where he thought that he was going to be the next president of the United States and there would be a Justice Department that would treat me fairly,” Hunter Biden said.
He said that view changed when President Donald Trump was elected to a second term and expressed a desire to make Matt Gaetz his attorney general.
“I would have been under the supervision of the Bureau of Federal Prisons” and a target for the new administration, Hunter Biden said on the podcast.
“It would have been like having a gun to my family’s head for the next four years at least, so that’s why he pardoned me. It’s a really incredibly rational decision and a really difficult decision,” he said.
Hunter Biden insisted the pardon would not have happened if Trump — who’d mocked him and accused him of criminality for years — had not won the election in 2024.
“If it was in a Mitt Romney administration, if it was in a John McCain administration, if it was in anybody that was an actual Republican and not a tyrant or a fascist, my dad would not have pardoned me,” he said.
However, the prosecutions of Hunter Biden were carried out during his father’s administration. The elder Biden said when he signed the pardon that “raw politics” had already “infected” his son’s criminal cases and “led to a miscarriage of justice.”
Former first lady Jill Biden recently told NBC’s “TODAY” that “of course” she supported her husband’s decision to issue the pardon.
“Joe wasn’t thinking about himself. He said all along that he was not going to pardon Hunter, but then the administration changed,” she said. “The process was not fair to Hunter. The current president won, and the Justice Department changed. It became political.”
Hunter Biden said he and his father were both aware that the pardon would be one of the things the former president is remembered for.
“It’s going to be one of the first things that is written about him. That’s how much you know my dad loves me,” Hunter Biden said. “He chose me over his political legacy.”
The investigation into Hunter Biden began during the first Trump administration. When Merrick Garland became attorney general during the Biden administration, he kept in place the U.S. attorney who’d been investigating the case.
After an earlier plea deal that would have settled both cases fell apart, Hunter Biden was convicted by a federal jury on the gun charges in Delaware in 2024, and later pleaded guilty to three felony and six misdemeanor tax charges.
The judge who presided over the California case blasted the then-president for his comments about his son being “unfairly” prosecuted, saying he was trying to “rewrite history.”
In the Newsom interview, Hunter Biden also defended Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, a Democrat who’s been the subject of several controversies including a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol on his chest and sexting relationships with multiple women during his marriage.
Hunter Biden said Platner had acknowledged that he’d “had some real issues” but had worked to make himself better and “lead a better life.”
“I’m 99.9% certain Graham Platner is no Nazi,” he said.
“I have not heard anything in any way that would say to me that he’s an abusive, misogynistic, antisemitic or racist person,” Hunter Biden said. “I have heard this from Graham Platner: he thinks we should have free health care” and that “we have to radically change our politics.”
“That’s what I’ve heard from Graham Platner,” he added.
