Hunter Biden used a podcast appearance to blame former Attorney General Merrick Garland for the political fallout his family now faces, calling the appointment his father's single worst decision, a striking claim from a man who accepted one of the broadest presidential pardons in modern history.
The younger Biden appeared Sunday on the "I've Had It" podcast, hosted by Jennifer Welch, and delivered a blunt assessment of the Biden administration's Justice Department. Garland, he said, failed to hold President Donald Trump accountable for the events of January 6 while simultaneously pursuing an investigation into Hunter Biden himself over tax charges and an unlawful firearm purchase. The result, in Hunter Biden's telling, is a DOJ that managed to alienate the Biden family without delivering the prosecution Democrats wanted most.
That framing, Garland as the root cause of Democratic woes, raises an obvious question Hunter Biden did not dwell on: if the attorney general was so catastrophically wrong for the job, why did his father keep Garland in place for the full term, and why did Joe Biden later pardon his own son for any offense committed or potentially committed over a full decade?
The core of Hunter Biden's complaint centers on the January 6 Capitol breach. He told Welch that Garland chose caution over action when the evidence, in his view, demanded an aggressive prosecution of Trump from the start.
Fox News Digital reported Hunter Biden's remarks in detail. On the podcast, he laid out his case against Garland in personal terms:
"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 went further, describing Garland's approach to the Capitol breach as willfully passive. Hunter Biden argued the attorney general tried to avoid "fanning the flames" rather than launching what he called a "completely 100% legitimate investigation."
"[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?"
He alleged the events of January 6 were part of a "concerted and planned effort" by the Trump administration that began "all the way back from the day before the election when they knew they were going." He offered no evidence for that claim during the podcast exchange.
The podcast host did not play a neutral interviewer. Welch framed the conversation around what she called the "capitulation by Democrats" to Republicans, and she attacked Garland's record before Hunter Biden weighed in.
"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 traced Garland's appointment back to President Barack Obama, who had previously pushed Garland as a Supreme Court nominee, a pick Senate Republicans blocked in 2016. She described Garland as a "milquetoast candidate" whom Joe Biden elevated out of sympathy.
"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 with that framing. He called the appointment a "massive mistake" and credited his father with maintaining a strict separation between the White House and DOJ decision-making, a claim that sits uncomfortably alongside the pardon his father ultimately issued.
Hunter Biden acknowledged that "the buck has to stop with my dad" for choosing Garland. But he insisted Joe Biden honored constitutional norms by refusing to intervene in Justice Department operations.
"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 claim deserves scrutiny. The DOJ under Garland investigated Hunter Biden over tax charges and an unlawful firearm purchase, an investigation that began in 2018, during President Trump's first term. The probe continued under Garland's tenure. Then, during the final weeks of his presidency, Joe Biden pardoned his son for any offense he "has committed or may have committed" from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024.
That pardon covered a full decade of potential criminal exposure. It was not limited to the tax and gun charges. It swept in anything Hunter Biden might have done over those ten years, known or unknown. If Joe Biden truly maintained a wall between the Oval Office and the DOJ, the pardon itself was the moment he tore it down, not to hold someone accountable, but to shield his own son from consequences.
Hunter Biden's complaint, stripped to its core, amounts to this: Garland was too cautious to prosecute Trump, but too aggressive in investigating a Biden. The convenient middle ground, a DOJ that goes after the right's leaders while leaving the first family alone, is not "independence." It is the opposite.
The podcast appearance fits a pattern. Since receiving his father's pardon, Hunter Biden has stepped back into public life with increasing confidence, positioning himself as a victim of political persecution rather than a beneficiary of extraordinary family privilege.
Neither Merrick Garland nor the Justice Department responded to Hunter Biden's remarks, and the former president has not publicly addressed his son's characterization of the Garland appointment as his worst decision.
Hunter Biden's legal entanglements have generated extensive public attention. He recently collected a $1.7 million defamation award after a former CEO abandoned his own defense in a lawsuit brought by the younger Biden. And the Biden family's handling of Hunter's troubles has remained a sensitive subject, with Jill Biden's memoir revealing lingering doubts about a key witness in his gun trial.
None of that history makes Hunter Biden the right messenger for a lecture on DOJ accountability. A man who walked free on a blanket pardon, one broad enough to cover crimes not yet discovered, now wants the public to believe the real problem was that the attorney general lacked the courage to prosecute someone else. That is not a call for justice. It is a complaint that the machinery of government did not work exclusively in his family's favor.