Interesting

 Termite asks in comments:

Don't pardons generally come AFTER a conviction? Hunter has been convicted of anything, just charged/indicted.

Yes, generally.  When I was a Parole Officer I would occasionally do a clemency investigation for the Pardon Board.  These offenders were serving time, or had completed their sentence and were looking for some time of legal relief.

However, there is precedent for summarily pardoning an offender.  Those of us old enough to have been at Woodstock recall when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon following Nixon's resignation.  No charges, no conviction, no sentence.  Just a "Get Out Of Jail" card.   It happens.

I was excited this morning to hear that Biden is headed to Angola.  Then I remembered that there are two Angolas.  One, a country in Africa.  The other, the main prison for the Louisiana prison system.

I was last at Angola during the late '80s for training.  At the time, the horse guards on the farm were still using Winchester lever guns in the fields.  Back in those days, if you wanted to rank the worst prisons in the US, among the top ten would be Angola in Louisiana, Parchmanin Mississippi, and The Walls in Texas.