Bill Clinton isn’t that concerned over President Joe Biden’s wide-ranging pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, but he does admit Biden made things worse for himself by breaking an explicit promise in order to do it.
“In the hierarchy of things there are to be upset about today… it’s not way high on there,” Clinton said on Wednesday about the pardon.
The ex-president’s comment came during a conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times’ Dealbook Conference. Clinton said he agreed with President Biden’s rationale, outlined in his pardon, that his son Hunter was being unfairly targeted by the Justice Department because of “raw politics.”
“I personally believe 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 case,” Clinton said.
On Sunday, President Biden issued a full pardon to his son, covering any potential illegal activity dating from the start of 2014 up to December 1, 2024. Hunter Biden was set to be sentenced on gun and tax evasion crimes later this month. The 54-year-old had plead guilty to nine federal tax charges and was convicted on three felony counts for lying on a gun application about his drug use; his pardon spared him from potentially spending years in prison.
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President Biden’s pardon has been criticized by many on the right and the left this week, with critics pointing out the president had said he wouldn’t interfere in his son’s legal issues.
Clinton agreed with critics that those circumstances made this worse for Biden, though he still defended the pardon. “I wish he hadn’t said he wasn’t going to do. I think it does weaken his case. But there is also a reason that the founding fathers gave this pardon power to the president. Because there are all kinds of things that you can’t reconcile and you can’t figure out,” he said.
Clinton did pushback, though, on claims the Biden pardon was akin to him pardoning his brother, Roger Clinton, in 2001. Clinton pardoned his brother for a 1985 cocaine possession and trafficking conviction.
“I’m still reading, somebody said, ‘Well, this is just like when Bill Clinton pardoned his brother.’ Well, it’s not,” Clinton said. “My brother did 14 months in the federal prison for something he did when he was 20, and I supported it.”
In other political news, Clinton said Vice President Kamala Harris had little chance of winning the 2024 election because she was a “stranger” to the American public. The country’s lack of familiarity with her, combined with President Biden’s low approval rating and her brief campaign window, ultimately doomed her bid for the White House, Clinton said.
Clinton added that, despite those issues, Harris did “on balance, a good job” and would’ve made a good president.
