Hunter Biden Names His Dad’s “Single Greatest Mistake” As President

Hunter Biden says he knows exactly who to blame for the “single greatest mistake” of Joe Biden’s presidency, and it wasn’t a policy battle, a campaign call, or anything to do with the border.

Instead, it came down to one person his father chose to put in one of the most powerful jobs in Washington. The claim came during an appearance on the I’ve Had It podcast hosted by Jennifer Welch.

Clips spread online, as Hunter argued the Justice Department moved too slowly after January 6. In the interview, Biden said his father bore ultimate responsibility for a single appointment he believes defined and undermined the entire administration.

“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,” Hunter Biden said.

He argued Garland should have moved faster after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Hunter said Garland should have started “a completely 100% legitimate investigation” instead of worrying about whether it would “fan the flames.”

“Did you not watch what I watched?” Hunter asked. “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 then tied the criticism directly to his father’s judgment. “The buck has to stop with my dad. He was the president and he chose him,” Hunter said, criticizing Garland for what he viewed as a slow response toward Trump after Jan. 6.

Welch, who has been described by outlets including The Advocate, LGBTQ Nation, and Crooks and Liars as a progressive commentator, did not challenge the premise. “I completely agree,” she said on air, adding that she writes about the issue in her book, Not Today, Fascists.

Welch and Hunter both described Garland as a “moderate,” and Welch argued Biden picked him partly because he felt bad about Garland’s failed Supreme Court nomination under former President Barack Obama.

“Obama picks this milquetoast candidate. Your dad is a decent man, felt bad about what happened to Merrick Garland. And he played integrity politics,” Welch said. She added that Garland then acted as if “we can't upset these crusty White Republicans.”

The comments also revived earlier reporting about Joe Biden’s own view of Garland. Breitbart reported that Biden privately regretted naming him attorney general, saying the Justice Department moved too slowly against Trump and too aggressively against Hunter. According to Bob Woodward’s 2024 book War, Biden told an associate he “Should never have picked Garland” while discussing the prosecution of his son.

Reaction split sharply, though not always along predictable lines. Some Democratic-aligned voices focused less on defending Garland and more on frustration that Hunter Biden keeps pulling attention back to the Biden family, with some lashing out at the family for dragging the party back into debates it would rather leave behind, particularly around the 2024 campaign and Joe Biden's fitness for office.

A year earlier, a Democratic source had already told the New York Post that "Hunter Biden continues to personify loss in a way that mainly helps Republicans," a sentiment that resurfaced among some Democrats as his latest round of headline-grabbing comments made the rounds.

Conservative commentators took a different angle, pointing to the fact that Hunter criticized Garland despite receiving a sweeping pardon from his father before Biden left office.

The far-right publication the Gateway Pundit went further, arguing the irony ran even deeper: Garland's DOJ had already used the justice system aggressively against Trump, his supporters, and other conservatives, charging more than 1,500 January 6th defendants, and Hunter's real complaint was simply that it hadn't gone far enough. Meanwhile, the outlet noted, Hunter himself walked away with a pardon. The outlet called the hypocrisy “staggering.”

The Garland comments weren't the only part of the podcast that made waves. Hunter also claimed there's a “closeted gay mafia, largely Republican,” operating in Washington, D.C., arguing that politicians who spend their careers hiding their sexuality end up channeling that inner conflict into hostility toward everyone else.

He went as far as naming the late Sen. Lindsey Graham as someone he believed belonged on that list, telling Welch “everybody knows” Graham was gay, a claim Graham consistently denied during his lifetime. Hunter framed it as a bigger issue than Washington's usual power struggles, calling it the “closetocracy” rather than the oligarchy.

Hunter's broader podcast appearance also drew coverage for his remarks admitting he regretted taking the Burisma board seat. Still, the Garland comments cut deepest, turning a routine podcast riff into a rare public break with his father over one of the defining calls of his presidency.