Joe Biden Has Pardoned His Son Hunter — Can Donald Trump Revoke That Pardon?

On the evening of Sunday, Dec. 1, President Joe Biden announced that he would grant a sweeping, 11-year pardon to his son, Hunter Biden, despite previous assertions that he would not interfere.

"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," he said in his statement.

On Truth Social, president-elect Donald Trump responded negatively, calling the pardon itself "an abuse and miscarriage of justice." Now, folks are wondering whether Trump will revoke the pardon once he is sworn into office. Is it possible?

Hunter Biden's pardon clears him of multiple convictions, including "illegally buying and possessing a gun as a drug user," as well as "nine tax offenses, stemming from $1.4 million in taxes that he didn’t pay," per CNN. Biden's decision hasn't gone over well with Democrats or Republicans, leading folks to wonder whether Donald Trump could possibly revoke the pardon while in office.

It wouldn't be the first time in history. In fact, President Andrew Johnson issued several pardons on his last day in office — and President Ulysses S. Grant, on his very first day, reversed three. However, he did so by physically recalling the U.S. Marshal so that the pardons could not be delivered.

However, nowadays, presidential pardons go into effect almost instantly, meaning that this sneaky method would no longer be feasible.

With the way our justice system works today, revoking a presidential pardon would be "impossible," per ABC.

"You can stop something that hasn't been completed, but you can't take back a pardon that's been completed," said Jeffrey Crouch, assistant professor of American politics at American University and author of the book The Presidential Pardon Power. "The Hunter Biden language in the pardon suggests any and all federal offenses ... and there's no taking that back."

One other example of a presidential pardon being revoked came from George W. Bush in 2008, who reversed one of his own. He originally pardoned Isaac Robert Toussie, a man who had been convicted of mail fraud, as well as "making false statements" to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

However, just one day later, he walked back the decision after new information came to light regarding Toussie's past offenses, according to the White House.

While Joe Biden is the first president to issue a pardon to his child, he definitely isn't the first to issue a pardon to a family member. In 2001, then-President Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, Roger Clinton Jr., for a 1985 cocaine possession and drug-trafficking conviction.

More recently, at the end of his term, Donald Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, his daughter Ivanka's father-in-law, for convictions of "preparing false tax returns, witness retaliation, and making false statements," per an official White House statement.