Joe Biden’s revocation of the pardon reflects family loyalty over legacy

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

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

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

For Biden, family has long been above almost everything. His adamant promise not to pardon his son came before he decided not to run for a second term. Therefore, despite the White House’s denials, it remained an open question whether he would keep his promise or choose to protect his son from impending punishment from President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.

The president was running out of time to make his decision. Hunter Biden faced a Dec. 12 sentencing hearing on federal gun charges and was scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 16 in a separate criminal trial after pleading guilty to federal tax evasion charges in September.

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

Sunday night’s announcement faces new scrutiny as a new week – and a new political era – begins in Washington. Even as Republican outrage mounted, it was an exercise for Biden of his fleeting executive power that underscored that his family comes first.

The president made it clear that he was particularly worried about what fate might befall his son in the new government of his successor.

“Hunter was singled out simply because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Biden said. Looking ahead, he added: “In trying to break Hunter, they tried to break me – and there’s no reason to think it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

It’s a monumental moment for Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who is about to bid farewell to a very different Washington than the one he spent more than half a century in. He announced his decision just hours before he left for a trip to Africa that is expected to be the last foreign trip of his presidency.

For the 82-year-old Biden, it was the biggest realization yet that politics in Washington and the USA have changed dramatically. But above all there is one thing not: the family.

After Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972 and lost his wife and daughter in a car accident, he trained every evening to return to Delaware to see his sons Hunter and Beau, making his daily Amtrak commute a central part of his career Life became history. After Beau Biden died of a glioblastoma brain tumor in 2015, the elder Biden’s bond with Hunter strengthened beyond words.

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

“Throughout my career, I have followed one simple principle: Just tell the American people the truth. They will be fair,” Biden said in his statement. “The truth is: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with it, I also believe that raw politics has infected this process and led to a miscarriage of justice – and when I made this decision this weekend, there was none . “It makes sense to delay it even further.”

Biden made the decision, said a long-time adviser, apparently aware of the harsh criticism that would come. Like so many Biden rulings, it was not one that came about after long and tiring discussions with his circle of advisors.

This was more of a family decision, with his role as father – the only title he will retain throughout his life – coming first.