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The president obviously receives extensive documentation about the case, including the letter by the person requesting the pardon (it appears that this was the wife of the convict). It also includes a recommendation by the minister of justice. The government is currently refusing to confirm whether the minister recommended granting the pardon or not, but according to press sources the minister did not recommend the pardon, but she still counter signed it afterwards.
As one of Novák's advisors, it is rumored that Balog was very often in the presidential office to a degree that was already annoying the staff, and Novák was for long a "mentee" of Balog.
The pedophile director himself, who molested boys between 2004 and 2016, received a Hungarian Order of Merit (bronze) in 2016 from the previous president, on the recommendation of Balog. And apparently the pardoned man's father was a lay leader in the reformed church as well.
Based on currently available media reports by investigative journalists, it seems that Orbán was actually kept out of the loop here (one man can't manage every individual issue after all and must delegate). Probably the family lobbied the church leadership who lobbied Balog who told Novák to sign. Minister Judit Varga (if it's true that she did not support the pardon initially) may have also been left out of the loop and saw no reason to support this based on the documents, but all requests for pardon must be forwarded to the president by the minister. And upon seeing here recommendation overturned she may have assumed higher powers took care of this already so she didn't double check this with Orbán.
Orbán is a masterful Machiavellian and rotates the second line of leadership quite often, so nobody grows to be to autonomous. And he usually picks very trusted people to the president's position. The last one, Áder, for example was his college dorm friend. But he wanted a female president this time so couldnt choose one of the old friends as female politicians are quite rare. And it seems Novák was more loyal to Balog than Orbán himself.
Probably they all thought it's no big deal as it all remains secret anyway and everything routinely gets done through favors and corruption so whatever. And that's usually okay with the public if it's just about stealing public money. But people are very sensitive to pedophilia cases, not unrelated to the government's child protection rhetoric.
So to sum it up, I think it signals people in the second and third lines of power getting too cocky in offering and expecting favors, and Orban needs to cull some of them so they know who's the silverback here. And that he needs to manually control even more things because people even mess up such easy things.
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