Hunter Biden publicly branded the appointment of Merrick Garland as attorney general the "single greatest mistake" of his father's presidency, while blaming Garland for both failing to charge Donald Trump over January 6 and for pursuing criminal charges against Hunter himself.
The former president's son made the remarks during an appearance on the "I've Had It" podcast, hosted by Jennifer Welch, adding another chapter to a growing pattern of public grievances from a man who received one of the broadest presidential pardons in modern history.
Hunter Biden framed his criticism as an attempt at objectivity, though the personal stakes were hard to miss. The Department of Justice under Garland had investigated him since 2018, first during Trump's presidency, then continuing under his own father's, over tax charges and an unlawful firearm purchase. Joe Biden ultimately pardoned his son during the final weeks of his presidency, covering any offense Hunter "has committed or may have committed" from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024.
On the podcast, Hunter Biden told Welch that Garland's leadership at the Justice Department was responsible for the country's current political situation. But he did not let his father entirely off the hook.
"My take is this, and removing myself from it as much as I can, my personal feelings, is the single greatest mistake of my father's administration was the leadership of Merrick Garland."
He continued by acknowledging his father's role in making the appointment:
"The reason that we are in the situation that we're in right now can almost... by the way, the buck has to stop with my dad. He was the president and he chose him. Now, once he chose him, he played by the, you know, a higher standard than the Marquess of Queensberry rules. He played by the Constitution and the tradition that the president will never, you know, particularly since Nixon, involve himself in any decision-making as relates to anything at the Department of Justice. So, I guarantee you there was a division between church and state there."
That last claim, that Joe Biden maintained a strict wall between the White House and the Justice Department, sits uneasily beside reporting from the Washington Post, cited by Breitbart, that Biden privately complained about the DOJ's slowness in prosecuting Trump and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Hunter. If Biden was privately grousing about specific DOJ decisions involving both his political rival and his own son, the "church and state" metaphor looks more like a public talking point than an operational reality.
Hunter Biden's growing list of media appearances has drawn attention in recent weeks. He has used podcast platforms to air political opinions and defend controversial Democratic figures, positioning himself as a political commentator despite, or perhaps because of, his own legal history.
Host Jennifer Welch did not exactly play devil's advocate. She opened the topic by expressing her own frustration with Garland's DOJ, telling Hunter Biden directly:
"One of the things that pisses me off is the Merrick Garland DOJ and the not prosecuting of Trump. And that they prosecuted you."
Welch then offered her own theory of how Garland ended up as attorney general in the first place, calling him a "milquetoast candidate" originally pushed by Barack Obama for the Supreme Court. She argued Joe Biden appointed Garland out of a sense of decency, to "make him whole" after Senate Republicans blocked his Supreme Court nomination, and that Garland then governed with excessive caution.
"Obama picks this milquetoast candidate. Your dad is a decent man, felt bad about what happened to Merrick Garland. And he played integrity politics. Like, well, 'I'm going to make him whole and make him attorney general.' And then Merrick Garland gets there, and he's like, 'Well, we can't upset these crusty White Republicans.'"
Hunter Biden agreed without hesitation: "Massive mistake."
The exchange is revealing less for its policy substance than for what it exposes about the left's relationship with the Justice Department. When the DOJ investigates a Republican, progressives treat it as the system working. When the same DOJ investigates a Democrat, even one who received a sweeping pardon covering a full decade of potential offenses, the attorney general becomes a coward and a fool.
Hunter Biden went further, arguing that Garland should have pursued charges against Trump over January 6. He described the events at the Capitol in vivid terms:
"[I]f Merrick Garland had started a completely 100% [legitimate investigation] rather than thinking like let's not fan the flames... did you not watch what I watched? Did you not see the people storming the Capitol of the United States of America, beating cops and running congressmen and senators literally out of the building? You didn't see that? You didn't see a president and know that it was a concerted and planned effort on their part beginning all the way back from the day before the election when they knew they were going."
Hunter Biden characterized January 6 as a "planned conspiracy", his words, not a finding of any court or investigative body cited in the reporting. The New York Post noted the remarks represent a significant public break from his father's legacy, with Hunter openly faulting Garland's leadership while acknowledging his father bore ultimate responsibility for the appointment.
The argument amounts to a complaint that the Justice Department was simultaneously too aggressive and not aggressive enough, too willing to pursue Hunter Biden's tax and gun cases, but too timid to charge a sitting president's political opponent. That is not a principled critique of prosecutorial discretion. It is a demand that the DOJ serve as a political instrument, charging enemies and shielding allies.
Meanwhile, the legal questions around Hunter Biden's own firearm case have continued to ripple through the courts. The Supreme Court recently weighed in on the federal gun statute tied to his charges, a ruling with implications well beyond his individual case.
None of Hunter Biden's complaints about Garland's DOJ can be separated from the extraordinary pardon his father issued. Joe Biden pardoned his son for any offense "committed or may have committed" across a ten-year window, January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024. That is not a pardon for a specific conviction. It is a blanket shield, the kind of legal protection most Americans could never dream of receiving.
Hunter Biden had been under federal investigation since 2018. The DOJ pursued him on tax charges and an unlawful firearm purchase. Whatever the merits of those cases, they were resolved not by a jury or a judge but by a presidential father's pen. And now the beneficiary of that pardon sits on a podcast calling the man who investigated him the worst appointment of the administration.
Questions about the Biden DOJ's independence have extended beyond Hunter's case. Allegations of coordination between the Biden Justice Department and the judiciary on Trump-related probes have surfaced separately, adding to a broader pattern of concerns about whether the department operated as independently as the Biden White House publicly claimed.
And Hunter Biden has not limited his public commentary to Garland. His recent media tour has included appearances on multiple podcasts where he has defended embattled Democratic candidates and weighed in on party strategy, all while carrying the unique credential of being the only living presidential son pardoned for crimes he may or may not have committed.
Hunter Biden's critique of Garland contains a grain of truth wrapped in layers of self-interest. Garland's tenure at the DOJ drew criticism from across the political spectrum, from the right for perceived politicization, from the left for perceived timidity. Reasonable people can disagree about whether Garland led the department well.
But Hunter Biden is not a reasonable critic on this subject. He is the man the DOJ investigated, the man his father pardoned, and the man now arguing that the attorney general's real failure was not going after someone else hard enough. He wants credit for acknowledging "the buck stops with my dad" while spending the rest of the interview making clear he thinks the buck actually stops with Garland.
The Biden White House spent four years insisting it never interfered with the Justice Department. Now the former president's son is on a podcast complaining that the DOJ made the wrong calls, both in pursuing him and in not pursuing Trump. If that is what "church and state" looks like in the Biden family, the congregation has some explaining to do.
When the man who got the pardon is the one complaining about the prosecutor, the problem is not Merrick Garland. The problem is a political class that believes accountability is something that happens to other people.