{"id":58271,"date":"2026-08-08T10:47:49","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T10:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/hunter-biden-says-pardon-was-not-good-for-america-or-his-fathers-legacy\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T10:47:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T10:47:49","slug":"hunter-biden-says-pardon-was-not-good-for-america-or-his-fathers-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/hunter-biden-says-pardon-was-not-good-for-america-or-his-fathers-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunter Biden says pardon was &#8216;not good&#8217; for America or his father&#8217;s legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Hunter Biden has told the BBC he is &#8220;the most privileged person there is&#8221; after receiving a presidential pardon from his father, former US President Joe Biden, acknowledging it was not a good choice for America or his father&#8217;s legacy. <\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC&#8217;s Newsnight, Hunter Biden defended the controversial pardon, revealed his father&#8217;s &#8220;painful&#8221; cancer has spread, ruled out seeking elected office and spoke about helping others recover from addiction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Asked about the 2024 pardon, he said he understood the criticism but noted: &#8220;What would you have thought of my dad if he did not do that for me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s something that is easily criticised and for good reason,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s not fair\u2026 All I know is that I&#8217;m grateful that he did it for me,&#8221; he said, acknowledging the pardon was &#8220;not good&#8221; for the American people, the Constitution &#8211; or his father&#8217;s legacy. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He argued to the BBC that his father ultimately acted out of concern that he would become a target under Donald Trump&#8217;s incoming administration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I was the only one in the world that could have gotten what I got from the only person in the world who could give it, my father.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hunter Biden also insisted he and his father had never discussed the possibility of a pardon before it was granted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There is no way that you can have those kinds of discussions that would not become public,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">President Biden granted his son a full and unconditional pardon in December 2024, despite repeatedly saying beforehand that he would not use the powers of the presidency to intervene in his son&#8217;s legal cases. In announcing the decision, the former president said his son had been &#8220;selectively and unfairly prosecuted&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The pardon covered his son&#8217;s federal gun conviction, a tax case he&#8217;d pled guilty to and any federal offences committed between 2014 and 2024. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cy8ey458pv5o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hunter Biden has told the BBC he is &#8220;the most privileged person there is&#8221; after receiving a presidential pardon from his father, former US President Joe Biden, acknowledging it was not a good choice for America or his father&#8217;s legacy. In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC&#8217;s Newsnight, Hunter Biden defended the controversial pardon, revealed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58273,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58271\/revisions\/58273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}