Hunter Biden has offered his most direct accounting yet of why his father granted him a sweeping presidential pardon, telling California Governor Gavin Newsom in a podcast interview that Joe Biden made a deliberate choice to protect his son over preserving his own historical record.
"He chose me over his political legacy," Hunter Biden said during the interview, which aired Friday. "That's how much you know my dad loves me."
The pardon, issued in December 2024 just weeks before the former president left office, upended years of public assurances that Biden would not intervene in his son's federal tax and gun prosecutions. Hunter Biden's account suggests the shift came after Donald Trump's election victory and the prospect of hostile Justice Department leadership under a new administration.
Hunter Biden said his father had been sincere in his original refusal to pardon him, but that calculation changed when the political landscape shifted. "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 explained.
The turning point came with Trump's election and his reported intention to appoint Matt Gaetz as attorney general. "I would have been under the supervision of the Bureau of Federal Prisons" and a target for prosecution by a hostile administration, Hunter Biden said. "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."
Hunter Biden framed the decision as pragmatic rather than nepotistic. "It's a really incredibly rational decision and a really difficult decision," he said, arguing that it would not have occurred under different Republican leadership.
"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," Hunter Biden said.
The younger Biden acknowledged the cost to his father's legacy. He said both he and the former president understood that the pardon would become one of the defining acts of his presidency.
"It's going to be one of the first things that is written about him," Hunter Biden said.
Former first lady Jill Biden has echoed similar reasoning in recent interviews. She told NBC's "TODAY" show that her husband was not thinking about himself when he issued the pardon, and that the situation changed once the new administration took over.
"The process was not fair to Hunter," Jill Biden said. "The current president won, and the Justice Department changed. It became political."
The background: Hunter Biden faced conviction on gun charges and tax-related felonies stemming from investigations that began during Trump's first term. A federal jury found him guilty on firearms charges in Delaware in 2024, and he later pleaded guilty to tax violations in California. The original plea deal that would have resolved both cases collapsed before trial.
The elder Biden had defended the pardon by citing "raw politics" that he said had "infected" the cases and produced "a miscarriage of justice." Critics noted the timing, with the pardon arriving just before sentencing and days before Trump's inauguration.
During the same podcast appearance, Hunter Biden also weighed in on Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, a Democrat facing controversies including a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol and sexting relationships during his marriage. Hunter Biden defended Platner's character, saying he believed Platner acknowledged his past problems and was working toward improvement.
"I'm 99.9% certain Graham Platner is no Nazi," Hunter Biden said, adding that he had not encountered evidence of abusive or racist behavior from the candidate.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Hunter Biden's framing of the pardon as a rational family decision over political calculation may satisfy some, but it doesn't erase that the president abandoned years of principled public statements the moment his son faced real legal jeopardy."
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