US President Biden’s growing worries spurred son’s pardon without delay

Momentum for the pardon began building this summer, after a gut-wrenching trial that saw the conviction of Hunter on gun charges and the president’s exit from the 2024 contest after a disastrous debate against GOP rival Donald Trump.

Trump’s electoral win, and some of the nominees the president-elect has floated for top law enforcement posts since, made Biden more concerned that his son could be a target after he left the White House, the people said. The president also was increasingly worried that two approaching court dates, when Hunter would be sentenced for gun and tax offenses, would cause too much stress and pain on his son and family, the people said.

The president said he made the pardon decision during a smaller-than-usual gathering of family members on Nantucket for Thanksgiving. Along with the president and first lady Jill Biden, the group included their daughter Ashley Biden, Hunter Biden and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden along with their young son Beau.

After returning to Washington from his Thanksgiving break, Biden told close advisers on a call Saturday night that he planned to issue the pardon, which he announced the next day. Since then, a chorus of lawmakers, including many Democrats, have criticized the decision, saying it politicizes the Justice Department and creates a system of unequal justice, even as they acknowledged a father’s motivations to help his son.

The biggest mistake, some Biden supporters said, was the White House’s insistence that the president would never issue the pardon, even if that messaging had been politically expedient while Biden was campaigning against Trump for a second term.

“He should have never closed the door so completely," said Michael LaRosa, a former aide to Jill Biden, who agreed with the decision to pardon but believed the president mishandled it. “It was always 100% raw politics," LaRosa said of the prosecutions, but added that the timing and the abrupt about-face on the pardon “makes him look disingenuous at best or deceitful at worst."

Hunter Biden’s legal problems have been a constant cloud over his father’s presidency and at times have come up in the most unusual of circumstances, including last month when Trump referenced it during an Oval Office meeting shortly after the election, according to people familiar with the exchange.

While not in keeping with his pledges, the decision fits with the president’s deep support for Hunter—and his willingness to embrace him even when his lapses in judgment have made him a significant political liability. The two grew even closer as the president was under fire from his own party to withdraw his re-election bid. Hunter was among his father’s most unwavering champions during that time, according to people familiar with their relationship.

While a pardon always was a possibility as Hunter faced yearslong scrutiny from U.S. attorney—and later special counsel—David Weiss, his defense lawyers said they didn’t have it in mind as they navigated the probe and plea negotiations that last year appeared set to resolve the younger Biden’s legal woes.

“Everyone fought their corner doggedly for years to try to get the right result," said Chris Clark, who represented Hunter Biden during the investigation and early stages of his prosecution.

Hunter Biden was set in July 2023 to plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanor tax charges and avoid prosecution related to a 2018 gun purchase. But the plea deal fell apart amid disagreement over the extent of immunity he would receive from potential future prosecution.

The pardon wasn’t vetted via the typical clemency process run through the Justice Department, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed Monday. It also was unusually broad. Instead of only granting Hunter mercy in the gun and tax prosecutions, the pardon immunized him from any potential federal offenses dating back to 2014. The approach resembled that of President Gerald Ford’s blanket pardon of Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal.

Some former aides are frustrated with the president’s timing, struggling to understand why he chose to announce the pardon at a moment that detracts from Democrats’ efforts to keep the public focus on some of Trump’s controversial cabinet nominees, one person familiar with their thinking said. They also questioned why the president criticized the Justice Department, which oversaw the prosecutions, rather than resting the decision solely on his role as a concerned father.

Biden’s decision to act now does offer several benefits to his family. Most immediately, the pardon nullifies a pair of coming court proceedings that promised more embarrassment and emotional trauma for the Bidens.

Hunter was due to be sentenced on Dec. 12 in Wilmington, Del., after a federal jury there convicted him in June of falsely claiming to be drug-free when he purchased a Colt Cobra revolver in 2018.

The trial turned into a wrenching exploration of his descent into addiction and the turmoil it caused within his family. Among the witnesses were Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, and Hallie Biden, the widow of the president’s eldest son, Beau Biden. In deeply personal testimony, Hallie Biden said she saw Hunter smoking crack sometimes as often as every eight hours during the course of an on-again-off-again romantic relationship they had following Beau Biden’s death from brain cancer.

After enduring that courtroom experience, Hunter Biden elected not to go through a second trial that threatened to cast a renewed spotlight on his past overseas business dealings and drug-fueled partying. As jury selection was set to begin in Los Angeles, the younger Biden pleaded guilty to a raft of tax charges alleging he failed to pay what he owed the government while spending lavishly on drugs, escorts, girlfriends and luxury hotels.

“I went to trial in Delaware not realizing the anguish it would cause my family, and I will not put them through it again," Hunter said in a statement after his surprise guilty plea. He was set to face sentencing in the tax case on Dec. 16.

The timing of Biden’s pardon effectively pre-empted not only the sentencing hearings but also filings from prosecutors recommending punishments for the president’s son. Those filings would have offered Weiss a new platform to criticize the president’s son.

“There will be no sentencings, no sentencing memos," said Jeff Neiman, a defense lawyer who previously worked as a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s tax division. “This, in essence, silences the special counsel."

At least one battle for Hunter Biden has remained in the pardon’s aftermath. Hunter Biden’s lawyers have tried to have his indictments dismissed in Delaware and California. Weiss’s team has urged federal judges not to take that step while acknowledging that Hunter Biden was the “recipient of an act of mercy."

In both cases, prosecutors have said the pardon “does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred."

In Delaware, Judge Maryellen Noreika appeared to sidestep the dispute by ordering that all proceedings in the gun case are “terminated." A federal judge in California hasn’t issued an order in response to the pardon.

Write to Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com, C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com and Ken Thomas at ken.thomas@wsj.com