President Biden is headed to Angola today and so instead of the usual press conference at the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre and John Kirby held a press gaggle aboard Air Force One. After a bunch of foreign policy questions handled by Kirby, Jean-Pierre stepped up to answer questions about the big story of the day, Biden's pardon of his son Hunter. Right out of the gate she was asked if all of her prior denials should now be considered lies. [There's no video of this exchange, just audio which I've included in full below.]

Reporter: The president has said for months no pardon was coming. I wanted to ask you, could those statements now be seen as lies from the American people? Is there really a credibility issue here given now this announcement?

KJP: First of all, one of the things that the president believes is to always be truthful to the American people. That is something that he always truly believes.

After encouraging everyone to read the president's statement she made a big point about the timing.

KJP: He came to this decision this weekend, so let's be very clear about that. He says it himself, it's in his voice. he said he came to this decision this weekend.

Why is she making a big point of this? Because this allows them to claim that the previous denials weren't lies. But there are already reports out saying that, in fact, Biden has been considering this for months while denying it publicly.

The president has discussed pardoning his son with some of his closest aides at least since Hunter Biden’s conviction in June, said two people with direct knowledge of the discussions about the matter. They said it was decided at the time that he would publicly say he would not pardon his son even though doing so remained on the table...

Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July, but a pardon before last month's election also could have generated political blowback on the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris after she took his place on the Democratic ticket.

You can read between the lines and it's clear what happened here. Joe Biden was planning to pardon Hunter all along but it was politically advantageous to lie about it so long as he/Harris were running for office. The decision may not have been made until Sunday but the plan to do this was discussed months ago. 

In fact, I wonder if the plan wasn't for a narrower pardon assuming Harris would be president-elect and that her DOJ would put an end to any further investigations of Hunter. But with Trump taking office instead, they decided to expand the pardon to 11 years. That's just speculation but it makes sense that would might have been part of the ongoing discussion.

Getting back to KJP, here's where she makes a weird claim about "war politics," whatever that means.

KJP: Because he believes in the justice system, but he also believes the war politics infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice. This is his words. I'm just repeating what the president said...What we have seen, and not just us—there's other people who have commented on the president's actions in the last 24 hours, I've lost track of time—and can see that Hunter was singled out because his last name was Biden, because he was the president's son. That's what we saw. 

A bit later she came back to this idea of war politics.

KJP: We have seen in the last five years or so the president's political opponents say this, not even-- I mean this is not the president saying this. They said this themselves. They were going after Hunter Biden.

Again, Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury of his peers in the gun case and pleaded guilty in the tax case. How did "war politics" come into that exactly? A reporter jumped in on that next.

Reporter 1: So, Karine, when the president says that the justice system is infected with politics, how deep is the rot and how much of the blame does the president take on himself for the fact that his own justice department, his appointees have allowed it to get this bad?

KJP then quoted Eric Holder and couple others backing up the idea that the pardon was warranted.

Reporter 1: How deep is the rot? How many selective prosecutions are there at the DOJ?

KJP: What I can speak to is this particular case, who is Hunter Biden, who has the last name of the president, who I just said there were political opponents who were very clear and very vocal about going after his son. And I just laid out there's more, multiple people who are part of that system, who have either worked in the justice system or currently do so, and they have been very clear on how they feel about this particular case, the cases against Hunter Biden.

Reporter 2: The judge was also clear in this case. The judge said it wasn't political pressure when it came to the plea deal. He said this was a process issue, that you basically had two agreements in one and that you can't have side deals. There were basic questioning in this case that both lawyers could not really answer the questions of. So the president in his statement, is he not undermining the judge and a judicial system that he promised would be independent? The judge in this case did not say it was political pressure.

After quoting some more supporters of clemency KJP came to this:

KJP: Two things could be true. The president does believe in the justice system and the department of justice and he also believes that his son was singled out politically. And this is what we saw over and over and over again over the last couple years...

Reporter 1: Does the president believe now and agree with president-elect Trump that the justice system has been weaponized for political purposes and that it needs root and branch reform.

KJP: No. Read the president's statement...

It's not going well.

Reporter 3: Karine, what kind of precedent is this setting going forward for American families who don't have the president as their dad? Is the president taking advantage of his position by doing this?

KJP just kept referring people to the president's statement, even after reading it out loud a couple times.

Reporter 1: His statement basically is a contradiction. It says I believe in this system; enough is enough. I don't see how you can have it both ways.

KJP: I don't see a contradiction. I don't. Two things can be true...

But just this one case? Really?

Reporter 3: You're been telling us that he has complete faith in the justice system, except for in the cases where his son was concerned and in those cases politics corrupted the system. But you can't tell us any other instance in which the president believes that politics corrupted the justice system. Is this literally the only time that this has happened or the limit of this problem?

KJP once again returned to reading statements form Eric Holder and others who supported a pardon. In other words...

Reporter 3: The system doesn't get corrupted by politics for people whose name is not Biden?

KJP: You're twisting and misrepresenting what I'm saying.

No, I don't think she is. I think she's gotten to the heart of it pretty nicely and KJP is just squirming because she can't find a way to square this circle. Here's the full audio as released by the White House. Note that the first half or so of this is blank so you'll have to scroll forward.

Update: KJP is now directly denying the claim made in the NBC News report, i.e. that Biden was discussing this months earlier and even planned to say he wouldn't pardon Hunter for political reasons.

That is false. As the President said last night, he made the decision this weekend. https://t.co/CMifyPeKaC

— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) December 2, 2024