After months of repeatedly vowing not to do so, President Joe Biden on Sunday issued a sweeping pardon for his convicted felon son Hunter Biden, who was set to face sentencing in a matter of weeks on separate federal gun and tax law violations.

The controversial reversal of the president's public promise may explain why Hunter confidently smiled and ignored a question in July about whether he expected to eventually be pardoned by his father, according to Fox News.

His cavalier demeanor, just a month after he was found guilty by a Delaware jury of lying about his drug use on a federal gun purchase form and while he still faced prosecution in California for felony tax law violations, strongly suggests that he anticipated receiving clemency from his father at some point, despite the president's repeated insistence to the contrary.

Hunter previously smiled when asked if he was "expecting a pardon" from his father

Fox News shared a brief video of Hunter Biden leaving a Malibu, California, restaurant on July 31 in which he was approached and asked if he was "expecting a pardon" from his presidential father, to which he simply smiled and kept walking toward his vehicle while accompanied by Secret Service agents.

That moment came just a few weeks after Hunter was convicted in Delaware in June on a trio of federal firearms law violations, shortly after which President Biden had vowed for the first time to not pardon his son as he told reporters, "I will abide by the jury’s decision. I will do that. And I will not pardon him."

Then, just a couple of months later, on the eve of his trial in California in September on multiple tax violations, Hunter pleaded guilty to multiple felonies and misdemeanors. He was set to be sentenced separately in both cases later this month and faced the potential of spending up to the next two decades behind bars.

Biden breaks vow, issues pardon for his son

Everything changed on Sunday, however, when President Biden announced that he had issued a "full and unconditional pardon" for his son Hunter that covered any federal offenses that he "has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024," including the offenses that he'd already been prosecuted and convicted for.

In a statement that accompanied the pardon, Biden dubiously asserted that his son had been "selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted" for relatively minor crimes that typically go unpunished, which he argued was a result of "political pressure" from his partisan opponents as a way to attack him through his family, and declared, "Enough is enough."

"For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded," Biden concluded. "Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice -- and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision."

On Monday during a press gaggle, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was grilled by reporters with numerous questions about the president's about-face on pardoning his son when he -- and she -- had repeatedly insisted otherwise for several months prior, but she had no real explanation and instead merely repeated and reiterated her boss' statement in response to each query.

Biden didn't follow normal pardon procedures

Ironically enough, USA Today reported that President Biden did not issue his pardon for his son through the typical process, meaning he did not submit a customary application for clemency with the Justice Department's pardon office.

That was confirmed to the outlet by an unnamed senior deputy official with that office, and questions have been raised about whether Biden even consulted with the DOJ about the pardon, which is standard practice, before making the decision to do so while spending time with his family over the holiday weekend on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, though many Democrats and Biden's loyal supporters have expressed their approval of the pardon, largely out of concern that the incoming Trump administration would seek to further prosecute Hunter, most Republicans and even a few Democrats have expressed outrage and condemnation of the expansive grant of clemency, according to CNN.

Yet, there wasn't much legitimate shock or surprise, though, for even as Biden and others like Jean-Pierre had repeatedly insisted that Hunter would not receive a pardon, it was widely suspected across the ideological spectrum that a pardon or commutation would nevertheless eventually be issued.