Overview

Hunter Biden's Pardon refers to U.S. President Joe Biden pardoning his son Hunter Biden in early December 2024 for his conviction on federal gun charges and different federal tax evasion charges. The move sparked major discourse and backlash against the President on social media, with many believing that President Biden was a hypocrite while others defended President Biden's decision. The pardon occurred a month before the end of President Biden's term, after which President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated. Much of the memes and discussions about Hunter Biden's pardoning circled back to his drug use, exposed in the NY Post's leak of Hunter Biden's hard drive years prior.

Background

In September 2023, Hunter Biden was indicted in Delaware on three federal firearm charges. He was accused of making false statements about drug use on a firearm application form and accused of illegally possessing a firearm for 11 days in October 2018.^[1]

On June 11th, 2024, Hunter Biden was found guilty on three felony charges for federal gun violations, making him the first child of a sitting U.S. president to be convicted in a criminal trial.^[2]

In September 2024, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses. According to the indictment, Biden had not paid at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019, among other offenses. He was set to be sentenced on December 16, 2024.^[3]

On December 1st, 2024, NBC News^[4] reported that President Joe Biden had pardoned his son Hunter Biden on all counts.

In a statement shared on the White House website,^[12] President Biden said, "I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision."

Online Reactions

Memes about Hunter Biden's pardon quickly populated social media sites like Twitter / X on December 1st, 2024. For instance, on that day, X^[5] user @stevensongs tweeted a Photoshop of Biden as Heath Ledger's Joker smoking a cigarette out of a cop car window, captioned, "Hunter Biden tonight." The tweet received over 8,500 likes in a day (shown below).

Also on December 1st, X^[6] user @sixinchbeys tweeted, "They let Trump do whatever he wants might as well free the crackhead," gaining over 43,000 likes in a day (shown below).

The tweet concerned Donald Trump's controversial pardons in the last months of his first term. Among the list of his pardons included Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Roger J. Stone Jr. and Charles Kushner.^[7]

Other people criticized the outrage levied against President Biden by referencing former President Trump's pardons, such as X^[8] user @KyleKulinski on December 1st, 2024, who said, "Lowest IQ take of all time is Biden pardoning Hunter opens the door for Trump to do bad pardons …" The tweet received over 12,000 likes in a day (shown below).

Also on December 1st, X^[9] user @C_3C_3 wrote, "President Trump was impeached over wanting to look into the crimes Joe Biden just pardoned Hunter for," gaining over 44,000 likes in a day (shown below). However, the X user's claim was misleading as Trump faced impeached in 2019 for pressuring Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden for matters unrelated to the gun and tax charges.

On December 2nd, 2024, a Community Note ^[10] was rated helpful on a tweet^[11] shared by President Biden on May 31st, 2024, reading, "No one is above the law." The tweet concerned Donald Trump's conviction in the felony hush money case earlier that year. The new Community Note read, "On December 1, 2024, President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden…" (shown below).

News of Hunter Biden's Pardon also went viral on Reddit's /r/news.^[13] Memes about the event began surfacing on Reddit as well. For instance, on December 1st, Redditor^[14] PlanetoftheAtheists shared a Forrest Gump meme to the subreddit /r/AdviceAnimals, gaining over 22,000 upvotes in a day (shown below).

Viral videos about the pardon also surfaced on TikTok in early December 2024. For instance, on December 1st, TikToker^[15] @harryjsisson posted a video in which he called Republicans hypocritical for criticizing President Biden's decision, gaining over 410,500 plays and 61,800 likes in a day (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References