Days later I’m still seething that President Biden gave a “full and unconditional” pardon to his troublesome surviving son.
And yet, reluctantly, I have to say that I’d have done the same thing — minus some of the self-pitying and misleading passages in Biden’s official statement.
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
First the bad stuff. With the pardon of Hunter Biden, who’d pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was separately convicted of lying about his drug addiction on a gun application, Joe Biden put his family ahead of his fealty to the animating pledge of his presidency: to restore governing norms and the rule of law after both were shredded by his predecessor, Donald Trump. Biden, who’s otherwise been stingy in using the Constitution’s mighty presidential power, by his nepotistic act adds to the pile of rancid pardons amassed by modern presidents of both parties, including Trump’s first-term grants to a scofflaw family member, sordid allies, donors and war criminals.
In Biden’s statement justifying his stay-out-of-jail-free card for Hunter, he echoed Trump’s tirades about a weaponized justice system. That alone contributes to many Americans’ loss of faith in their own institutions and gives Trump cover for his false claims of victimhood. Though Hunter Biden’s name does explain why he faced gun and tax charges for which most Americans wouldn’t be similarly prosecuted — as even Republicans have acknowledged — there is a flip side: Hunter traded on that name to peddle his purported influence globally. Despite years of probing by the feds and House Republicans, however, he faced no charges for those dealings.
The biggest reason to oppose the pardon is this: Joe Biden lied to us.
The man who likes to say “I give you my word as a Biden” broke it here, betraying himself and us. He didn’t have to make the “no pardon” promise, or allow his spokeswoman to do so as recently as last month. He could have dodged the question.
Instead, in June, then-candidate Biden said he would “abide by the jury decision” that had just convicted Hunter for the gun lie. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured reporters the following month that a pardon was “still a no. It will be a no.” And last month, after Trump’s election and in advance of Hunter Biden’s sentencing scheduled for Dec. 16, Jean-Pierre underscored: “Our answer stands, which is no.”
So Joe deserves the bipartisan backlash he’s getting. But how about some backlash to the backlash? For me, one consideration trumps all others, pun intended, to excuse the president: The deplorable Trump is about to reclaim power.
Had any other Republican in the 2024 mix been elected — say, Nikki Haley or Tim Scott, even Ron DeSanctimonious — there’d be no justification for absolving Hunter. But those Republicans weren’t elected, Trump was, and he’s the vengeful former and future president who vowed last year to “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”
Given such explicit threats, and Trump’s first-term record of trying to politicize the Justice Department and FBI, why should Biden leave his son to Trump’s nonexistent mercies? Especially once Trump showed by his picks of willing enforcers for his new administration just how serious he is about retribution.
The president-elect’s first choice for attorney general, attack dog and former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, fell under the weight of his own legal woes. Then Trump turned to former Florida Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, a longtime loyalist who has explicitly called for revenge against those deemed responsible for Trump’s legal travails: “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted. … The investigators will be investigated.”
And on Saturday, Trump tapped MAGA henchman Kash Patel to be FBI director. Patel’s credentials? Last year he produced a literal enemies list for Trump and separately said he’d prosecute Hunter Biden as a foreign agent, never mind past investigations that produced nothing.
As former federal prosecutor and law professor Joyce Vance wrote recently, by way of justifying the pardon, Trump as president could have made Hunter Biden’s life in federal prison “extremely difficult.”
And a Trumpian Justice Department could have redoubled efforts to charge him for foreign dealings going back to his father’s time as veep, as Patel has suggested. The pardon preempts that sort of actual witch hunt.
President Biden has time to make up for the all but unpardonable pardon. He could endorse an effort, even if it’s a pipe dream, to amend the Constitution to repeal or at least reform presidents’ unchecked pardon power.
Better yet — because it’s achievable by Jan. 20 — Biden could put aides to work on a long list of pardons for obscure Americans truly wronged by the justice system and deserving mercy. This pattern of presidents sullying the office as they leave it with clemency for the connected should end, even if the pardon power lives on.