White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced the press for the first time Monday after President Biden pardoned his son Hunter – an outcome that both Biden and Jean-Pierre previously insisted multiple times would not happen.
One reporter asked Jeane-Pierre if those previous statements denying a pardon “could be seen as lies” to the American people.
“One thing the president believes is to always be truthful with the American people,” Jeane-Pierre said, repeatedly saying that Biden “wrestled with [the decision].”
Jeane-Pierre was peppered with questions about the pardon and why Biden decided to go forward with it this weekend, mostly repeating many points in the president’s statement from Sunday night, such as Hunter was “singled out politically.”
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Jean-Pierre also raised the possibility of further pardons, saying that Biden is “thinking through that process very thoroughly.”
“There’s a process in place, obviously,” she told reporters. “And so, I’m not going to get ahead of the president on this, but you could expect more announcements, more pardons, clemency at the end of this term.”
Jean-Pierre maintained that Hunter was targeted “because his last name was Biden, because he was the president’s son.”
“And so the president believed enough is enough,” she said. “And the president took action, and he also believes that they tried to break his son in order to break him. That’s what we saw.”
Jean-Pierre took questions from reporters while aboard Air Force One en route to Luanda, Angola, where Biden was taking a three-day trip to highlight a U.S.-backed railway project in Zambia, Congo and Angola that he has pushed as a new approach in countering China’s influence and dominance of Africa’s critical minerals.
Jean-Pierre had denied Biden was considering a pardon six times since July 2023. The denials came even as Hunter was being prosecuted.
Jean-Pierre last repeated that her answer had not changed in November, shortly after President-elect Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
“We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no,” the press secretary said at the time.
Fox News Digital’s Lindsay Kornick and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
