Yesterday I wrote:

Everyone’s hair is on fire because a president pardoned his son. Unprecedented? Sure.

Early this morning, I came across an Esquire article from Charles P. Pierce in Apple News+, headlined:

A President Shouldn’t Pardon His Son? Hello, Anybody Remember Neil Bush?

The deck was as straightforward:

Nobody defines Poppy Bush’s presidency by the fact that he pardoned his progeny. The moral: Shut the fck up about Hunter Biden, please.

The article included the following paragraph (emphasis added):

But the luckiest thing about this lucky American businessman is that his father and brother were both presidents of the United States, and that his father exercised his unlimited constitutional power of clemency to pardon The Lucky American Businessman for all that S&L business way back when. The president’s name was George H.W. Bush. The Lucky American Businessman was his son, Neil, whose brother, George, later became president of the United States himself.

I bookmarked it, prepared to post an update to my “unprecedented” comment, but in tracking down the direct web link, I instead got a “Sorry, this story isn’t available in Apple News” error.

Hm. The article was still available in Apple News+ when visited it directly, but both the headline and the deck were now changed. It now read:

Hunter Biden Isn’t the First Presidential Son Caught Up in Controversy. Anybody Remember Neil Bush?

Nobody defines Poppy Bush’s presidency by his son’s struggles or the pardons he issued on his way out of the White House. The moral: Shut the fck up about Hunter Biden, please.

It includes an Editor’s Note:

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated. An earlier version stated incorrectly that George H. W. Bush gave a presidential pardon to his son, Neil Bush. Esquire regrets the error.

The paragraph I quoted also removed the reference to a pardon:

But the luckiest thing about this lucky American businessman is that his father and brother were both presidents of the United States. The president’s name was George H.W. Bush. The Lucky American Businessman was his son, Neil, whose brother, George, later became president of the United States himself.

On the Esquire Politics site simply pulled the article, giving it a title “This Column Is No Longer Available,” with the content of article itself also replaced by an Editor’s Note.

It appears Pierce, the article’s author, got caught spreading misinformation, possibly originating on Threads (archive). The Threads post itself now has a Community note linking to a fact-check.

I wanted to believe that H.W. Bush had pardoned his son—and no one has thought about it since—because I also believe Hunter Biden’s pardon would have absolutely zero impact on President Biden’s legacy.

I’m not sure if Pierce wrote the story based on the misinformation, or added the “pardon” bits to an existing story.

Either way, it’s a reminder of the importance of double-checking what you read, especially when it validates your own viewpoint.