The political landscape was shook on Sunday night after President-elect Joe Biden issued a wide-ranging pardon to his son Hunter. The decision not only reaches the two sentences against him, but also any other potential crime he could have committed over the span of the past decade.
The sheer scope of the pardon has led an expert on the matter to say she's "never seen language like this." Speaking with POLITICO, Margaret Love, who served as the U.S. pardon attorney, said the only similar precedent that came to her mind was that of former president Richard Nixon, who was given a blanket pardon by Gerald Ford in 1974.
"I have never seen language like this in a pardon document that purports to pardon offenses that have not apparently even been charged, with the exception of the Nixon pardon," said love, whose position required assisting the president on clemency issues. She added that "even the broadest Trump pardons were specific as to what was being pardoned."
Biden justified his reversal on the matter saying in a statement on Sunday night that even though he believes in the justice system, "raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice."
"Once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision," the president added.
President Biden made reference to his son's addictions in the statement, saying his political opponents were going after Hunter in order to get to him. "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,"
Hunter Biden was set to be sentenced this month on two different charges: one regarding the purchase of a gun and another one to tax evasion. The "full and unconditional pardon" also applies to also any other crime he might have committed in the past decade. Analysts have discussed Trump using his second term to investigate members of the Biden family, with conservative commentators speculating about the possibility that Hunter could be charged with bribery, illegal lobbying or other crimes related to foreign business activities and drug addiction.
POLITICO recalled that the starting date of the pardon is just three months before Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company. Republicans have long accused him and his father of illegally profiting from that post.
Trump won't be able to undo the pardon when he takes office and his Justice Department won't be able to reopen the criminal probe either, Samuel Morrison, a lawyer who spent over a decade in the office of the pardon attorney, said. "It is an extraordinary broad grant," he told the outlet.
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