Hunter Biden Says His Father's Biggest Mistake Was Picking Merrick Garland

Hunter Biden says his father's worst call in office wasn't a policy vote or a foreign crisis. It was picking Merrick Garland to run the Justice Department.

The younger Biden made the comment on the "I've Had It" podcast, hosted by Jennifer Welch, in an episode that aired Sunday. Asked about what Welch called "capitulation by Democrats" in pushing Garland's nomination in the first place, Hunter Biden didn't hedge.

"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 said, according to both Fox News and the New York Post, which carried near-identical transcripts of the exchange.

Two Different Complaints, One Target

Welch framed her question around a grievance shared by many Democrats: that Garland's DOJ investigated Hunter Biden but never charged Donald Trump. She put it bluntly: "One of the things that pisses me off is the Merrick Garland DOJ and the not prosecuting of Trump. And that they prosecuted you."

Hunter Biden agreed with the premise but framed Garland's failure as one of excessive caution rather than corruption. He argued Garland treated the DOJ's independence from the White House as sacred to a fault.

"He played by the Constitution and the tradition that the president will never... involve himself in any decision-making as relates to anything at the Department of Justice," Hunter Biden said. "So, I guarantee you there was a division between church and state there."

Hunter Biden is criticizing Garland for respecting the norm that presidents don't direct DOJ prosecutions against their political rivals — the same norm at the center of years of political fights over whether it should bend for or against Trump. Whether that norm should have been set aside to pursue Trump over January 6 is a separate question from whether it was properly applied to Hunter Biden.

The January 6 Claim

Hunter Biden went further, telling Welch that Garland should have pursued Trump aggressively over the Capitol riot, calling it a "planned conspiracy" dating back to before the 2020 election.

"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?" he said. "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."

That characterization remains Hunter Biden's stated opinion, offered plainly as such on a podcast — not a claim tied to any adjudicated legal finding described in the reporting on the interview.

Garland's Own Record With Hunter Biden

Garland's Justice Department did investigate and prosecute Hunter Biden on tax charges and an unlawful firearm purchase, an investigation that had begun in 2018, during Trump's first term.

Joe Biden pardoned his son during the final weeks of his presidency, covering offenses "committed or may have committed" from Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 1, 2024. Hunter Biden has previously criticized his father's use of the pardon power even as he benefited from it, a tension he didn't resolve on this podcast either.

Both Fox News and the New York Post ran essentially identical accounts of the interview, down to the quotes, and neither outlet challenged Hunter Biden's characterization of the January 6 case or pressed him on the contradiction between blaming DOJ independence for Trump's non-prosecution while also blaming that same independence for his own prosecution. Neither piece sought comment from Garland or his office.

What's Unresolved

The bigger open question is whether Hunter Biden's account reflects an actual rift within the Biden family and administration over Garland's tenure, or whether it's retroactive spin from someone who was personally prosecuted by that same DOJ. Welch didn't ask him to reconcile the two, and he didn't offer to.