Justifying the decision to pardon his own son, President Joe Biden pointed to Republicans bringing “political pressure” on the criminal justice system, which he claimed had scuttled a plea deal and was why Hunter’s tax-and-gun issues risked landing him in prison for up to 25 years.
“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,” Biden said in a statement. In that, he wasn’t exactly wrong, his son having been charged by a Trump-appointed prosecutor, albeit one kept on the job by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had conceded that the “average American” never “would have been charged with the gun thing,” referring to Hunter Biden allegedly purchasing a firearm while still suffering from drug addiction (the tax thing, he said, was more legitimate).
Speaking to reporters after the sweeping pardon was issued, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre suggested that the president had made the decision to help his son because he also feared the retribution that could come under his successor. Asked if Biden would have issued the pardon had Vice President Kamala Harris won in November, Jean-Pierre said, “I can answer that — it’s a no,” even as she went on to dismiss the question as a hypothetical.
But if that’s the case — if Biden acted because he thinks President-elect Donald Trump would act out his campaign-rally projections and weaponize the Department of Justice, he has not made that argument himself. Instead, Biden is traveling the globe on a farewell tour (Angola on Tuesday), leaving it up to his political allies at home to defend his actions and warn about what his successor might do.
“It is true that President Biden had said he wouldn’t pardon his son,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said Monday. “And it may or may not be related, but would it change your mind at all if, after you made a pledge like that, the incoming next president then announced that he planned to remove the director of the FBI and install in his place someone who has literally published a hit list of people he wants to go after once Trump is back in power? There are 60 names on this list.”
Maddow was of course referring to Kash Patel, a Trump sycophant who has embraced conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and pledged to use the power of the state to go after those in politics and the press who enabled Biden to “steal” his win four years ago. Indeed, Patel’s 2023 book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” names a host of people who could be targeted for government surveillance and harassment by a Patel-led FBI.
There are, in other words, many others besides Hunter Biden who could find themselves targeted in the years to come, from journalists and activists to career attorneys and others at the Department of Justice who dared take part in investigations of Donald Trump. And these others did not cheat on their taxes or lie while trying to buy a gun: Couldn’t the president act to shield them from retribution too?
There are also more than 158,000 people currently in federal prison, many for nonviolent drug offenses, all of whom are eligible to be freed by the stroke of a pen. That includes 40 people who are presently on death row, the majority Black or Latino, who could have their sentences commuted; Trump has vowed to lift Biden’s moratorium on capital punishment and potentially execute them all.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said the Hunter Biden pardon underscores the president’s responsibility to act on behalf of others less fortunate.
“It’s less about the fact that the president pardoned his son and more about the fact that he's only really pardoning his son when there are, in fact, many people, including Leonard Peltier, as well as several other cases of many Americans who are on death row, who should be taken off death row, and who are facing the end of their lives if this president does not act,” she said, referencing the case of a Native American activist who supporters believe was wrongly convicted of killing two FBI agents.
President Barack Obama commuted nearly 1,700 sentences before leaving office, points out the bipartisan advocacy group FWD.us. In a new ad, which The Washington Post reports is running on Biden’s favorite MSNBC program, “Morning Joe,” the organization highlights testimony from family members whose loved ones benefited from such pardons. “Mr. President, there’s one more chance to give thousands a second chance,” the ad states.
It’s not just the progressive wing of the Democratic Party using the pardon of Hunter Biden to argue for a broader and potentially sweeping use of executive clemency power.
President Biden has already issued pardons to anyone convicted of simple marijuana possession at the federal level, although those eligible must first apply to receive it. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries is urging him to go much further.
“During his final weeks in office, President Biden should exercise the high level of compassion he has consistently demonstrated throughout his life, including toward his son, and pardon on a case-by-case basis the working-class Americans in the federal prison system whose lives have been ruined by unjustly aggressive prosecutions for nonviolent offenses,” Jeffries said in a statement on Tuesday. “This moment calls for liberty and justice for all.”
