Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox says Joe Biden told him inside the presidential limousine that he and Jill Biden had already discussed pardoning Donald Trump, months before the 2024 election that rendered the question moot.
Cox recounts the exchange in his upcoming book, an excerpt of which was detailed by the New York Post on Wednesday. The conversation took place in August 2023 during a limousine ride through Salt Lake City. Trump had just been hit with a federal indictment over his alleged effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, and he was simultaneously facing federal charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents.
Cox told Biden directly that he thought a pardon could cool the country down. His pitch, as he recalls it in the book: "Mr. President, I know this might sound crazy, but I think you should pardon Donald Trump."
Biden's response, according to Cox, was not the dismissal one might expect. The then-president said he had already been turning the idea over, and that the First Lady was part of the deliberation.
"You know, I've actually considered this for a while. In fact, just this week as we were lying in bed, Jill and I had a long conversation about it."
That quote, attributed to Biden by Cox, places the pardon discussion squarely inside the White House residence at the same moment federal prosecutors were escalating their cases against Trump. A Biden spokesperson did not immediately respond to the New York Post's request for comment.
Cox's reasoning, as laid out in the book excerpt, was straightforward: prosecuting a former president and leading presidential candidate would intensify political turmoil rather than resolve it. He argued a pardon could break the cycle of partisan retribution that had come to define Washington.
At the time, Cox was not supporting Trump's re-election bid. His pitch was not about loyalty to Trump but about the downstream consequences of weaponized prosecution, a concern that resonated with millions of conservative voters who saw the legal cases as politically motivated.
Biden, for his part, acknowledged the tension. People were "demanding justice," he told Cox, but the fact that he was entertaining the idea at all, and had brought it to Jill, suggests the political calculus was more complicated than the White House ever let on publicly.
The Washington Examiner reported that Biden promised Cox he would "legitimately consider" the proposal, even as Democratic voters pushed hard for Trump to face trial. That promise, if it was sincere, produced nothing.
Months before the limousine conversation, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy had asked Biden directly whether he would consider pardoning Trump. Biden smirked, waved off the question, said "I'll see you guys," and called it "a great question." He offered no substance.
Behind closed doors, the picture was different. Biden was discussing it with his wife. He was telling a Republican governor he took the idea seriously. And yet he never acted on it.
What Biden did act on was a pardon spree that protected his own circle. He granted 80 pardons in total, including one for his son Hunter Biden and another for former COVID czar Anthony Fauci. The decision to pardon Fauci drew sharp criticism from Republican senators who argued it was designed to shield a politically connected official from accountability.
Whether Jill Biden dissuaded her husband from pardoning Trump remains unclear. The book excerpt does not resolve that question. But the First Lady's reported influence over White House decisions during Biden's term makes her role in the conversation more than a footnote.
Just days after Cox made his case in the limousine, Trump was indicted on state charges in Georgia over his alleged efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election there. A presidential pardon would not have touched the Georgia case or the Manhattan prosecution, both were state matters beyond the reach of federal clemency.
Trump was already in the middle of his Manhattan trial for allegedly falsifying business records. He was ultimately convicted on 34 felony counts at the end of that trial. A federal pardon would have addressed only the two federal cases.
The federal cases, along with the Georgia case, were ultimately dismissed after Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped the federal charges, as Newsmax noted, once Trump's election victory made continued prosecution untenable.
So the pardon Biden considered, and chose not to issue, turned out to be unnecessary. The voters settled the matter themselves. But the revelation that Biden privately entertained the idea, discussed it with Jill in the White House residence, and told a Republican governor he took it seriously raises a pointed question: if Biden believed a pardon was worth considering, what does that say about the strength of the cases his own Justice Department was pursuing?
Biden's pardon record speaks to his priorities. He found room to grant clemency to his own son, who faced federal gun and tax charges. He found room for Fauci. He found room for 80 recipients in total. Hunter Biden later called the appointment of Attorney General Merrick Garland his father's "greatest mistake", a remark that underscored the internal dysfunction of the Biden Justice Department.
Trump, the man Biden privately told Cox he was thinking about pardoning, did not make the list. The man Biden discussed in bed with the First Lady, the man whose prosecution Cox warned would tear the country apart, Biden left him to face the full weight of the federal government.
Cox's anecdote does not prove Biden acted in bad faith. But it shows a president who understood the political danger of prosecuting his predecessor, acknowledged it privately, and then chose to let the prosecutions proceed anyway. The question of motive, whether Biden feared the political cost of a pardon more than he feared the cost of prosecution, is one his spokesperson has so far declined to answer.
The broader pattern of controversial pardon decisions across the political landscape has sharpened public skepticism about how clemency power is used. Voters increasingly see pardons not as acts of mercy but as tools of political convenience, a perception Biden's selective record does nothing to dispel.
Cox, for his part, put his argument on the record. He told a sitting president that pardoning a political rival was the right thing to do for the country. Biden said he agreed it was worth considering. And then he chose his son, his allies, and his political comfort over the principle Cox described.
When a president privately admits an idea has merit and publicly pretends it never crossed his mind, the gap between those two positions is not a mystery. It is a choice, and the country lived with the consequences.
