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The comments reportedly came after Trump won the 2024 election
Outgoing US President Joe Biden reportedly thought about pardoning his successor, Donald Trump, before leaving office, NBC News has reported, citing a White House source.
Trump faced a flurry of federal felony charges levied by Biden’s Department of Justice in the run-up to the 2024 election, which he described as political persecution intended to prevent him from returning to office.
Biden “privately mused” about the idea of pardoning Trump after his victory in the 2024 election as “a magnanimous move,” NBC reported on Friday, citing a person “directly familiar” with his comments who wished to remain anonymous.
However, a White House official said that “to our knowledge, this was not raised.”
The federal cases against Trump had already become untenable after the US Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity in July. Trump went on to win the popular vote and the Electoral College in November, sweeping all swing states to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden officially won the 2020 election with the most-ever votes in US history. Trump contested the vote, claiming rampant irregularities under the cover of the Covid-19 pandemic measures.
Biden initially pledged to be a one-term president and pass the job on to Harris, but ultimately decided to run for reelection. Democrats pressured him to bow out of the campaign in July after Trump survived an attempt on his life. Biden eventually endorsed Harris to replace him.
According to NBC, he will leave office with “a nation divided, a party in tatters,” and Americans questioning his commitment to the rule of law. On Friday, Biden commuted the sentences of 2,500 drug offenders, arguing they were serving “disproportionately long sentences” under current laws.
“I have now issued more individual pardons and commutations than any president in US history,” he said in a statement.
Biden’s most controversial pardon was granted to his son, Hunter, convicted last year of breaking federal gun and tax laws. The pardon covered offenses which Hunter “has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024,” a period that extends far beyond the time the gun and tax offenses took place and encompasses Hunter’s time on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
Citing a trove of emails and messages found on Hunter’s laptop in 2020, Republicans accused Hunter of selling access to his father, who was US vice president at the time.
