President Joe Biden’s blanket pardon of his son Hunter represents an extraordinary exercise of executive power, prompting accusations from both parties that it risks damaging both the president’s place in political history and public confidence in the legal system is further damaged.
But for Biden, facing the prospect of an incoming president who has threatened to take revenge on his political enemies, it might simply have been worth the risk, according to allies interviewed after his abrupt decision Sunday night. The president, they said, was faced with a decision that pitted his responsibility as a father against political considerations — after a decades-long attempt to balance the two.
“In the president’s situation, he couldn’t be objective — everyone knows what his family means to him, especially given the tragedies in his life,” said former Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), a longtime friend and ally of Biden . “If you’re a father and you have this power, I don’t see how anyone can blame the president of the United States for telling the world that his son has been through enough.”
Some Democrats have criticized the pardon, accusing Biden of putting his personal interests above the country and worrying that it would give newly elected President Donald Trump more ammunition to justify weaponizing his federal authority once he takes power is.
Others, while sympathetic to the dilemma Biden faced, warned that such a sweeping pardon would only strengthen, rather than undermine, scrutiny of Hunter and the broader Biden family.
But the decision ultimately came down to his overriding belief that Hunter had been through “enough” — and confidence that the American people would understand, or at least not care enough for it to matter.
Biden, who said he decided over Thanksgiving weekend to root out Hunter’s crimes, had become concerned that his son’s impending sentencing would be particularly difficult for Hunter and his broader family, a person familiar with the matter said. case and to whom anonymity was granted. discuss private deliberations.
The pardon will likely be one of the final and most personally consequential acts of a period in which Biden has been overshadowed by a series of unflattering revelations related to Hunter’s drug and alcohol abuse. And it amounts to a kind of tragic bookend to a career that began with an equally momentous personal decision: whether to stay in politics after a car crash killed his first wife and daughter just weeks after Biden’s election in the Senate.
Then it was young Hunter and his older brother Beau who made Biden doubt whether he should take the oath of office and commute between Washington and Delaware. Biden chose to serve out his term, beginning a decades-long climb that included moments of intense grief, including Beau’s death in 2015 from cancer and Hunter’s addiction.
Although Joe Biden often cited Beau as a driving force in his decision to run for president in 2020, it was Hunter who colored his last few years as president.
Biden refused to distance himself from his son during the federal trials that resulted in Hunter’s convictions, despite the urging of advisers concerned about the personal toll it took and the risk of political backlash. Hunter later emerged as an increasingly visible advocate for staying in the presidential race as his father weighed whether to continue his disastrous June debate — a role that some officials viewed with suspicion given his lack of political experience and outsized personal interest .
Biden maintained throughout that he would not forgive Hunter, insisting in June that he would “abide by the jury’s decision.” White House officials, including press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, have repeatedly ruled out pardons in the months since.
“Our answer is: no,” Jean-Pierre said earlier this month.
That reversal created its own wave of criticism, beyond the pardon itself, with reporters and lawmakers alike wondering when Biden had changed his mind. On Monday, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told reporters that he would also have pardoned his son — but he objected to the “lie.”
“Don’t tell us you’re not going to do it and then do it,” he said.
Some allies privately believed that he would always relent and pardon. But the calculus seemed to shift definitively after the election, and as Hunter’s sentencing date approached. Trump’s victory increased the likelihood that Hunter would be subject to years of additional investigation — a prospect that Biden concluded was primarily designed to “break” his son and disrupt his attempt at recovery. And with Biden set to leave politics in less than two months, the personal cost of going back on his word would be much lower than before.
“I think anyone who doesn’t understand why they would grant this pardon has never loved someone who suffered from addiction,” said Lisa Goodman, the founder of Equality Delaware, who has known the Biden family for decades. “He is a family man, through and through. And so I wasn’t surprised that, in the grand scheme of things, he would grant a pardon.”
Nevertheless, the decision has alarmed some who now worry that the broad nature of the pardon — which includes all crimes committed over the past decade — will ultimately cloud the distinction Biden tried to make during his presidency as a leader committed to repairing of post-Trump norms. bend first term.
“He was right to pardon his son,” said Anthony Coley, a former Biden Justice Department official. “His reason for doing this, namely that the prosecutions are political, is wrong. Republicans will use Biden’s rhetoric as a perceived proof point to try to reform and re-create DOJ in Donald Trump’s image.”
Trump immediately used the pardon to renew his call for clemency for insurrectionists involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, while other Republicans sought to use it to fuel doubts about the Justice Department and the FBI.
“Joe Biden was elected to bring order to chaos, to restore institutions and restore norms,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian and researcher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “And this pardon blurs the lines in an unnecessary way.”
Biden’s defenders pointed to the several legal experts who supported his decision, noting that the crimes for which Hunter was convicted are rarely, if ever, prosecuted so aggressively. A former member of Biden’s 2020 campaign dismissed Democrats’ concerns about its broader impact on the public, arguing that parents would also agree with Biden’s decision.
On Monday, Jean-Pierre called Biden’s move a difficult one as he believed Hunter was unfairly targeted, trying to separate it from his confidence in the justice system in general.
“Two things can be true: the president believes in the justice system and the Justice Department. And he also believes that his son was politically singled out,” she said.
But at his core, allies said, Biden believed his son had done the hard work to turn his life around. He feared that another prolonged period of attacks and investigations could jeopardize that recovery. And for another two months, he found himself in the unique position of making it all go away. So he did.
“Let’s be honest: I think the president blames himself for his public service that his political enemies have used against Hunter and unfairly exploited against Hunter – and as a human being, as a father, you can’t divorce that. ” Jones said. “I don’t think this was an easy decision for Joe Biden, I really don’t… But this ended up being much, much more personal. And the stakes have become so much higher.”
Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.
