Biden knows there’s a better way to use it—other people’s children deserve mercy, too.
President Joe Biden’s Dec. 1 pardon of his son Hunter was unusual and stunning. Among modern pardons, it stands apart because of the family relationship, the breadth of the gift, the unfulfilled promise not to do so, and the pardon’s isolation from other pardon decisions. While Bill Clinton is still remembered for pardoning Mark Rich, decades later Joe Biden will carry the unfortunate weight of that single moment. However, he can mitigate the damage by using the remaining weeks to fundamentally and forcefully use the pardon powers to secure thousands in grants in the wake of a well-deserved pardon.
People related to recent presidents (Bill Clinton’s half-brother, Roger; Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner) have received pardons, but none were as close relatives as the president’s son. Biden did not hide the emotional basis of his pardon: statement He said as he explained this, he concluded by saying, “I hope the American people will understand why the father and the president made this decision.” Notably, and probably intentionally, he put “father” before “president” in that sentence.
The breadth of the grant was also staggering and likely created in anticipation of further harassment of Hunter Biden by the new Trump administration. The language of pardon provides “a full and unconditional pardon … For those crimes against the United States that he committed or may have committed or in which he participated between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.” On the face of it, it even covers federal crimes that are currently unknown. The only comparable grant was given to Richard Nixon, and it covered a shorter period of time than Biden’s staff could have known about, since Hunter Biden was monitoring the language. used by Gerald Ford to exonerate Nixon from potential prosecution.
Biden’s insistence for months that he would not pardon Hunter was both embarrassing and unnecessary. In June 2024, Biden was single-digit when an interview ABC News’ David Muir, and as recently as early November, his spokesperson denied for the sixth time that a pardon would be granted. They could have simply said that they hadn’t considered the issue, or that the pardon decisions were something Biden would focus on later (an unfortunately true statement, given that he rarely used the power while in office).
Obviously, Biden either lied or changed his mind. Even so, he should have issued the grant in a much more fundamental way, showing that Hunter wasn’t the only one Biden sympathized with — that he was indeed acting not just as a father, but as a president. He could combine Hunter Biden’s pardon with the pardons and commutations of hundreds or thousands of other deserving people who actually followed the rules and petitioned the lawyer for clemency, petitions that (unlike Hunter Biden) were carefully reviewed and recommended for grant. It’s likely that the White House has several hundred such petitions, given the age of the pending petitions and the hard work of Pardon Attorney Liz Auer and her staff. Pa latest lawyer pardon numbers9,378 clemency petitions are currently pending. Biden has granted only 157 (25 pardons and 132 commutations), a historically low level of grants for modern presidents.
Biden knows there’s a better way to pardon than to repeat.”friends and family” The approach taken by Donald Trump during his first term. He was an eyewitness to the fundamental speech of Barack Obama (if incomplete) a clemency initiative that granted freedom not to family members or loved ones, but to hundreds of unknown but worthy petitioners serving excessively long drug sentences.
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We and other pardon advocates have urged him to use this power since the beginning of his tenure, and while it would have been better for him to make it a priority from the start, he still has time to do better. In September we emphasized the easiest categories for grants: petitions that already have a positive recommendation from the prosecutor for clemency; commutation of all federal death sentences to life imprisonment; extending the marijuana pardon to those convicted of distribution crimes; and providing continued care to people already out of prison under the CARES Act, an emergency measure enacted during the pandemic that provided temporary release for vulnerable incarcerated people. He could do more, such as helping the elderly who cannot get compassionate release because they are covered by the old parole regime, which is never granted in practice.
Whatever the specific package is, it should be bold. A hunter must be one of thousands. He can and should leave behind a legacy of compassion that goes beyond his own son. Other people’s children also deserve mercy.
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