Hunter Biden, the 56-year-old son of former President Joe Biden, sat down with MeidasTouch and offered his thoughts on presidential pardon power, a subject on which he is, by his own admission, "completely biased." The former first son criticized President Trump's use of clemency while simultaneously acknowledging that he himself benefited from one of the most expansive pardons in modern presidential history, the New York Post reported.

The contrast is worth spelling out. A jury found Hunter Biden guilty in June 2024 of illegal possession of a firearm while addicted to illegal drugs. Three months later, he pleaded guilty in a separate case involving $1.4 million in unpaid federal taxes. Before leaving office, the 83-year-old former president gave his son a full and unconditional pardon covering all crimes he may have committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024, a decade-long blanket that went far beyond the two cases already adjudicated.

That pardon came after White House officials had insisted dozens of times that Joe Biden would not pardon his son. When the elder Biden reversed course, he argued that Hunter had been "selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted."

Hunter Biden's own words

Asked by MeidasTouch whether the pardon power needs reform, Hunter Biden did not specify what changes he would support. But he had plenty to say about Trump. He told the interviewer:

"I'm completely biased as it relates to what my dad did for me. I fully understand how uniquely situated I am in being privileged enough to have received a pardon from my father."

That admission of bias did not stop him from pressing the point. He went on to compare the two administrations' clemency records, claiming his father issued roughly eighty pardons across four years while Trump had granted more than 1,500 in his first year alone.

"Donald Trump has given over 1,500 pardons in the first year alone. But I'm obviously, I'm not the one to be, I don't think, fairly or unbiasedly talking about the presidential pardon power."

He also offered a broader critique of the constitutional framework itself, saying, "I don't think that the founders ever imagined Donald Trump. I don't think they ever imagined the Trump family."

The numbers behind the rhetoric

Hunter Biden's figures deserve context. Department of Justice clemency statistics show that by the conclusion of his presidency, Joe Biden had issued 4,165 commutations and 80 pardons. The commutation total dwarfed that of any prior president, a point confirmed by Pew Research Center data referenced alongside the DOJ figures.

On the Trump side, the bulk of the clemency actions Hunter Biden referenced stem from one grant: President Trump's mass clemency order covering some 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the events at or near the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Outside that single action, Trump has issued 120 pardons and commutations, per DOJ records.

So the picture is more complicated than Hunter Biden's sound bite suggests. His father's commutation spree, 4,165 grants, exceeded Trump's combined total by a wide margin. Whether you count pardons alone or pardons and commutations together, the Biden White House was hardly restrained in its use of executive mercy.

And none of those 4,165 commutations carried the personal stakes of the one pardon that mattered most to the Biden family.

A pardon unlike any other

Presidential pardons for a sitting president's own child are extraordinarily rare. Joe Biden's grant to Hunter was not limited to the gun conviction or the tax case. It swept in any federal offense Hunter Biden may have committed over a full decade, crimes charged and uncharged alike. That breadth stands out even among controversial pardons in American history.

The reversal was all the more striking because the White House had spent months assuring the public it would not happen. Dozens of on-the-record statements from Biden administration officials said the president would let the legal process play out. Then, in the final weeks of his term, he did the opposite.

Hunter Biden's legal entanglements have extended beyond the federal cases. He has also faced a child-support dispute in Arkansas over his young daughter, another chapter in a pattern of personal controversies that shadowed his father's presidency.

The credibility gap

Hunter Biden acknowledged his own credibility problem. He called himself "completely biased" and said he was not "the one to be, I don't think, fairly or unbiasedly talking about the presidential pardon power." Fair enough. But he then proceeded to do exactly that, offering a pointed critique of Trump's clemency decisions while sitting under the protection of his father's sweeping grant.

The interview did not include any specific proposals for reform. Hunter Biden declined to say what types of changes to the pardon power he would support. The critique, in other words, was all framing and no substance.

That framing conveniently omitted the context of Biden-era investigations that many conservatives viewed as politically charged. The FBI's secret subpoenas of phone records belonging to Trump allies Kash Patel and Susie Wiles during a Biden-era probe raised serious questions about how the Justice Department wielded its power in the last administration. Those questions remain unresolved even as the department undergoes significant changes; President Trump recently moved to reset leadership at the DOJ.

Meanwhile, the broader debate over prosecutorial fairness has produced its own landmarks. The DOJ's $1.2 million settlement of Michael Flynn's malicious-prosecution lawsuit underscored the real-world costs when federal power is misused, a point the elder Biden's "selective prosecution" defense of his son implicitly conceded.

What this episode reveals

The substance of Hunter Biden's complaint boils down to a numbers game: Trump pardoned more people, therefore Trump's use of the power is more troubling. But that math only works if you ignore the nature of the pardons. A blanket grant shielding a president's own son from a decade of potential criminal liability is a different animal than clemency for political protesters, however controversial the January 6 cases remain.

Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter was personal, preemptive, and delivered after months of public denials. It covered crimes that had not been charged and offenses that may never have come to light. It was issued by a father for a son, not by a president acting on the recommendation of the pardon attorney or in response to a formal petition.

Hunter Biden is free to criticize anyone he likes. The pardon guarantees that much. But when the beneficiary of the most personally self-serving presidential pardon in recent memory lectures the country about clemency norms, the audience is entitled to notice the irony.

A man who owes his freedom to his father's last official act probably isn't the best spokesman for restraint in the use of presidential power.