“rather than merely pardoning his son for the gun crimes for which he was convicted and the tax crimes for which he pleaded guilty, the president’s pardon covers all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in” from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024. That language mirrors the language in Ford’s pardon of Nixon, which did not merely cover the Watergate scandal but extended to “all offenses against the United States” that Nixon “has committed or may have committed” between Jan. 20, 1969, and Aug. 9, 1974 — the exact span of Nixon’s presidency.
The starting date of Jan. 1, 2014, in the Biden pardon was surely not chosen randomly: Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company, in April 2014, while his father was vice president. Republicans have accused the younger Biden of illegally profiting off his position on that board.
The pardon came the day after Trump announced he would nominate Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist, as FBI director. Last year, when it appeared that Hunter Biden was on the verge of a plea deal to resolve his legal troubles, Patel criticized the deal as unusually lenient. (The deal later collapsed.)”
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“its sweeping nature means the Trump Justice Department will not be able to reopen the long-running criminal probe of the president’s son, according to Samuel Morison, a lawyer focused on clemency who spent 13 years in the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/02/hunter-biden-pardon-nixon-00192101