Former President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he would consider pardoning Hunter Biden if he wins the 2024 election.
“I wouldn’t take it off the books,” Trump told the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in an interview. “See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously … And Hunter’s a bad boy.”
“There’s no question about it. He’s been a bad boy,” Trump added. “But I happen to think it’s very bad for our country.”
Hunter Biden was convicted in June of three federal gun-related charges. He also pleaded guilty last month to a number of tax offenses. His sentencing hearings in both cases are scheduled for December.
President Joe Biden said earlier this year that he would not pardon his son.
“I am not going to do anything,” Biden said in June, shortly after a jury found Hunter Biden guilty of three felony gun charges. “I will abide by the jury’s decision.”
Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, on June 10, 2024 in Wilmington, Delaware. Trump says he wouldn’t be opposed to pardoning Biden if he’s reelected in November.
Getty Images/Anna Moneymaker
Trump, by contrast, broadly exercised his executive clemency powers when he was president, particularly with respect to his friends and allies.
Among others, Trump pardoned his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort; the GOP strategist Roger Stone; and the real-estate businessman Charles Kushner, who is the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared.
Trump also issued full pardons to other associates who were convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes related to the Justice Department’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
The Republican nominee also said on Hewitt’s show that if he’s reelected, he would quickly fire the special counsel Jack Smith, who is spearheading the Justice Department’s criminal cases against Trump.
“You’re either going to have to pardon yourself, or you’re going to have to fire Jack Smith,” Hewitt said. “Which one will you do?”
“Oh, it’s so easy,” Trump said. “It’s so easy. In fact, he’s a crooked person.”
He also suggested that he “could have gotten Hillary Clinton very easily” when he was president.
“And when they say lock her up … What did I do? I always say take it easy, just relax,” he added. “I could have had her put in jail. And I decided I didn’t want to do that. I thought it would look terrible.”
Clinton has not been convicted of any crimes, and Trump has repeatedly claimed that he didn’t call to “lock her up.”
But as CNN reported, he’s often explicitly advocated for Clinton’s imprisonment.
“For what she’s done, they should lock her up,” he said in an October 2016 rally.
At another rally that month, he told the crowd, “‘Lock her up’ is right.”
