Joe Biden privately considered issuing a presidential pardon for Donald Trump during his final months in office but never acted on it, a revelation the Trump White House says proves Democrats knew they had weaponized the justice system all along.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, recounted a phone call from August 2023 in which Biden told him the idea of pardoning Trump was already on his mind. Cox had raised the subject himself, pitching it as a way to break the cycle of partisan retaliation. Biden's response, as Cox told The Atlantic, was not dismissal. It was something closer to agreement.
Biden told Cox he had "actually considered this for a while," and that he and First Lady Jill Biden had discussed it at length in a private conversation that same week. The pardon never came. Instead, Biden spent his final weeks in office shielding allies, family members, and political appointees, issuing clemency to more than 1,500 individuals while leaving Trump to face the legal machinery Biden apparently understood was politically motivated.
Cox framed the pardon idea to Biden as something that "might sound crazy." He hoped Biden would "choose mercy over escalation" and "unity over retaliation." The moderate Republican governor later endorsed Trump, but only after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in August 2024. At that event, Cox asked Trump to unite the country.
Neither president delivered what Cox wanted.
"In both cases, things didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped."
Cox's account, published in The Atlantic, paints a picture of a president who privately acknowledged the political nature of the prosecutions against his opponent, and then did nothing about it. Biden weighed the pardon, talked it over with his wife, told a Republican governor he would "seriously consider" it, and walked away.
What Biden did do with his pardon power tells its own story. His first pardon after losing the 2024 election went to his son, Hunter Biden, who had been convicted on felony tax charges and federal crimes for lying about drug use on a firearm purchase form in 2018. Hunter himself has since acknowledged that his father's pardon was "not good" for the Constitution.
Biden then issued preemptive pardons for Dr. Anthony Fauci, all nine members of the January 6 Committee, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. He gave Milley blanket protection in his final moments in the Oval Office. Emails show Biden formally decided on preemptive pardons for his family on January 19, the day before he left office.
In his written pardon announcement, Biden justified the actions by saying the recipients "have been threatened with criminal prosecutions" and called them public servants who "served our nation with honor and distinction." He added that "public servants have been subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties."
The same day Biden pardoned Hunter, Trump announced he would pardon January 6 defendants charged with crimes related to the Capitol breach.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis responded to Cox's account with a statement to the Daily Mail that cut straight to the implication Biden's own deliberation created.
"This shows President Biden knew he and his fellow extreme Democrats had weaponized the justice system against his political opponent, but did nothing to stop it."
Bis added a two-word assessment of Biden's inaction: "A real profile in courage."
The White House response frames the story as an admission against interest. If Biden believed Trump deserved a pardon, if he discussed it privately, told a governor he had been thinking about it "for a while," and brought it up with his wife, then his decision not to act amounts to a choice to let prosecutions he considered unjust proceed. That is the Trump administration's argument, and Biden's own words to Cox make it difficult to dismiss.
Biden's broader clemency record in his final weeks reinforces the contrast. He found the political will to protect Fauci, the January 6 Committee members, and Milley from potential prosecution. He pardoned his own son. He extended clemency to more than 1,500 people. But the one pardon that would have required genuine political courage, pardoning the man his party had spent years prosecuting, never materialized.
Hunter Biden has been publicly grappling with the fallout from his father's late-term decisions, at one point calling Merrick Garland his father's "greatest mistake" while sidestepping the awkwardness of his own pardon.
Biden's pardon spree in his final weeks amounted to a systematic effort to shield every political figure in his orbit from legal consequences under the incoming administration. Fauci's preemptive pardon was among the most controversial. Milley received protection after Trump had publicly said the former Joint Chiefs chairman "deserves to be executed." The January 6 Committee members, all nine of them, got blanket coverage.
The 82-year-old president, who had already decided not to seek reelection and watched Vice President Kamala Harris lose to Trump in the 2024 race, used the final days of his term to build a legal firewall around his allies. The scale, more than 1,500 clemency grants, was extraordinary. Trump, meanwhile, has used his own pardon authority in a different direction, recently pardoning individuals convicted under what he called Biden-era government overreach.
Cox's account raises a question Biden has never publicly answered: If you believed the prosecutions were wrong, wrong enough to discuss pardoning your political opponent in a late-night bedroom conversation with your wife, why did you protect everyone except him?
The broader scrutiny of Biden's late-term judgment has only intensified since he left office, with even his memoir announcement drawing pointed questions about the decisions he made in his final months.
Biden had the power. He had the private conviction. He had a Republican governor handing him the political cover. He chose to protect his son, his allies, and his appointees, and left the one pardon that would have matched his private words to sit unissued on his desk. That is not a profile in courage. It is a record of exactly who Joe Biden was willing to fight for, and who he was not.