U.S. President Joe Biden made headlines on Dec. 1 when he pardoned his son, Hunter. As the Thanksgiving weekend came to an end, the president decided to make the extraordinary move of offering a “full and unconditional pardon” to his son, despite having repeatedly promised that he would not do so. Joe Biden released a statement explaining that the charges against his son were politically motivated: “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.”
Hunter Biden was facing the possibility of 25 years in jail after being convicted of three felonies for lying about his drug addiction on federal forms during a gun purchase in 2018. Under a plea deal, he also plead guilty in a tax evasion case. With President-elect Donald Trump’s picks of Pam Bondi as attorney general and Kash Patel for FBI director, there was more than enough reason to think that Hunter Biden would remain the focus of intense investigation and prosecution during Trump’s second administration.
U.S. President Joe Biden made headlines on Dec. 1 when he pardoned his son, Hunter. As the Thanksgiving weekend came to an end, the president decided to make the extraordinary move of offering a “full and unconditional pardon” to his son, despite having repeatedly promised that he would not do so. Joe Biden released a statement explaining that the charges against his son were politically motivated: “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.”
Hunter Biden was facing the possibility of 25 years in jail after being convicted of three felonies for lying about his drug addiction on federal forms during a gun purchase in 2018. Under a plea deal, he also plead guilty in a tax evasion case. With President-elect Donald Trump’s picks of Pam Bondi as attorney general and Kash Patel for FBI director, there was more than enough reason to think that Hunter Biden would remain the focus of intense investigation and prosecution during Trump’s second administration.
To be sure, Joe Biden is not the first president to pardon a family member—President Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger in 2001 for a drug conviction. In 2020, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, his current pick for ambassador to France; he is the father of Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
But Joe Biden’s announcement feels qualitatively different. Besides the fact that Roger Clinton and Charles Kushner had served at least some of their sentences by the time they were pardoned, Hunter Biden has been at the center of a political firestorm ever since Trump’s impeachment in 2019, when he was brought up during a telephone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. To secure foreign aid, Trump asked Zelensky for assistance in digging up evidence of Hunter Biden’s corruption.
The language of the recent pardon, moreover, is extraordinarily broad, which many experts agree is comparable to President Gerald Ford’s pardon of former President Richard Nixon in . It is reminiscent of the way that President Lyndon Johnson described the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which provided congressional authorization for the use of force in Southeast Asia— “Like grandma’s nightshirt, it covered everything,” Johnson said.
Trump jumped on the news of Hunter Biden’s pardon as evidence that he was right all along—that Joe Biden has been trying to protect his son and that the pardon offers proof of something rotten at the core. On social media, Trump posted, “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Joe Biden has also come under criticism from some Democrats, as well. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis posted on X, “I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country.” Journalist Jonathan Chait wrote in the Atlantic, “With the pardon decision, like his stubborn insistence on running for a second term he couldn’t win, Biden chose to prioritize his own feelings over the defense of his country.”
Some of Joe Biden’s supporters will perceive this to be one more act from a human commander in chief trying to protect those—whether family or otherwise—who are at risk come Inauguration Day on Jan. 20. He and his supporters say Hunter Biden would never have faced these charges had it not been for the political battles that surrounded him. The dangers posed by a weaponized Justice Department during Trump 2.0, moreover, are so great that the president-elect’s opponents must do what they can to protect themselves.
Either way, the pardon will become an integral part of Joe Biden’s legacy. Presidential pardons have always been controversial—how have their use shaped the legacies of past presidents?
The power to pardon people—granted to the president in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution—is ideally meant to provide the most powerful individual in the country with the ability to achieve justice and reconciliation in regard to federal crimes. Though legal experts have pointed to limitations on how this authority can be deployed, the power has historically been used with extraordinary breadth. For many citizens, a pardon is the ultimate unilateral assertion of presidential power since it is generally independent or free from congressional or judicial review.
Most pardons do not receive much national attention. Requests work their way through the processes set up by the Justice Department and don’t trigger much of a public reaction.
Sometimes, however, presidential pardons of elected officials have triggered a firestorm. One of the most controversial in U.S. history took place when Ford pardoned Nixon in 1974 for any crimes that he might have committed against the United States. For Ford’s opponents, the decision reeked of an effort to avoid accountability for high crimes and misdemeanors or, even worse, a corrupt deal that was payback for his appointment as vice president in 1973 after Nixon’s first vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned as a result of a corruption scandal.
Ford’s decision was only slightly more contentious than when President George H.W. Bush pardoned and commuted the sentences of six key figures in 1992, including former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for their role in the Iran-Contra scandal under President Ronald Reagan.
Some pardons with clear political ramifications have triggered a massive backlash. Between 1865 and 1868, President Andrew Johnson infuriated many Americans by offering amnesty to many former Confederate officials and soldiers. He declared that he wanted to help reconcile a broken nation. Opponents thought that Johnson, who had been hostile to reconstruction after the Civil War, was simply letting treasonous people go free and nothing more. One editorial in a Republican newspaper called Johnson “malignant” and “perverse.”
When President Jimmy Carter unconditionally pardoned hundreds of thousands of people in 1977 who had resisted the draft for the Vietnam War, conservatives pointed to the news as proof that he, as well as the entire Democratic Party, really didn’t care about national security. (Ford had offered conditional amnesty to some of those who evaded the draft.)
Individual pardons have also been at the center of unwanted attention. In his final days in office, Patty Hearst, who had been convicted for crimes she committed with the Symbionese Liberation Army, and billionaire Marc Rich, a fugitive accused of illegal oil deals with Iran and major tax fraud and evasion. During his first term, Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, a former sheriff who was tough on immigration and supported Trump, as well as conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza, who had been convicted of campaign finance violations. He also
pardoned two of his top advisors—Paul Manafort and Steve Bannon—and there is much anticipation that he will pardon the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrectionists once he takes office again.
Why did Joe Biden change his mind about pardoning his son? First and foremost, the answer is that this is what a protective parent does. Scared for his son and concerned about how Trump will use a compliant Justice Department to enact revenge, the father-in-chief acted.
Equally important, Joe Biden is sending a message to the United States. He has consistently warned about the threat that he believes Trump poses to democracy. A central part of the warning has to do with the way that Trump will abuse his presidential power by acting against his opponents in the government, the media, and the law for having caused him problems in recent years. This reversal is a statement—Joe Biden’s declaration that the threat is serious, that the warnings were not merely campaign rhetoric, and that the time has come for all Americans to act by using the constitutional rights they have available to them to protect the nation and themselves.
But it could be that the negative fallout is much greater than the rationale, certainly in the short term and maybe as Americans grapple with his legacy over the long term. Trump is a politician who understands the power of narrative. He will use this decision to confirm and sell his basic message about his predecessor, simultaneously seeking to give himself even more legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate as he moves forward with cabinet appointments, diplomatic discussions, and policy declarations that send the message that he will govern the way he wants to.
As the widespread criticism of Hunter Biden’s pardon has revealed, there are and will be many Democrats who feel that, by going back on his word, Joe Biden has undercut their ability to keep ringing alarm bells about the way that Trump has and will politicize the Justice Department. Even if the decisions are very different, this pardon will be more than enough for a Republican to argue that “both sides” are to blame.
Regardless of what one thinks of the pardon, at this point, the reality is that even Joe Biden, with all the presidential power at his disposal, can only do so much to protect himself and the United States. The rest will depend on vigilant citizens and the guardians of our institutions—particularly the courts—to make sure that the checks and balances we have counted on for so long are strong enough to ensure that no president, no matter how aggressive they are in their vision of power, can act without restraint.
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