December 2, 2024
By now you already know President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son Hunter Biden for any and all offenses he may have committed between January 1 of 2014 and December 1 of 2024.
Now – as a journalist it is not my job to tell you how to feel about that. You feel about that however you’d like. But it is my job to explain to you how pardons work, why President Biden – like all presidents is allowed to do this and how this compares to other presidents. Spoiler alert – every president does this and every single time they do – it’s controversial.
First — how are presidents allowed to do this? Because of the constitution. Article two – Section two says — the president has a right to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States with one exception. Except in the case of impeachment. A president can only pardon federal crimes but has no say in pardoning state crimes. Presidents usually issue a ton of pardons on their last day in office to avoid any kind of political backlash for who they pardon on the way out the door. That’s how it usually happens. But President Biden still has 49 days in office and most believe he decided to issue this pardon for his son right now because hunter’s sentencing in both the tax and gun cases are coming in the next few weeks.
Now here’s the thing. The power to pardon in the constitution is set up to be extremely broad and virtually unchecked power for the president. There is no other branch of government that can stop it or change it. Yes –people complain and say it’s bad form when it happens but there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
The two most popular types of presidential pardons is a full pardon which absolves the crime and the punishment like it never happened – which is what President Biden just gave his son. And the other type is a commutation where the president reduces the punishment for a crime to something less severe like commuting a death sentence to instead life in prison.
Pardons are completely normal. Every single president has done this….a lot. And yes – other presidents have pardoned family members. I will tell you more about that in a second – but first – here are the numbers.
Of the last four presidents – former President Clinton had the most pardons with almost 400. Former President Obama had 212 pardons, former President George W. Bush had 189 and during his first term now-President elect Trump issued 143 pardons.
And yes – some of those pardons were for family members. During his first term trump pardoned Charles Kushner — his daughter’s father-in-law. Kushner was convicted of preparing false tax returns retaliating against a cooperating witness and making false statements to the federal election commission back in 2005. He served more than 16 months in federal prison. Trump pardoned him wiping that off his record. In case you missed it– Trump just nominated Charles Kushner to be the ambassador to France.
But Trump wasn’t the only one pardoning family members…former President Bill Clinton also pardoned his half-brother Roger Clinton after he was convicted on drug related charges for which he spent a year in prison. That pardon wiped his criminal record clean.
Read the President’s statement here.
Read more about pardons here.
