After promising not to pardon Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden reversed course and issued the controversial pardon for his son on Dec. 1, 2024. Kalshi, a popular prediction market, implied a 31% chance of Hunter receiving a pardon from his father before the news became public. By the time the market reached 99%, trading volume had surpassed $700,000.
Hunter Biden faced felony charges for lying about his drug use on a gun purchase form and for tax evasion. His sentencing for the tax charges was set for Dec. 16, just over two weeks after his pardon.
President Biden pledged not to pardon Hunter Biden in June 2024. On Nov. 8, 2024, the White House Press Secretary repeated the claim that Biden would not pardon his son.
In a statement, the White House defended the move:
Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.
While prediction markets didn’t give President Biden a high chance of pardoning his son, one journalist saw this coming.
Why Bob Woodward believed Biden would pardon his son
During his press tour for his new book War, journalist Bob Woodward appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Woodward reported that Biden regretted appointing Merrick Garland as the Attorney General, because Garland appointed the special council that investigated Hunter Biden.
In War, Woodward reports a conversation Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had with Biden after the presidential debate. Woodward wrote that “Blinken knew Hunter’s struggles had derailed Biden emotionally much, much more than any outsider or the public realized.” One of Woodward’s sources for the book “called this ‘the real war,’ the battle that affected Biden more than Ukraine, more than Israel.”
Even though Woodward’s prediction was public, he gave it in a noisy intellectual environment. The Biden administration’s repeated assurances that Hunter would not be pardoned, and the lack of interference following Hunter’s convictions, reinforced the prevailing belief that the president would refrain from granting a pardon.
Prediction markets weren’t right or wrong. They reflected the odds based on the publicly available information at the time. There were good reasons to think that President Biden would not pardon his son — some traders, however, saw through them.
Manifold sweepstakes market gives Biden an 18% chance of pardoning Hunter.
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) October 25, 2024
I think that's too low. What else does he have to lose at this point? But the fact that it is this low shows the market believes in Biden's fundamental integrity. What's the MAGA explanation for this? pic.twitter.com/Jzn54VazOx
