Hunter Biden Joins Long List of Controversial Presidential Pardons

President Joe Biden talks with his son Hunter Biden upon arrival at Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Del., on June 11, 2024. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

With President Joe Biden pardoning his son Hunter on Sunday night, it joins a list of controversial presidential pardons issued throughout the nation’s history

The president said the gun and tax charges that were brought against his son were politicized, while his son offered a statement of his own saying that he was addicted to drugs at the time and has since sobered up. The pardon not only covers the two cases but any potential criminal activity between Jan. 1, 2014, and Dec. 1, 2024.

Some members of Biden’s own party were critical of the decision on Sunday and Monday, suggesting it could establish an unusual precedent for future presidents.

Ford Pardons Nixon

On Sept. 8, 1974, President Gerald R. Ford fully pardoned his predecessor, President Richard Nixon, for any crimes he may have committed against the United States while he was in office. This pardon came about a month after Nixon resigned as president in August 1974.

The pardon covered Nixon’s activity during the Watergate scandal.

Ford said in a televised statement at the time that pardoning his predecessor was in the best interest of the country.

“It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must,” he said, referring to the investigation of Nixon.

Clinton Pardons Marc Rich and Half-Brother

Biden’s move to provide clemency for a family member isn’t without precedent. In 2001, at the very end of his term, President Bill Clinton pardoned Roger Clinton, his half-brother, who was sentenced to about a year in prison after he pleaded guilty to selling cocaine to an undercover officer.

On the same day, Clinton also pardoned commodities trader Marc Rich, who had fled the United States to Switzerland after he was indicted in 1983 on charges of evading millions of dollars in taxes. Rich was also accused of allegedly trading with Iran while the regime was holding American hostages in the late 1970s.

The former president’s “truly remarkable achievement,” according to a Brookings Institution article published in 2001, “was in creating a consensus against himself with his pardon of Marc Rich, popularly known as the ‘fugitive financier.’”

At the time, the Brookings Institute noted, members of Clinton’s own Democratic Party were incensed by the Rich pardon.

“It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous,” former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told reporters in 2001.

Carter Pardons Vietnam Draft Dodgers

President Jimmy Carter is known for several controversial pardons during his single presidential term, including the blanket pardon for those who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War. Carter issued the pardon on his first day in office, on Jan. 20, 1977, making good on a campaign promise to do so.

The move drew significant criticism at the time.

Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), a supporter of the Vietnam War and a one-time presidential candidate, said Carter’s move was the “most disgraceful thing that a president has ever done.”

Carter’s decision, however, wasn’t entirely unheard of. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman granted amnesty for more than 1,500 men who had violated the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 by not serving in the U.S. military during World War II.

Andrew Johnson Pardons Confederate President Jefferson Davis

Following the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson issued multiple proclamations pardoning several former Confederate soldiers. On Christmas Day in 1868, Johnson granted pardons and amnesty for treason to “every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion.”

Johnson, who issued more than 13,000 pardons during his lone term in office, reasoned that his executive actions would provide “permanent peace, order, and prosperity throughout the land, and to renew and fully restore confidence and fraternal feeling among the whole people.”

According to federal records, that included a sweeping pardon for former Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

While not technically a pardon, President Carter, more than 100 years later, signed a congressional bill in October 1978 that restored Davis’s citizen rights.

Clinton Pardons Patty Hearst, Susan Rosenberg

In 1979, Carter commuted the sentence of heiress Patty Hearst for allegedly helping rob a bank after she was kidnapped by the Marxist Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist organization. But more than 20 years later, Clinton, on his last day in office in 2001, provided a full pardon for Hearst.

Perhaps more controversial was his pardon of Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans, who were members of a Marxist organization known as M19, which had ties to the Weather Underground. Both were sentenced on explosives and weapons charges, and the two had served about 16 years in prison each when Clinton took action.

Their group, described in a William Rosenau book as “America’s first female terrorist group,” was accused of bombing the U.S. Capitol building and damaging it.

George H.W. Bush Pardons Iran-Contra Convicts

President George H.W. Bush, who served from 1989 to 1993, was criticized for pardoning and commuting the sentences of six individuals convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal that occurred during the administration of President Ronald Reagan when Bush served as vice president.

Among those who received pardons included then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and then-White House national security adviser Robert McFarlane.

Bush said the pardons were issued due to what he called “a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences.”

“These differences should be addressed in the political arena, without the Damocles sword of criminality hanging over the heads of the combatants,” he said.

Trump Pardons Advisers, Staff

At the end of his first term, President Donald Trump pardoned his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, adviser Roger Stone, former national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former adviser Stephen Bannon, and former aide George Papadopoulos.

The moves drew significant backlash in the media and among Democratic lawmakers.

In 2020, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and former Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) issued a joint statement claiming that “no other president has exercised the clemency power for such a patently personal and self-serving purpose” with his pardon of Stone.

Trump said that the pardons were necessary because Stone and the others faced biased prosecutions, according to a White House statement issued at the time.

Stone had faced “prosecutorial misconduct by Special Counsel [Robert] Mueller’s team” and was “treated very unfairly,” Trump wrote at the time. “He was subjected to a pre-dawn raid of his home, which the media conveniently captured on camera. Mr. Stone also faced potential political bias at his jury trial.”