Utah Governor Spencer Cox reveals in a new book that President Biden admitted in August 2023 to privately weighing a Trump pardon, a move he ultimately abandoned in favor of protecting his own family and allies instead.
Cox pitched the idea inside the presidential limousine during a Biden visit to Salt Lake City, telling the president directly: "Mr. President, I know this might sound crazy, but I think you should pardon Donald Trump." Biden's reply, as Cox recounts it, was immediate and revealing. He told the governor he had "actually considered this for a while" and that he and Jill Biden had spent time that very week talking it over in bed.
The exchange, detailed by the New York Post, comes from Cox's forthcoming book, Off Ramp: How to Be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt, published by Penguin Press. The Atlantic published the anecdote in an excerpt. Biden's spokesperson did not respond to the Post's request for comment.
What makes the revelation sting is not that Biden considered it. It is that he considered it, told a Republican governor he was taking it seriously, and then walked away from the idea, only to spend his remaining pardon authority on his own son and political allies.
Cox's reasoning was straightforward. He feared that prosecuting a former president and leading presidential candidate would intensify political turmoil rather than resolve it. He argued a pardon could deescalate tensions and break the cycle of partisan retribution that had consumed Washington. At the time, Cox was not even supporting Trump's re-election bid, he simply believed the prosecutions were doing more damage to the country than any courtroom verdict could repair.
The timing of the conversation matters. Just days before Cox made his pitch, Trump had been hit with a federal indictment over his alleged effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He was already facing separate federal charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents. And a few days after the limousine conversation, a Georgia grand jury indicted Trump on state charges over alleged election interference there.
Biden, by Cox's account, acknowledged that people were "demanding justice" but said he was entertaining the pardon idea anyway. That phrasing, entertaining, captures the problem. Biden treated a consequential act of presidential leadership as a thought exercise, something to mull over during pillow talk, rather than a decision to make.
Biden never pardoned Trump. He did, however, find time before leaving office to grant 80 pardons of his own choosing. Among them: a rare, unconditional pardon for his son Hunter Biden, and an autopen pardon for former COVID czar Anthony Fauci. The contrast is hard to miss. Biden told a sitting governor that he and the First Lady had been seriously discussing whether to pardon his chief political rival, then used his clemency power to shield his own family and a politically controversial bureaucrat instead.
A presidential pardon, it should be noted, would not have touched the Manhattan case where Trump was tried for allegedly falsifying business records. That was a state prosecution. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts at the end of that trial. But a pardon could have resolved the two federal cases, and Biden's own Justice Department was driving both of them.
In the end, the federal cases and the Georgia prosecution were all dismissed, not because Biden acted, but because Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The cases collapsed under their own weight once voters rendered their verdict.
The limousine conversation was not the first time Biden encountered the pardon question. A few months before the August 2023 meeting with Cox, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Biden directly about the possibility of pardoning Trump. Biden smiled, called it "a great question," said "I'll see you guys," and walked away. No answer. No engagement. Just a wave-off.
That public dismissal looks different now, knowing that Biden was privately telling a Republican governor the idea was already on the table at home. The gap between what Biden said in front of cameras and what he admitted behind closed doors is a pattern his critics identified throughout his presidency. Cox's book adds one more documented example.
Newsmax reported that Biden indicated he had "already seriously considered" the pardon, language that tracks with Cox's direct account. The Washington Examiner noted that Cox framed the suggestion as a way to "unify the country," a goal Biden himself had campaigned on in 2020.
Whether Jill Biden played a role in steering her husband away from the pardon remains unclear. Cox's account does not resolve that question, and Biden has not confirmed or denied the governor's version of events. The silence from Biden's camp is itself notable, a spokesperson offered no comment to the Post.
Cox's anecdote arrives at a moment when the public record on Biden's use of clemency is complete. He left office having pardoned his own son in a move he had previously promised not to make. He extended protection to Fauci, a figure who had become a lightning rod for government overreach during the pandemic. And he let the prosecutions of his political rival proceed, prosecutions his own Justice Department initiated, despite privately admitting he saw the case for mercy.
The pardon power exists precisely for moments when a president believes justice and the national interest point in different directions. Biden apparently recognized that tension. He discussed it with his wife. He told a governor he was weighing it. And then he chose the path that served his political allies and left his opponent to face the machinery of the state.
That is not leadership. That is calculation dressed up as deliberation, and the country paid for it in two more years of division Biden himself said he wanted to end.
