DemDaily: Pardon Politics
December 4, 2024
In a surprise announcement Sunday, December 1, President Joe Biden issued a "full and unconditional” pardon for his son Hunter Biden, who was facing sentencing on federal felony convictions this month.
The reversal of the President's long-held public position that he would not use the powers of his office to pardon his son was met with criticism -- as much for the perceived deception of a pledge as for the act itself.
More significantly, it drew immediate concerns that, in doing so, Biden provided President-elect Donald Trump with new rationale and political cover for expanding his own pardon power when he takes office.
In the statement, a principled but aggrieved President Biden said, "It is clear that Hunter was treated differently...Any 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."
| "For my entire career, I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: 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...There has been an effort to break Hunter -- who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough...I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision." - President Joe Biden, 12/1/24 |
The Case
Hunter Biden -- the second son of President Joe Biden, father of four, attorney, lobbyist, hedge fund principal, venture capitalist, and recovering alcoholic and former drug addict -- announced in December 2020, that his tax affairs were under federal criminal investigation by the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware.
The scope of the investigation included potential violations of tax and money laundering laws and Hunter's business dealings in foreign countries -- principally China and Ukraine.
In June 2023, Hunter entered a plea deal with prosecutors, agreeing to two misdemeanor counts of failure to pay taxes and a felony charge for knowingly denying drug use when applying for a gun purchase permit in 2018. They recommended two years probation and dropping the gun charge after a pretrial program had been met.
The agreement was thrown out July 26 by a Trump-appointed Federal District Court judge who gave 30 days to both sides to provide additional information. That negotiation imploded, and the US Attorney in Delaware, a Trump appointee, asked that he be named a special counsel to expand his authority on the case.
On September 14, Hunter Biden was indicted in Delaware on three federal firearms-related charges: two for making false statements on a firearm application form and one for prohibited possession of a firearm. Hunter pleaded not guilty to all charges at his October 3 arraignment. Legal experts and news organizations have noted that prosecutions for these charges are very rare.
In addition to being a target as the president's son, the excessive charges against Biden were no doubt influenced by a hyper-sensitive Justice Department determined to demonstrate its impartiality.
Biden was found guilty June 11, 2024 of three felony charges for federal gun violations, and was scheduled to be sentenced December 12, 2024.
Separately, Hunter pleaded guilty in September 2024 to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles, including three felony charges – one tax evasion count and two counts of filing false returns – and six misdemeanor charges.
While he initially fought the charges, he reportedly told his attorneys he could not subject his family to the anguish of another trial like the gut-wrenching gun trial in Delaware earlier in the year. Biden pleaded guilty and was scheduled to be sentenced on December 16, 2024.
| In his 2021 memoir Beautiful Things, Hunter Biden wrote of his struggles with drug and alcohol abuse. Over the past two decades, he has been in and out of rehabilitation, with several cycles of sobriety followed by relapse. which escalated after his brother Beau's death in 2015 from brain cancer. He has been in recovery since a 2019 intervention. |
The Pardon
The unusually inclusive language in Biden's pardon -- covering all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in” from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024 — has come under great scrutiny.
The near-limitless pardon has been compared to that of President Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of disgraced former President Richard Nixon, who was granted protection for any crimes he may have committed during his presidency.
Biden reportedly wanted a broadly worded document that extended to other potential crimes so Hunter would be protected from future retribution by a weaponized Trump Justice Department.
The Predator
Trump's promise to investigate his adversaries and critics, including the Biden family, was a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign. He has been unrelenting in his attacks on Hunter Biden over his personal and legal issues.
In early 2019, then-President Trump pushed baseless claims of a Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory alleging that then-Vice President Joe Biden's efforts to seek the dismissal of Ukraine's disgraced top prosecutor as a part of anti-corruption efforts led by the US was instead an effort to cover up illegal dealings by his son.
In July 2019, Trump famously ordered the freezing of $391 million in military aid in an attempt to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to launch an investigation of the Bidens. Trump's actions later led to his December 2019 impeachment by the US House of Representatives.
A subsequent 2019-2020 investigation into Hunter Biden's involvement with Burisma and Ukraine, led by Republican Senators Ron Johnson (WI) and Chuck Grassley (IA), was also unsuccessful.
In an October 2020 article, twenty days prior to the 2020 US presidential election, the New York Post -- in collaboration withTrump attorney Rudy Giuliani and former chief strategist Steve Bannon -- alleged evidence of corruption by both Joe and Hunter Biden found on a laptop computer that Hunter left for repairs at a Wilmington, Delaware computer shop.
Extensive scrutiny of the laptop's contents by multiple parties found no evidence of criminal activity. Emails authenticated by CNN in July 2022, however, did reveal Hunter's struggle with large debt and overdue tax bills.
In January 2023, after Republicans took control of the US House of Representatives, the House Oversight Committee initiated an investigation into the "Biden Crime Family" and whether President Biden was improperly involved in the foreign business activities of his son and brother James, a former business partner of Hunter's.
The committee, led by Chair James Comer (R-KY), alleged "international influence peddling schemes," bribery, and a Justice Department cover-up. No evidence of wrongdoing was discovered.
| In a June 2023 speech Trump said, “When I get back in office, I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.” |
During his tenure as President of the United States, Donald Trump granted executive clemency to 237 individuals charged or convicted of federal criminal offenses, including 143 pardons -- 116 of which were issued in the final two weeks of his presidency.
Ultimately, of the 237 grants of clemency by Trump, only 25 came through the Office of the Pardon Attorney's process.
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Sources: New York Times, Politico, AP, NB, CNN
