Joe Biden Rarely Issues Pardons but Made an Exception for His Son
Biden continues a modern trend of presidents who are stingy with the pardon pen.
With just weeks left in office, President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, for all federal crimes he may have committed during the span of more than a decade—some of which he had already been convicted of or pleaded guilty to.
While the controversial move reeks of favoritism, it's even more galling in light of how few pardons Biden has issued throughout the rest of his term.
On Sunday night, Biden announced that he had granted his son "a full and unconditional pardon" for "offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024."
The move frees up the younger Biden from legal jeopardy stemming from charges of tax evasion, to which he pleaded guilty in September; lying on a firearm purchase form by saying he was not an illegal drug user, of which he was convicted in June; and any other potential wrongdoing that may have taken place during the 10 years and 11 months the pardon covers.
While the document never mentions President-elect Donald Trump, it's clear that Biden feared reprisal from the incoming administration and its political allies. "There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution," Biden noted in a statement announcing the pardon. "In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me – and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough."
The power to grant clemency, though enshrined in the Constitution, is often controversial, and ripe for abuse; presidents often issue questionable pardons on the way out the door to lessen the possibility of political blowback. But it also represents an important backstop against legal injustice. If judges or juries convict an innocent person or impose an unjust sentence, presidents—or governors, in the case of state crimes—possess the singular, irreversible power to either commute a sentence, which shortens or ends a prison term, or to issue a pardon, which wipes the slate clean and removes the conviction altogether.
To be sure, previous presidents have pardoned family members: Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger Clinton on charges of trafficking cocaine, and Abraham Lincoln's pardons of former Confederates included his sister-in-law. Trump did not pardon any immediate family members in his first term, despite apparently considering it, but he did pardon real estate developer Charles Kushner, the father of Trump's son-in-law. Kushner previously served 14 months in federal prison for what former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie called "one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted." This past weekend, Trump announced that he would nominate Kushner to be the U.S. Ambassador to France, in his second term.
But Biden's effort is in a league of its own, issuing his son a blanket pardon covering all federal crimes committed within the period of a decade—a son who had been convicted of several crimes already and faced prosecution for others. Republicans have accused Biden and his son of corruption since long before the 2020 campaign—and by granting such a sweeping pardon, Biden handed them a gift, wrapped in a bow just in time for Christmas.
On a human level, Biden's act makes sense: If given the opportunity to spare our admittedly troubled child a stint in federal prison for violating a law that, by all accounts, is rarely enforced and should not be a crime at all, who among us would not be tempted to act?
But it also stands in contrast to the rest of Biden's term, in which he has granted relatively few petitions of clemency to anyone, for any reason.
"Mr. Biden has granted 25 pardons and commuted the sentences of 131 other people, according to the most recent Justice Department data," wrote law professors Rachel E. Barkow and Mark Osler in a September 2024 editorial in The New York Times. "That is a mere 1.4 percent of the petitions he has received, based on our analysis. No modern U.S. president, going back to Richard Nixon, has had a rate so low; though of course, Mr. Biden is still in office."
"Mr. Biden has issued fewer clemency grants so far than the 238—144 pardons and 94 commutations—issued by Mr. Trump during his first administration," the Times' Kenneth Vogel wrote this week.
In fairness, Biden has made some grand gestures, issuing pardons for federal convictions of marijuana possession.
"But let's be clear: None of the administration's actions has released a single marijuana offender from prison," Arizona State University law professor Erik Luna and Weldon Angelos, a music producer who served 13 years in prison for marijuana possession, wrote in January 2024. "President Biden has yet to exercise his clemency power to release a marijuana offender from federal prison. By our count, he has pardoned the marijuana offenses of three specific individuals, none of whom was incarcerated."
Biden's stingy pardon pen continues a long-running trend, in which presidents are increasingly hesitant to grant clemency. "Between 1932 and 1988 the percentage of total cases acted on by the president that had been sent to him with the Justice Department's blessing averaged around 30%," according to a 2015 piece by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center. "The percentage of cases sent forward with a favorable recommendation dropped to single digits beginning with the presidency of George H.W. Bush, and it has dropped even lower in the past 15 years….The absolute numbers also tell a tale: President [Barack] Obama has granted more sentence commutations than any president since Richard Nixon, but fewer full pardons than any president since John Adams."
With six weeks left in his term, Biden still has time to correct his failure to act. Catholic advocacy groups have called on him to commute all federal death row inmates to life without parole—a worthy exercise, since Trump's first term ended with a flurry of federal executions. Given the pardon of his son, it's clear that Biden knows how to exercise his federal clemency powers; the only question left is if he'll use it.
