Democrats left fuming over Biden’s decision to pardon his son — after he repeatedly said he wouldn’t

By MJ Lee, Paula Reid and Michael Williams, CNN

(CNN) — President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son has left some Democrats fuming over his choice to repeatedly and unequivocally claim that he would never take that step, even though a pardon long appeared possible to Hunter Biden’s legal team.

Multiple officials who recently worked for Joe Biden said they never believed the president or White House aides speaking on his behalf when they insisted in recent months that a pardon for Hunter Biden was off the table.

“Anyone who was even close to the top knew that he was probably going to do this. Why did we pretend otherwise?” a former senior West Wing aide said.

A different former senior White House official said they and others around them had felt “certain” the president would ultimately pardon his son, while another ex-administration official put it this way: “It was extremely, painfully obvious that this was where things would end up.”

But even as some of Joe Biden’s closest allies were bewildered by the president’s eleventh-hour pardon, Hunter Biden and his lawyers long believed that one was possible, multiple sources told CNN. That comes despite the White House saying that a final decision on the pardon was reached only this weekend.

The president’s Sunday evening move to announce the pardon came after he spent time with his family, including Hunter, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, over the Thanksgiving holiday and has led lawmakers in Biden’s own party to criticize him. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said as recently as November 7 that a pardon for Hunter Biden was not being considered.

Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son presented a delicate balancing act for the president, who has long been fiercely loyal to his family, even when it comes at his own personal or political detriment.

Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury in June of illegally buying and possessing a gun as a drug user, after a gut-wrenching trial that delved into his drug abuse and family dysfunction. He then pleaded guilty in September to nine tax offenses, stemming from $1.4 million in taxes that he didn’t pay while spending lavishly on escorts, strippers, cars and drugs.

Sources familiar with Hunter Biden’s legal strategy said he would not have agreed to plead guilty in September to all nine charges in the federal tax case — exposing himself to the possibility of 17 years in prison and more than $1 million in fines — without the expectation of clemency.

The legal pressure on Hunter Biden mounted as his sentencing dates in December neared. People close to the president’s son said they didn’t want him to have to undergo sentencing.

In the days before the pardon was issued, Hunter Biden’s attorneys circulated a 50-page document outlining the six-year investigation of the president’s son and blaming Donald Trump and Republican allies for being the driving force behind his legal problems.

Though controversial, Joe Biden’s move to pardon a close family member or associate is not unheard of. Presidents from both parties have wielded their pardon power in ways that have raised eyebrows — though perhaps none did so after so strongly saying they would not, as Biden did.

Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, his daughter’s father-in-law, on his last month in office. President Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger, who had pleaded guilty to a drug charge, on his last day in office.

Biden’s public reversal this weekend and the issuance of a sweeping “full and unconditional” pardon for his son has some Democrats wondering why he had maintained that he wouldn’t take a course of action that had seemed simply inevitable to so many around the president.

“As a father, I get it,” Rep. Greg Landsman, an Ohio Democrat, said on X. “But as someone who wants people to believe in public service again, it’s a setback.”

Another Democrat, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, said Biden’s decision placed “personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.”

Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona said that while he respects the president, “I think he got this one wrong.”

“This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution,” Stanton said on X. “Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”

One former administration official suggested the blowback Monday would have been less intense had Biden not been adamant for months that he wasn’t seeking a pardon for his son.

“I wonder if there was a way to just be less righteous about it, and more like: ‘We’re not spending our time thinking about that,’” the former administration official said.

The ex-senior West Wing aide echoed that sentiment, saying there were multiple ways Biden could have left the door open to a pardon rather than ruling out its possibility altogether.

“Could he have been super honest?” they asked. “Like, ‘Hey, I don’t know, I can’t answer that right now.’”

Jean-Pierre, who on more than one occasion had told reporters that Biden would not pardon his son, admitted Monday that Trump’s victory in last month’s election had been a factor.

“It is a no — I can answer that, it’s a no,” Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One, when asked whether Biden would have pardoned his son if Vice President Kamala Harris had won the election.

But she then proceeded to insist she was not interested in discussing an event that did not happen: “I can speak to where we are today, and so I can’t speak to hypotheticals here. Where we are today, the president made this decision over the weekend.”

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