Nearly all pardons target specific allegations or charges, making Hunter Biden’s unusual. The only other precedent was President Gerald Ford’s highly controversial move in which he pardoned “all offenses against the United States” that Nixon “has committed or may have committed” over the course of his presidency.

Joe Biden had repeatedly denied that he was going to pardon his son Hunter for his gun and tax evasion convictions or commute what was shaping up to be a substantive prison sentence. On the Sunday evening after Thanksgiving – at a moment when the American public’s attention was decidedly elsewhere – he announced he had changed his mind.