Hunter Biden says his father ‘chose me over his legacy’ with controversial pardon

Hunter BidenHunter Biden says his father ‘chose me over his legacy’ with controversial pardonThe former president’s son told California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a podcast that the pardon from his father shows “how much you know my dad loves me.”Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Then-President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden in December 2024.Susan Walsh / AP fileShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJune 12, 2026, 3:57 PM EDTBy Dareh GregorianHunter Biden acknowledged in an interview that aired Friday that his father’s presidential pardon of him tarnished his reputation as commander in chief and demonstrated that “he chose me over his legacy.”Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.“That’s how much you know my dad loves me,” the younger Biden told California Gov. Gavin Newsom in an interview on his podcast.Then-President Joe Biden had repeatedly vowed not to interfere in the federal tax and gun cases against his son, but wound up granting him a “full and unconditional” pardon in December 2024, shortly before the scheduled sentencing in the two criminal cases and not long before the president left office.“My dad said that he wouldn’t give me a pardon and he was absolutely 100% genuine about it,” but “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 said.He said that view changed when President Donald Trump was elected to a second term and expressed a desire to make Matt Gaetz his attorney general.“I would have been under the supervision of the Bureau of Federal Prisons” and a target for the new administration, Hunter Biden said on the podcast.“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. It’s a really incredibly rational decision and a really difficult decision,” he said.Hunter Bid...