Hunter Biden has said he is "the most privileged person there is" and that the pardon his father gave him was "not good" for the American people, the Constitution, or Joe Biden's legacy. He made the comments in a BBC interview reported on August 7, 2026. It is the most he has spoken publicly about the pardon since it caused a political uproar.

A pardon is a power the U.S. president has to forgive someone for federal crimes, meaning those crimes can no longer be punished. In December 2024, President Joe Biden gave his son a full pardon with no conditions attached. It covered Hunter Biden's conviction for lying on a gun background-check form, a tax case where he had admitted guilt, and any federal crimes he may have committed between 2014 and 2024. That ten-year window was unusually wide — most pardons focus on specific charges that have already gone through court. BBC

Before the pardon, Joe Biden had said over and over that he would not step in to help his son legally. When he announced the pardon, the elder Biden said his son had been "selectively and unfairly prosecuted." The White House defended the decision after the public backlash that followed. BBC

Hunter Biden shared new details about how the decision happened. He told the BBC that he and his father had never talked about a pardon before it was granted. He said his father told him he would not give him one, and that his father was "absolutely 100% genuine" about that at the time. That matches what Hunter Biden told NBC News in June 2026, when he said his father "chose me over his legacy." BBC; NBC News

Hunter Biden said his father acted because he worried that Hunter would be targeted by Donald Trump's incoming administration. Trump won the November 2024 election and was set to take office the next month. Biden also talked about his father's declining health, a topic that has drawn public interest since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.

The interview answered one open question: Hunter Biden said he will not run for political office. He had said the same thing before, telling the "Macrodosing" podcast in July 2026 that he is "definitely not running for anything," and repeating that to NBC News in June. BBC; Yahoo News; NBC News

Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings, which were part of the political and legal background to the pardon, have been debated for years. In a 2019 ABC News interview, he said he "did nothing wrong at all" about his foreign work, though he admitted it may have looked improper. Reuters

What stands out across several interviews now is how open Hunter Biden is being. Instead of arguing the pardon was the right legal call, he describes it as a father choosing to protect his son, knowing it would cost him politically. The broader picture here is that his own take on the pardon — that it hurt his father's legacy, the Constitution, and public trust — lines up more closely with the pardon's critics than with the White House's official defense. Whether that honesty helps repair his image, makes things more complicated, or simply closes the chapter on the pardon is a separate question. But it does leave the people defending the pardon with less room to argue than they had back in December 2024.