President Biden did not lie to Americans earlier this year when he repeatedly promised not to pardon his son, Hunter; rather, he simply changed his mind over the weekend, the White  House said on Monday.  

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on the way to Angola, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president “wrestled with” the issue of pardoning his son while the Biden family was spending their Thanksgiving holiday on Nantucket.

“He came to this decision this weekend,” Ms. Jean-Pierre told reporters. “He said he wrestled with this because he believes in the justice system, but he also believes the war of politics infected this and led to a miscarriage of justice.”

“If you are looking at this in a good-faith way … you can’t reach any other conclusion,” Ms. Jean-Pierre added. “Hunter was singled out because his last name was Biden, because he was the president’s son. That’s what we saw.”

Mr. Biden was first asked about the potential for a pardon in June while his son was on trial for buying a firearm while addicted to drugs and then lying about it to the government. When asked if he would give his son any help, the president simply said, “no.” 

Ultimately, Mr. Biden was convicted of multiple felonies in the gun case, after an embarrassing trial that laid bare his sordid life as a drug and alcohol addict, as well as Biden family dysfunction. Mr. Biden would later plead guilty, on the eve of a second trial, of tax evasion for failing to pay taxes on millions of dollars he made trading on his father’s name with foreign entities, including Ukrainians. Following this guilty plea, the White House said again that no pardon would be forthcoming. White House aides repeated this pledge after the election.

Only according to one report, the president quietly made plans to pardon his son for his crimes in the wake of his conviction in the firearms case.

According to NBC News, the president discussed pardoning his son with close aides around the time his son was first convicted, though they decided that they would have to say publicly he would not do so, only to later issue a pardon after the 2024 election.  

The scope of the younger Biden’s pardon is unusual, given that it absolves him of any and all “crimes against the United States”, or federal crimes, that may have been committed between 2014 and the end of Sunday, December 1, 2024. The former United States Pardon Attorney Margaret Love, who advised Presidents Bush and Clinton on pardons and clemency from 1990 to 1997, says the only other “full and unconditional” pardon she has ever seen was issued for President Nixon after he resigned his office. 

It is especially notable that the pardon grants reprieve for 2014 and 2015 because the younger Mr. Biden was never changed by Special Counsel David Weiss for any crimes during those years. His gun crime occurred in 2018, and his tax evasion charges only cover 2016 through 2019. 

Yet in 2014, Mr. Biden began his consulting for the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma while his father was the sitting vice president. Mr. Weiss, whose investigation of Mr. Biden was still underway when the pardon came down, had been expected by many legal observers to charge the first son with felonies for violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act. This little enforced law was employed in recent years by federal prosecutors to go after both prominent Republicans and Democrats, usually for interactions with Ukraine.

At least one Democratic member of Congress says that such a sweeping blanket of protection for the president’s own son sets a dangerous precedent for other presidents. 

“The unilateral and near-unlimited nature of the pardon makes it one of the most potent powers held by the president, but with great power comes great responsibility,” Congressman Jared Golden, who narrowly won re-election in his Maine swing district last month, said in a statement to Axios. “As a father, I understand the desire to do everything you can to help and protect your children, but I worry such a sweeping pardon for a close family member sets an unfortunate precedent that undermines trust in the office of the president.”

Mr. Weiss’s investigation of Mr. Biden is now presumably rendered moot, but he could still prosecute other people whose misconduct he discovered in the course of his investigation. Mr. Weiss’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.