Bill Clinton backs president’s pardon of Hunter Biden

The former president questioned whether the party’s reputation would suffer over it: “Nobody believes anybody anymore.”

Dec 5, 2024 - 09:00

NEW YORK — Former President Bill Clinton defended Joe Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter Biden on Wednesday, contending that the president’s son was facing tougher consequences than a typical citizen for his crimes.

“I personally believe that the president is almost certainly right that his son received completely different treatment than he would have if he hadn’t been the president’s son, in this kind of case,” the former president said onstage Wednesday at the 2024 DealBook Summit.

The former president said there should be a broader conversation about how pardon applications are processed and approved. He also pushed back on recent comparisons to his own decision to pardon his younger brother, Roger Clinton, for a 1985 cocaine trafficking and conspiracy conviction.

“My brother did 14 months in federal prison for something he did when he was 20,” he said, adding that his reasoning hinged on the questions of whether his younger brother would “ever be able to vote again? Will he ever be able to have normal citizenship responsibilities?”