Joe Biden’s pardon reversal reflects family loyalty over legacy

Analysis by Jeff Zeleny, CNN

(CNN) — In the end, President Joe Biden acted as a father.

The decision to issue a blanket pardon for his son Hunter will forever be a part of the president’s legacy. Across an extraordinary five decades in public life, with a long rise from the Senate to the Oval Office, his Sunday night declaration puts an exclamation point – and a question mark – on Biden’s tenure in a changing era of American politics.

“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” Biden said in the closing words of a statement issued by the White House. It came at the end of a Thanksgiving holiday during which he reached a final decision on his plan to pardon his oldest son after spending the weekend together in Nantucket.

For Biden, family has long come above nearly everything. His relentless pledge to not pardon his son was delivered before he stepped away from running for a second term, so it remained an open question – despite White House denials – whether he would uphold his promise or choose to protect his son from any forthcoming punishment from President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.

Time was running out for the president to make his decision. Hunter Biden faced a sentencing hearing on December 12 for his conviction on federal gun charges and was also scheduled to be sentenced in a separate criminal case on December 16, after pleading guilty in September on federal tax evasion charges.

“I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making,” the president said in his statement, “and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.”

The Sunday night announcement will be freshly scrutinized as a new week – and a new political era – dawns in Washington. Even as Republican outrage poured in, for Biden, it was an exercise of his fleeting executive authority that underscored how his family comes first.

The president made clear he was worried, above all, about what fate could befall his son in his successor’s new administration.

“Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” Biden said. Looking to the future, he added, “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

It’s a monumental moment for Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who is poised to take his leave from a far different Washington from the one he spent more than half a century in. He made his decision known only hours before setting off for a trip to Africa, which is expected to be the final foreign trip of his presidency.

It was the biggest acknowledgment yet that for Biden, 82, Washington and American politics has changed dramatically. But one thing, above all, has not: family.

After Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972 and he lost his wife and daughter in a car accident, he would train back to Delaware every night to see his sons, Hunter and Beau, with his daily commute by Amtrak becoming a central part of his story. After Beau Biden died of a glioblastoma brain tumor in 2015, the elder Biden’s bond with Hunter strengthened beyond words.

It’s that long background that is central to any decisions involving his family, a longtime Biden friend said Sunday night, and will forever outweigh any criticism or controversy.

“For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded,” Biden said in his statement. “Here’s the truth: 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 made the decision, a longtime adviser said, clearly mindful of the searing criticism to come. It was not one reached, like so many Biden judgments, after long and tedious discussions with his circle of advisers.

This was a far more of a family decision, where his role as a father – the only title he will keep for life – came above all else.

The-CNN-Wire
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