During a briefing dominated by questions regarding the president’s unprecedented pardon of his son, Jean-Pierre remained adamant that she would not apologize for misleading the public about his intentions and that he did not need to apologize to her for changing his mind.

“I know what I said,” Jean-Pierre told reporters Friday. “I know what the president said. That is where we were at the time. That is where the president was at the time. … He wrestled with it and made this decision. … Circumstances have changed.”

Those circumstances include President-elect Donald Trump‘s nominations of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a loyalist, to lead the Justice Department and Kash Patel, a former DOJ prosecutor who was chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christoper Miller, deputy director of national intelligence, and the National Security Council’s senior director for counterterrorism during Trump’s first administration, for FBI director. Patel, in particular, has been criticized for his list of 60 people who he claims in his 2023 book, Government Gangsters, are part of the so-called “deep state.”

“There have been some circumstances that have changed this. Republicans not letting up saying they won’t stop,” Jean-Pierre said Friday. “I mentioned the recent Trump appointees of legal enforcement positions that said during the campaign they were out for retribution.”

Jean-Pierre reiterated that Biden’s decision to pardon his son “was not easy,” citing Rep. Jim Clyburn‘s (D-SC) and former Attorney General Eric Holder‘s defenses of it, in addition to supportive public polling from YouGov, in response to questions about criticism from the likes of Govs. Jared Polis (D-CO) and Gavin Newsom (D-CA).

“I’m not going to relitigate this,” she said at one point. “I did it on Monday for 30 minutes.”

Jean-Pierre was also pressed on the hypocrisy of Biden’s decision after criticizing Trump for complaining about a politicized justice system, as well as the poor precedent it sets before Trump is poised to provide clemency to, for example, Jan. 6, 2021, rioters after his inauguration.

“Can I be blunt here? The situation with Hunter Biden and what the incoming president has said are very different,” she said. “I just don’t think those two things are the same.”

At the same time, Jean-Pierre previewed that Biden would continue the tradition of taking more clemency action before the end of his administration and did not rule out the possibility of preemptive pardons for people, from Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) and former Rep. Liz Cheney to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, though she did not “get into hypotheticals.”

“Certainly, the president is looking at, you know, reviewing next steps, and there’ll be more to come,” she said.

Hunter Biden was due to be sentenced in his federal gun crime and tax cases before his father pardoned him for them and any other offense “he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”

“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 — and that is wrong,” the elder Biden wrote last weekend. “There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”