President Biden has pardoned his son Hunter this is an Abus of power this is a complicated situation but there should be one simple rule that we should force our politicians to adhere to presidents should not use their office for personal gain now it's debatable whether this is a norm or an aspiration but even if it's not codified anywhere we should force our politicians to adhere to this rule this isn't the first political or self-interested pardon and it certainly won't be the last but there is no argument that this is not a self-interested pardon this is
a pardon for the president's son because he is the president's son and look it is completely understandable that an aging father doesn't want to see his only surviving son go to jail for what might be the rest of that father's life but it is as understandable as it is indefensible President Biden is a father but more importantly he is the president of the United States and this use of the president's power should be unacceptable now this pardon is Broad the President issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son Hunter for offenses Hunter quote has
committed or may have committed or Taken part in during the period from January 1st 2014 through December 1st 2024 including the cases he has in Delaware for which he was convicted on June 11th and in California to which he pleaded on September 5th in the accompanying statement the President issued he made it clear that he believes that Hunter Biden was quote selectively and unfairly prosecuted simply because he is his son the president wrote in part quote I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of Justice now there's no
dispute that legally the president does have the power to issue this pardon but this kind of unchecked Pardon power is wrong and President Biden knows that it's wrong and there's one Surefire way to know which is that Joe Biden said he wouldn't issue this pardon over and over again with regard to the question regarding the family I'm extremely proud of my son Hunter he has overcome an addiction he is he's one of the brightest most decent men I know and I am satisfied that I'm not going to do anything I said I said i' abide
by the jury decision and I will do that and I will not pardon him President Biden swore several times that he would not pardon Hunter because he believed in the due process of law and now he's changed his mind undermining the rule of law and lending Credence to Trump's claims that nothing matters and Justice is fake now this isn't the first political and arguably corrupt pardon 88% of Trump's pardons went to people with personal ties to the president or to people that furthered his political agenda including notably the pardon that Trump issued to Jared kushner's
father who Trump says he's going to nominate as the ambassador to France HW Bush pardoned six people involved in the Iran Contra Scandal Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger Clinton though that was for a crime that occurred 15 years before which he had already gone to jail and of course there are more on the horizon to it Donald Trump says he's going to pardon the January 6 riers who of course rioted to make Donald Trump president again but to say that both sides do it or get bogged down in a question of who does it
worse belies the fact that this is always unjust and this one is arguably particularly bad the point is that this is exactly what you would expect from Donald Trump and exactly why why the Biden pardon is wrong and as we explained at the time Trump's pardon spree at the end of his first term was completely corrupt he rewarded friends he undermined prosecutors and he completely covered up everything related to Russia gate and I take the point that Trump probably did it more but a world where we're tallying up the pardons to see whose worse is
one where we all lose and I also take the president's point that it's reasonable to believe that aspects of Hunter's prosecution was unjust but it's also hard to argue that it was completely outside of the realm of prosecutorial discretion there are aspects of the prosecution that are a stretch for example 18 USC 922g which is the gun crime that Hunter was prosecuted for which says that an addict cannot be in possession of a gun is totally incompatible with the Supreme Court's Bruin decision and some circuits have come to that conclusion but it's still on the
books and it's still a crime where Hunter Biden was prosecuted and there are those that say the tax prosecution was overly harsh President Biden states that it would have been fair if the plea deal had held and that's definitely true but it's also true that if a plea deal blows up as it did here that could lead to harsher carceral punishments and in either case Hunter did the crimes he even wrote a book about it and sure the vast majority of people that have been charged with these crimes have been fined and have avoided jail
but they're still punished under these laws perhaps not as severely but there's no question that he committed these acts and that those acts are currently crimes but I'm also fine with a rule that says the president and their family are subject to more strict rules by virtue of their position perhaps there is an element of the investigation the prosecution that singled Hunter out so be it but the Republicans and the prosecutors were never able to prove that President Biden benefited from his son's indiscretions but it is reasonable to question those links if that means increased
scrutiny and accountability into the president and their family I think that's actually a good thing and you know what by that same token I'd love to probe the agreement that the Saudi government has with Jared Kushner right after he left the first Trump Administration that's worth $2 billion that seems kind of sketchy but in any event a large us from a foreign government to the president's family is a reasonable thing to investigate and sometimes prosecute and look it is understandable as to why President Biden did this there's real risk that the second Trump Administration would
have tried to score political points by doubling down on the prosecution of Hunter Biden especially now that Trump has said he's going to nominate cash Patel as the head of the FBI but those are supposed to be the risks you either believe in the institution and the Department of Justice and the rule of law and let it run its course or you don't and it looks like President Biden doesn't but if that was the real concern then the pardon could have been drafted as to only apply to uncharged crimes it could have left the current
convictions intact which remain and need to be sentenced but could have headed off any politicized investigations into new trumped up charges this pardon and the justifications for it are also going to retroactively paint the trump prosecutions in a tainted light based on everything that we know today it appears that the federal Trump prosecutions were remarkably apolitical and not to mention much of the prosecutions were based on what was just plainly out in the open but the prosecutions were unusual only in the sense that the president has never committed these types of crimes before not that
they were being prosecuted but many will now reasonably look to the justifications for this Parton and say see Biden's doj is corrupt if the president himself says that the Department of Justice is political and selectively prosecutes his son it is much harder to defend the Trump prosecutions which is a tragedy because love him or hate him attorney general Merrick Garland appears to have bent over backwards to make the Trump prosecutions as apolitical and as institutional as possible but the fact is Hunter Biden was not selectively prosecuted and here's the thing neither was Trump but President
Biden threw his own department of justice under the bus and claimed that it was selective prosecution now I don't really think that this will change any of Trump's Behavior or actions in the future but it will give cover to a lot of people who will say that both were selective and the history books aren't written yet and the people are going to debate the Trump prosecutions for decades and I think the narrative matters not the least of which because there is an entire right-wing ecosphere that lives in an alternate reality that's hellbent on painting their
felonious president as a saint and yes President Biden is a dad and that explains his actions but it doesn't excuse them I would be outraged if Trump pardons himself or his children and that's why I'm outraged to President Biden today at base the pardon power should be abolished it never should have existed in the first place it's an anacronismo shreds in front of our eyes and look I recognize that the fault for that is not evenly distributed but this is a race to the bottom people are not being punished for corrup coruption and manifest illegality
we see that with the end of the Trump prosecutions decisions of the Supreme Court regarding immunity and we're likely to see that here with this pardon on the spectrum of too many prosecutions of politicians to not enough prosecutions of politicians we are currently way way on the side of not enough and here there probably won't be dramatic consequences and that is a problem it's one and a long line of things that should be punished by the electorate but are currently not this kind of behavior whether it is from President Biden or former president Trump should
have made either of the candidates unelectable but we aren't rewarding people for doing the right thing and we're not punishing people for doing the wrong thing and unfortunately I don't see that Trend changing anytime soon and as I said at the beginning there's no dispute that the president actually possesses this power but we're in really bad shape as a country if the rule is if you're legally allowed to do it then you can and should do it I guess this a good reminder that so much of what we've come to respect in our society and
in our government is not about the law as it's explicitly written down but is just a norm that we've grown accustomed to a norm that is slowly eroding and I wish I had more for you but this is going to get worse before it gets better and you know even if there is a double standard where one side is supposed to be perfect and the other side can do it seems whatever they want without any kind of political repercussions I think all we can do is that when when any of this happens we say it's
wrong and this pardon of the president to his son is wrong
