President Biden had seemed so adamant. He would leave the Justice Department to make its own decisions.
Hunter Biden would not be granted clemency for gun and tax convictions just because he was the president’s son.
But that was before he dropped out of the presidential race. A lot has changed since then. A lifetime in politics has just weeks left to run.
Joe Biden‘s presidential legacy will be marked more by his failure to keep the country from swinging to the Republicans under Donald Trump than it will be for a last-minute pardon of his son.
A reversal, yes – but hardly surprising he is choosing family first.
The decision was announced after a weekend in Nantucket, which has long been the Biden family’s traditional Thanksgiving getaway spot.
Hunter was there with his wife and four-year-old son, Beau – named after his late brother who died of brain cancer. His sister Ashley was there too, as was the first lady. A tight family circle.
Senator Joe Biden first went to Nantucket for Thanksgiving in 1975, with Jill, Beau and Hunter after his first wife and baby girl were killed in a car crash.
He has endured great personal tragedy, as the nation knows, compounded recently by Hunter Biden’s struggles with substance abuse.
So his words have special resonance: “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this.”
The Bidens have long maintained the cases against Hunter Biden were pursued as vigorously as they were because Donald Trump saw an opportunity in them to attack his political rival.
With a sweeping pardon that will see Hunter Biden immune from prosecution for any crime he might have committed since as far back as 1 January 2014, the president is ensuring his son is spared any further criminal investigation, especially into alleged influence peddling in his business affairs in China and Ukraine which is a particular Republican contention.
Joe Biden is pulling out all the stops. Republicans especially may question why.