'A PROFILE IN COURAGE'?: DISCLOSURE THAT BIDEN CONSIDERED A TRUMP PARDON FUELS WEAPONIZATION CHARGES
WASHINGTON — In August 2023, as the Justice Department expanded its unprecedented criminal prosecutions of Donald Trump, Utah Governor Spencer Cox made a quiet, desperate appeal to the White House: grant presidential clemency to your chief political rival to save the country from a destructive cycle of partisan retaliation.
Joe Biden's response was as startling as the request itself. According to an account published by The Atlantic, Biden did not dismiss the idea as absurd. Instead, he acknowledged that he and First Lady Jill Biden had spent days agonizing over that very possibility, telling the Republican governor he was taking the proposal under serious consideration.
Ultimately, Biden chose a different path. He left office without pardoning Trump, leaving the prosecutions to play out while issuing a wave of controversial late-term pardons for his son, Hunter Biden, and key figures targeted by political opponents, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Gen. Mark Milley.
Now, as details of those private conversations surface, the White House and Trump allies are seizing on the disclosure to reframe the entire legacy of the Biden-era prosecutions.
An Unheeded Appeal for De-escalation
Governor Cox’s account reveals a rare glimpse into the private calculations inside the Biden White House during one of the most volatile periods in modern American politics. Cox, a moderate Republican known for advocating political civility, acknowledged to Biden that offering Trump a pardon "might sound crazy," but insisted it was the only way to "choose mercy over escalation" and "unity over retaliation."
For a moment, Biden seemed open to the gesture. Yet, as the 2024 campaign intensified, the White House doubled down on its legal offensive, maintaining that the prosecutions were entirely independent of the Oval Office.
Cox later lamented that neither Biden nor Trump chose the path of de-escalation he had envisioned. "In both cases," Cox noted, "things didn’t turn out quite the way I’d hoped."
The Political Weaponization Narrative
For the current administration, the revelatory account serves as a devastating admission of political calculation. Trump officials argue that Biden's willingness to even contemplate a pardon proves he recognized the deeply partisan nature of the cases brought by his Justice Department.
"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," White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a stinging statement. "A real profile in courage."
The revelation is made more striking by Biden's eventual use of executive clemency. After repeatedly promising not to intervene in his son's legal troubles, Biden issued a sweeping, blanket pardon for Hunter Biden covering federal firearms and tax offenses dating back to 2014—a move that drew sharp criticism even from Hunter himself, who later remarked that the action was "not good" for the Constitution.
The Post-Presidency Judgment
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In his final hours in office, Biden defended his slate of preemptive pardons for government officials and Jan. 6 committee investigators by claiming they faced "ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties."
Yet, by shielding his allies while allowing the prosecutions against his main political competitor to proceed unchecked, Biden left behind a deeply contested legacy. What Governor Cox had pitched as a historic moment to heal a fractured nation instead dissolved into a stark political reality: an executive branch that considered taking the high road, only to let the machinery of partisan warfare run its full course.
