Former First Lady Dr. Jill Biden has broken her public silence on her husband’s decision to pardon their son Hunter Biden, telling CBS News Sunday Morning in an interview that aired May 31 that she actively urged the pardon and could not allow Hunter to face prison under President Donald Trump’s Justice Department.

Speaking with correspondent Rita Braver in a conversation tied to the release of her new memoir, “View from the East Wing: A Memoir,” Dr. Biden offered her most candid defense yet of the December 2024 pardon — a reversal that drew bipartisan criticism and rattled members of her own party. The interview, and a follow-up appearance on NBC’s TODAY with anchor Craig Melvin on June 1, mark her first extended remarks on a decision that has shadowed the Biden family’s post-White House life.

The former first lady told Braver that the family’s calculus shifted the moment Trump won the November 2024 election. Until then, former President Joe Biden had repeatedly pledged he would not intervene in his son’s prosecution. After the election results, she said, the political ground moved beneath them.

A Reversal Shaped by the Election

“When Trump was elected, things changed, and we knew that he would target Hunter,” Dr. Biden said. She added that the family “could not let our son go to jail on a charge that no one would go, I mean, no one has ever gone to jail for.”

Hunter Biden, 56, was convicted in June 2024 of three felony charges tied to his 2018 purchase of a revolver during a period when he was battling drug addiction. Prosecutors proved he lied on federal paperwork to obtain the firearm, which he possessed for 11 days. In September 2024, he pleaded guilty to nine tax evasion charges in a separate case brought by Special Counsel David Weiss. He was scheduled to be sentenced in both matters when his father intervened.

The full and unconditional pardon, issued in December 2024, covered any offenses Hunter Biden “committed or may have committed or taken part in” between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024. The sweeping scope drew immediate criticism from Republicans and from Democrats who said the move undercut the Biden administration’s repeated insistence on the Justice Department’s independence.

Jill Biden’s Role in the Decision

Pressed by Braver on whether she had pushed her husband toward the pardon, Dr. Biden did not hesitate. “I truly supported it. I wanted him to pardon Hunter at that point, and I agreed with Joe,” she said. It was a notable shift in tone from her earlier comments after Hunter’s June 2024 conviction, when she described the verdict as a “tough week” and praised her stepson’s strength without addressing executive clemency.

On TODAY a day later, the former first lady told Melvin that former President Biden “changed his mind” once it became clear, in her view, that the Justice Department would not operate independently in Trump’s second term. Asked whether the former president had lost faith in the justice system, she replied: “Yes, I guess it is, yeah.”

She framed the decision as a parental imperative rather than a political one. “I did support it, of course. I’m his mother,” she told Melvin on TODAY, referring to Hunter — her stepson — in maternal terms. She also defended former President Biden’s preemptive pardons of several other family members issued in the final hours of his presidency, saying he believed they too would be targeted.

Bipartisan Criticism and Democratic Backlash

The pardon was a striking turn for a president who had built much of his political identity on respect for institutional norms. In his December 2024 statement explaining the decision, former President Biden said he believed in the justice system but had concluded that “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.” He argued that “no reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son.”

Weiss, the special counsel who oversaw the prosecution, pushed back forcefully in his final Justice Department report, calling the former president’s characterization “gratuitous and wrong” and rejecting what he termed “false accusations” of political bias.

Dr. Biden told Braver the family clung to the principle of separation of powers until the last possible moment. “We grew up with the three separate branches of government, hands off,” she said. “Joe would never have interfered in the Justice Department and told the Justice Department what to do and how to handle it.”

Hunter Biden has remained out of the public eye and, according to his father’s statement at the time of the pardon, has been sober for more than five years. He continues to face scrutiny over his business dealings dating to his father’s vice presidency.

The timing of the memoir and the accompanying media tour has frustrated some Democratic strategists, who privately complain that the Biden family is consuming oxygen the party needs as it prepares for the midterm elections. The book arrives as Democrats attempt to define themselves against the second Trump administration — a task complicated, several party operatives say, by the return of the pardon debate to cable news.

Dr. Biden, for her part, signaled she has no regrets. The decision, she suggested, was less about her husband’s legacy than about a son’s freedom — and a family’s calculation about what the next four years would bring.