Editorial: Biden’s pardon of his son betrays those who stand for the rule of law
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When it comes to his son Hunter, Joe Biden is always a father first, a president second.
Last Sunday, at the close of the Thanksgiving weekend and the warmth of family gatherings, Biden granted a full and unconditional pardon for his son’s convictions on tax evasion and gun-related charges.
As a father, Biden’s action in the last weeks of his presidency is understandable. As a president, it is another blow to Democrats’ efforts to argue for the rule of law in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s next term, as they did in Trump’s first four years in office.
Democrats cannot reverse the president’s pardon. But Democrats can and should criticize it as an abuse of power and the breaking of a pledge. Otherwise, their future complaints about any Trump abuse of his office for personal or political interests will seem little more than partisan bellowing.
It’s clear the prosecution of Hunter Biden’s case was driven at least some by the president’s political opponents. Similar charges involving an ordinary citizen likely would have been settled without the potential prison sentence that the president’s son faced.
But Hunter Biden broke the law and was convicted within the law.
After a jury convicted his son on three felony charges for illegally purchasing a gun, the president said, “I said I’d abide by the jury decision. I will do that.”
Now that he hasn’t, a charge of presidential hypocrisy will loom larger than the verdicts against his son.
Biden assisted Trump’s return to the White House by his desire to seek a second term despite his advanced age and low public approval. Now, by using the power of his office to spare his son the consequences of his actions, he has further opened the door to Trump similarly abusing the presidency.
In justifying the pardon, Biden went beyond his feelings as a father to suggest that the justice system was manipulated for political purposes. He said, “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me.”
That’s an echo of Trump’s false claims about Democrats using the courts against him.
Democrats will offer a wail of “whataboutisms” in this matter. They argued that as president Trump abused pardons to protect associates who could be used against him. (He has now suggested he will pardon Jan. 6 rioters after Biden’s pardon of his son.)
Biden also pointed to politics in defending his decision: “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.”
Wrong, yes. Illegal, no. The president should have let the process run its course.
Democrats have argued that no one is above the law. That was — and remains in the bones of most Americans — a universal belief despite the Supreme Court’s recent reckless decision to bestow blanket immunity on presidents.
But to effectively argue that no one is above the law, Democrats cannot condone family members being placed beyond the reach of the law’s consequences.
Biden has done that. In doing so, he has weakened the complaints that have been made — and will be made — against Trump’s bending the law to serve his loyalists and punish his enemies.
Biden’s career has been shadowed by the tragedy of family losses. His first wife and daughter died in a car accident. His son and namesake Joseph R. “Beau” Biden III, an Army National Guard officer and attorney general of Delaware, died of brain cancer.
The toll of those losses likely played a role as Biden weighed whether to spare his son a potential prison sentence. As a father, he acted in his son’s best interest. As a president, he betrayed the nation’s best interest.
Democrats and others fear the Trump years ahead will be a parade of people abusing the law to serve their own ends. Those who would object have been weakened by Biden’s doing the same.