Meet Roger Clinton, a first-family member pardoned long before Hunter Biden
President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden on Sunday, averting a potential prison sentence on drug and gun charges. But Hunter Biden is far from the first member of the first family to be pardoned.
Among the most notable is Roger Clinton Jr., half brother of former president Bill Clinton. In January 2001, Clinton pardoned a slew of bold-faced names – former Cabinet members, an ex-governor, a fugitive heiress – and his cocaine-dealing younger sibling.
Roger Clinton was such a problem for the family that the Secret Service code-named him “Headache.” He was arrested in 1984, during an Arkansas State Police sting operation that then-Gov. Bill Clinton (D) allowed, and pleaded guilty in 1985 to conspiring to distribute cocaine.
Roger Clinton was released from federal prison in April 1986 and turned to a field that doesn’t always mind a criminal record: show business.
Roger had his break with a spontaneous performance at his older brother’s fifth gubernatorial inauguration, the Washington Post reported in 1993. He got a Hollywood job doing mostly nonglamorous work, but he also played music to warm up the studio audiences for “Designing Women,” “Hearts Afire” and “Evening Shade.” His R&B band was named Politics.
In 1992, he told the Post’s Lois Romano that he was doing well. Politics was playing several nights a week in Los Angeles. He had kicked his seven-gram-a-day cocaine habit and – save for a short relapse in 1987 – said he hadn’t had drugs in seven years.
His IMDb page lists several acting roles, including as himself in “The Nanny.” In 1993, the year the Clintons moved into the White House, he appeared as a character named Mayor Bubba in the horror movie “Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings.”
Eight years later, a real-world politician gave him the gift of a clean slate.
It’s not unheard of for presidents to use their pardon powers on family. The American tradition of pardoning family members goes back to Abraham Lincoln, who pardoned Emilie Todd Helm, his wife’s half sister, in 1863. (He also pardoned Hunter Biden’s great-great-great-grandfather.)
Donald Trump ended his first term by granting pardons to political allies, and one of them was Charles Kushner – the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The elder Kushner pleaded guilty in 2004 to 18 counts after he admitted to recruiting a sex worker to seduce the husband of a cooperating witness (his sister) and videotaping them having sex.
And in 2001, Roger Clinton’s link to pardons was just beginning. That’s when a House investigation found that the younger Clinton was paid to lobby on behalf of as many as 13 people who wanted pardons, The Post reported in 2002. According to the report, Roger Clinton admitted that he gave his brother a list of six people to be pardoned, but they were not.
One of those people was Rosario Gambino, a heroin dealer and a leader of the Gambino family’s mob operation. The Gambinos paid Roger Clinton at least $50,000 and gave him a gold Rolex watch, according to investigators.
The allegations came after House Republicans published a two-inch-thick report into last-minute pardons.
Roger Clinton “was involved in serious and reckless misconduct constituting a systematic effort to cash in on his fame as the President’s brother,” according to the report.
He was never charged with anything mentioned in the report. Almost one month to the day after being pardoned, Roger Clinton was arrested on a charge of drunken driving and pleaded guilty.