Hunter Biden’s pardon is a political gift for Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 rioters | Opinion
President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter’s criminal convictions is a gift to President-elect Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 rioters.
Trump will certainly use Biden’s favor to his son as justification to free the insurrectionists from any sentences they faced.
Both Hunter Biden and the capitol attackers are guilty of crimes. All of them should serve jail time as punishment for their misdeeds. That is how the rule of law is supposed to work in America.
But presidential pardons upend the legal system in unique ways. It is the one time a president can actually act like a king and get away with it.
In this case, President Biden was hypocritical and wrong. The pardon erodes his legacy, and gives easy fodder to Republicans who have for years said President Biden was corrupt without proof. This pardon case is different. It is President Biden is telling America, “Rules for thee, not for me.”
What a shameful way for him to end his single term.
President Biden cites political opponents
Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury in June for lying about being addicted to drugs when he purchased a gun. In addition, he was facing sentencing this month after pleading guilty to federal charges of not paying taxes.
According to the statement issued by the White House, President Biden said he pardoned his son “for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.”
President Biden argued that his son’s case was politicized by GOP opponents. That was the reason for the pardon. “The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.
“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.”
Such reasoning, however, is eerily similar to complaints Trump has made for years over congressional Democrats and state attorneys pursuing him through court cases and impeachments.
In the criminal cases — such as fraud by covering up hush-money payments to a porn actress and gross mishandling of presidential records belonging to the American people — Trump is clearly guilty by any common-sense assessment. In the hush-money case, Trump was found liable by a jury of falsifying business records. Sentencing was delayed indefinitely once he was elected president. The documents case ended just before Thanksgiving when the special counsel asked a federal appeals court to dismiss it, given Trump’s election.
Common sense also says Hunter Biden is guilty. He admitted as much in the tax cases, and a jury of his Delaware peers found him liable in the gun-records case.
President Biden was said to be suffering from a father’s sorrow at the prospect of his son going behind bars. But that would be no different than any father whose child is in criminal court. All dads feel sad over their wayward children. Yet regular American fathers don’t realize presidential pardons for their children’s convictions.
A devout Catholic, President Biden is forgetting God’s command in the Old Testament to Israel’s leaders that their judgment not be tainted by partiality.
The president repeatedly said he would not pardon his son. But that commitment fell away as the December sentencing closed in.
Pardons done the right way
Someone who offered pardons the correct way is California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In a Thanksgiving ritual, Newsom last week pardoned 19 people, including a Sonoma County restaurant owner who served prison time on drug convictions. With those wiped off his record, Damian Clopton said he will be able to apply for federal programs that he had been disqualified from using.
Unlike most people who get pardoned, Hunter Biden has served zero time.
The presidential pardon gives Trump justification to forgive true law-breakers. According to NBC News, federal prosecutors have secured over 1,100 convictions so far, and more than 600 rioters have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison for the head of the Proud Boys.
Hunter Biden’s pardon undermines the justice system that President Biden has usually given his full support. It shows President Biden putting his family interests ahead of the law, further tarnishing his legacy. It deepens the cynicism Americans have for their leaders.
