NEW YORK — Former President Bill Clinton defended Joe Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter Biden on Wednesday, contending that the president’s son was facing tougher consequences than a typical citizen for his crimes.

“I personally believe that the president is almost certainly right that his son received completely different treatment than he would have if he hadn’t been the president’s son, in this kind of case,” the former president said onstage Wednesday at the 2024 DealBook Summit.

Clinton’s defense of Biden’s controversial pardon lands as party leaders grapple from the fallout. California Gov. Gavin Newsom broke with the president on Tuesday, saying he was disappointed even though he understood why Biden decided to grant his son clemency, echoing several other elected Democrats who oppose the pardon and worry about its consequences.

Many presidents — including Clinton and President-elect Donald Trump — have used their executive power to pardon convictions or commute sentences handed down to close friends and family members. But Biden had insisted for the last year that he would not do the same and that he would abide by a jury decision that found his son guilty of three felony counts stemming from his 2018 purchase of a handgun while he was struggling with addiction. Hunter Biden also pleaded guilty in September to tax evasion and other federal tax crimes. The pardon allows the president’s son to avoid two criminal sentencing hearings that had been set for this month.

Hunter’s pardon unleashed a torrent of criticism claiming the president provided political cover for Trump to issue wide-ranging pardons to his own allies in order to spare them from prosecution. When asked onstage about whether the Hunter Biden decision would damage any future case Democrats could make about being a party that adheres to the rule of law, Clinton scoffed but didn’t deny it.

“We had a lot better record than Republicans did, didn’t we? And what good did it do us?” he said. “I mean, nobody believes anybody anymore.”

The former president said there should be a broader conversation about how pardon applications are processed and approved. He also pushed back on recent comparisons to his own decision to pardon his younger brother, Roger Clinton, for a 1985 cocaine trafficking and conspiracy conviction.

“My brother did 14 months in federal prison for something he did when he was 20,” he said, adding that his reasoning hinged on the questions of whether his younger brother would “ever be able to vote again? Will he ever be able to have normal citizenship responsibilities?”