Biden's broken promise on pardoning his son Hunter is raising new questions about his legacy

WASHINGTON -

President Joe Biden’s decision to go back on his word and issue a categorical pardon for his son, Hunter, just weeks before his scheduled sentencing on gun and tax convictions was a surprise that wasn't all that surprising.

Not to those who had witnessed the president’s shared anguish over his two sons after the boys survived a car crash that killed Biden's first wife and a daughter more than a half-century ago. Or to those who heard the president regularly lament the death of his older son, Beau, from cancer or voice concerns — largely in private — about Hunter’s sobriety and health after years of deep addiction.

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But by choosing to put his family first, the 82-year-old president — who had pledged to restore a fractured public’s trust in the nation’s institutions and respect for the rule of law — has raised new questions about his already teetering legacy.

“This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation,” Colorado's Democratic Gov. Jared Polis wrote in a post on X. He added that while he could sympathize with Hunter Biden’s struggles, “no one is above the law, not a President and not a President’s son.”

Biden aides and allies had been resigned to the prospect of the president using his extraordinary power in the waning days of his presidency to ensure his son wouldn't see time behind bars, especially after Donald Trump ’s win. The president's supporters have long viewed Biden's commitment to his family as an asset overall, even if Hunter's personal conduct and tangled business dealings were seen as a persistent liability.

But the pardon comes as Biden has become increasingly isolated since the loss to Trump by Vice President Kamala Harris, who jumped in to the race after the president’s catastrophic debate against Trump in June forced his exit from the election.

He is still struggling to resolve thorny foreign policy issues in the Middle East and Europe. And he must reckon with his decision to seek reelection despite his advanced age, which helped return the Oval Office to Trump, a man he had warned time and again was a threat to democratic norms.

Trump has gleefully planned to undo Biden’s signature achievements on climate change and reverse the Democrat's efforts to reinvigorate the country’s alliances, all while standing poised to take credit for a strengthening economy and billions in infrastructure investments that are in the pipeline for the coming years.

And now, Biden has handed the Republican a pretext to carry through with sweeping plans to upend the Department of Justice as the Republican vows to seek retribution against supposed adversaries.

“This pardon is just deflating for those of us who’ve been out there for a few years yelling about what a threat Trump is,” Republican Joe Walsh, a vocal Trump critic, said on MSNBC. “‘Nobody’s above the law,’ we’ve been screaming. Well, Joe Biden just made clear his son Hunter is above the law.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday from Air Force One that the president wrestled with the decision but ultimately felt his son’s case had been tainted by politics, though she tried to thread the needle — insisting he had faith in the Justice Department.

“He believes in the justice system, but he also believes that politics infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice,” she said.

But Trump has already made very clear his intent to disrupt federal law enforcement with his initial nomination of outspoken critics like former Rep. Matt Gaetz to be attorney general and Kash Patel to replace FBI Director Christopher Wray, who nominally still has more than two years left in his term. (Gaetz ended up quickly withdrawing his name amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations.)

Reacting to the pardon, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement, “That system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what President Trump will do as he returns to the White House with an overwhelming mandate from the American people."

In a social media post, the president-elect himself called the pardon “such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice.”

“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump asked. He was referring to those convicted in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters aiming to overturn the 2020 presidential election result.

Biden and his spokespeople had repeatedly and flatly ruled out the president granting his son a pardon.

In June, Biden told reporters as his son faced trial in the Delaware gun case: “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”

In July, Jean-Pierre told reporters: “It's still a no. It will be a no. It is a no. And I don’t have anything else to add. Will he pardon his son? No."

In November, days after Trump's victory, Jean-Pierre reiterated that message: “Our answer stands, which is no."

Neither Biden nor the White House explained the shift in the president's thinking, and it was his broken promise as much as his act of clemency that was a lightning rod.

He is hardly the first president to pardon a family member or friend entangled in political dealings. Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger for drug charges after he had served his sentence roughly a decade earlier. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

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Yet Biden held himself up as placing his respect for the American judicial system and rule of law over his own personal concerns — trying to draw a deliberate contrast with Trump, who tested the bounds of his authority like few predecessors.

Inside the White House, the timing of the pardon was surprising to some who believed Biden would put it off as long as possible, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. It came just after Biden spent extended time over the past week with Hunter and other family members on Nantucket in Massachusetts, a family tradition for Thanksgiving.

“I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further,” Biden said in a statement announcing the pardon.

Some in the administration have privately expressed anguish that the substance of Biden’s statement, including his claim of an unfair politically-tinged prosecution of his son, resembled complaints Trump — who faced now-abandoned indictments over his role in trying to subvert the 2020 election — has been making for years about the Justice Department.

Biden said the charges in his son's cases "came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.” Many legal experts agreed that the charges against the younger Biden were somewhat unusual, but the facts of the offenses were hardly in dispute, as Hunter wrote about his gun purchase while addicted to illegal drugs in his memoir and ultimately pleaded guilty to the tax charges.

The pardon too was unusual, coming before Hunter Biden was even sentenced and covering not just the gun and tax offenses against his son, but also anything else he might have done going back to the start of 2014.

It's a move that could limit the ability of the Trump Justice Department to investigate the younger Biden's unsavory foreign business dealings, or to find new ground on which to bring criminal charges related to that time period.

Biden, in his statement, asked for consideration: “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision."

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Associated Press Writer Aamer Madhani in Washington and Will Weissert aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.