President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump now agree on one thing: The Biden Justice Department has been politicized.
In pardoning his son Hunter Biden on Sunday night, the incumbent president sounded a lot like his successor in complaining about selective prosecution and political pressure, questioning the fairness of a system that Mr. Biden had until now long defended.
“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,” Mr. Biden said in the statement announcing the pardon. “Here’s the truth,” he added. “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
Mr. Biden’s decision to use the extraordinary power of executive clemency to wipe out his son’s convictions on gun and tax charges came despite repeated statements by him and his aides that he would not do so. Just last summer, after his son was convicted at trial, the president rejected the idea of a pardon and said that “I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process.” The statement he issued Sunday night made clear he did not accept the outcome nor respect the process.
The pardon and Mr. Biden’s stated rationale for granting it will inevitably muddy the political waters as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to take office with plans to use the Justice Department and F.B.I. to pursue “retribution” against his political adversaries. Mr. Trump has long argued that the justice system has been “weaponized” against him and that he is the victim of selective prosecution, much like Mr. Biden has now said his son was.
Their arguments are, of course, different in important respects. Mr. Trump contends that the two indictments against him by Mr. Biden’s Justice Department amounted to a partisan witch hunt targeting the sitting president’s main rival. Mr. Biden did not explicitly accuse the Justice Department of being biased against his family, but suggested that it was influenced by Republican politicians who have waged a long public campaign assailing Hunter Biden.
As it happens, the Justice Department has rejected both accusations. The prosecutions of Mr. Trump and the younger Mr. Biden were each handled by separate special counsels appointed specifically to insulate the cases from politics and senior department officials have denied that politics entered the equation against either man.
But Mr. Biden’s pardon will make it harder for Democrats to defend the integrity of the Justice Department and stand against Mr. Trump’s unapologetic plans to use it for political purposes even as he seeks to install Kash Patel, an adviser who has vowed to “come after” the president-elect’s enemies, as the next director of the F.B.I. It will also be harder for Democrats to criticize Mr. Trump for his prolific use of the pardon power to absolve friends and allies, some of whom could have been witnesses against him in previous investigations.
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