The Truth About the Growing Hunter Biden Pardon Scandal

Disillusioned Americans across the nation are still expressing their distaste at President Joe Biden’s granting a universal pardon to his convicted criminal son, Hunter, but after separating fact from fiction, there are potential downsides for the president and his family from the Hunter Biden pardon and an uncertain answer to how this power will be used in the future.

Understanding this growing scandal of Biden Family corruption requires understanding Hunter’s crimes as well as how presidential pardons work and how they don’t. Media stories have been hit-or-miss in explaining this scandal and have not yet discussed how this pardon could actually blow the doors open on every questionable event that involves anyone with the last name “Biden.”

Hunter’s sordid story reeks of corruption, political favoritism, and the worst practices of the Deep State. Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss tried to sneak in a sweetheart plea deal to get Hunter out of many of his self-inflicted legal woes. (Weiss was appointed by President Trump, but U.S. attorneys are effectively chosen by home-state senators, so Delaware’s two Democrat senators – faithful allies of Biden – blessed the selection of Weiss if they did not pick him outright.)

But Judge Maryellen Noreika – also appointed by Trump – smelled a rat, finding language buried in a secondary document that a judge often does not see that would close the door on any additional criminal charges, and she blew the lid off the whole scheme. She announced during a court hearing that she had never seen such a deal and asked the federal prosecutors standing before her if they had ever seen such wording hidden in such a secondary document. They admitted they had not.

Humiliated, Weiss then turned on a dime, bringing real charges against Hunter and taking them to trial. Even so, Weiss charged Hunter only with crimes that had no connection to President Biden. For example, there were no Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) charges, which would have gotten into why foreign powers were paying enormous sums of money to Hunter – and through him to the whole Biden clan – which would eventually lead back to quiet access Hunter provided to his ultra-powerful father.

Nonetheless, federal prosecutors pursued Hunter on these non-Joe crimes, and those prosecutors nailed him. Hunter was scheduled to be sentenced this month on two separate crimes.

First, he lied when he purchased a gun. When a person buys a firearm at a gun store he must fill out Form 4473 issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which among other things asks about using illegal drugs. It’s a felony to lie on that form, and Hunter – who is a graduate of Yale Law School – knows better and did so.

Second, he was charged with tax evasion, likewise scheduled for sentencing this month. The judge over that case – Mark Scarsi, also appointed by Trump – terminated all proceedings because of the pardon. But before doing so, he backhanded Joe Biden’s statement that that no reasonable person would prosecute Hunter, writing that the current president was saying the “legion of civil servants” at the Department of Justice (DOJ) involved in his son’s prosecution “are unreasonable people.”

That explains the timing of Hunter’s pardon. Issuing it on December 1 instead of January 19 or the morning of January 20 was necessary to keep the hammer from falling on Hunter. Joe could not wait until he was heading out the door next month.

But the wording of the pardon also raises eyebrows, covering any crimes that Hunter might have committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024 – almost 11 years. That’s a long time. Federal law at 18 U.S.C. § 3282 provides that the statute of limitations – meaning the deadline – to bring federal charges is limited to five years unless a specific criminal law specifies a different number of years. The timeframe in the pardon is very unusual in part because of this five-year default rule, leading one to question why Joe would want to cover Hunter for so many years.

It is worth noting that Hunter joined the board of Barisma Holdings – the infamous Ukrainian energy company – in April 2014. Hunter was given a seat on the board for close to $1 million a year for a no-show job, amazing because Hunter had no background in the energy industry and did not speak Ukrainian. This pardon would cover that entire period, prompting questions of what sort of backdoor dealings might have been going on.

Another fact worth noting is that Joe did not involve DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPA). Presidents receive a mountain of requests for clemency, so OPA administers that process, teeing up recommendations for the White House. Evidently Joe was not confident that OPA would conclude that Hunter deserved a pardon, so he avoided that additional negative press by ignoring DOJ altogether. He has the right to do so, but it just makes this look even more nakedly political.

Weiss is now officially protesting that the indictments against Hunter should not be dismissed, but his assertion should be looked at skeptically as likely a combination of crocodile tears and rope-a-dope. The president’s power to pardon these charges is essentially absolute, and Weiss should know perfectly well that any federal trial judge would immediately toss an ongoing case where the defendant has been pardoned.

Finally, Congress cannot limit presidential pardon power. The Constitution confers it directly on the president and specifies only that it cannot be used to overcome impeachments, so Congress has no power to limit the president’s use of it.

But there are some limits to presidential pardons, and more than one member of the Biden family might find out that this development could be a mixed blessing for the Bidens.

For one, a presidential pardon does not cover state crimes. (Or at least the courts have never held that it does, and from a federalism standpoint it would likely violate state sovereignty if the president – a federal officer – could unilaterally overthrow a state prosecution of a private citizen.) Criminals often do not contain their lawless behavior to discrete categories. Depending on the statute of limitations for state crimes, it is possible – unlikely, but possible – that between Hunter’s drugs and prostitutes and guns and shady associates that state charges could be brought on something.

For another – and this is a big one – Hunter can now be required to testify before Congress or in court. His sole defense against subpoenas thus far has been that he wanted to invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to say anything under oath that could incriminate him. Now that he cannot be charged for any federal crimes, he can no longer meet the legal threshold of showing a reasonable fear that answering questions would provide evidence that could be used in court to convict him of a crime.

Ironically, the only risk of prosecution he would face now would be if he does not tell the truth in testimony. If he refuses to testify, then he can be held in criminal contempt, which could put him behind bars. And if he testifies but lies under oath, that’s perjury, which is a felony punishable by five years in federal prison.

So now the bagman at the center of all the Biden Family corruption scandals cannot escape what could be hours of interrogation under oath. Peter Schweizer – easily the foremost researcher on the Bidens’ decades of enriching themselves – reminded readers this week of just how bad the family’s misdeeds over the years have been. Thus readers could want what finally comes to light to be confirmed.

Although the Bidens are now politically finished, the American people still deserve the truth, and that truth could shine a light on all sorts of things about all sorts of people that voters might want to know for the future, possibly involving other prominent Democrats.

Joe Biden is thus left with only one play: pardon everyone the Hunter Biden pardon scandal touches, including himself. He could close the door on federal prosecutions for all of those people going forward.

But there is one potential weakness for the current president under such a plan: It is unclear whether a president can pardon himself. The “Father of the Bill of Rights” in the Constitution, George Mason, openly worried that a president might abuse the pardon power by conspiring to commit crimes, then pardoning everyone including himself. Another Framer of the Constitution, Edmund Randolph, expressed a similar concern. They certainly believed a president could issue a self-pardon.

However, no president has done it, so no court has ever weighed in on it. There are serious arguments on both sides as to whether the president’s power reaches that far.

And the only way that theory could be tested is if he does so, and then the new Trump administration chooses to bring charges against Joe Biden. After the lawfare of the past four years, it is unclear whether the new Justice Department would go there. If not, even a non-existent power does exists as a practical matter if it goes unchallenged.

So President Joe Biden’s primary goal for his son will stand: Hunter will not be going to federal prison anytime soon. But there may be a price to pay for the Biden family, and it remains to be seen what this new precedent means for the future.

Breitbart News senior legal contributor Ken Klukowski is a lawyer who served in the White House and Justice Department. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @kenklukowski.