Biden’s unpardonable clemency: Clearing son Hunter clouds father Joe’s legacy

Presidents have broad and unchecked power to issue pardons. And when they make self-serving decisions that mock the ideal of equal justice, they must be roundly condemned. So it is with President Biden wiping the slate clean of consequences for his convicted-felon son Hunter.

It wasn’t very long ago that this page excoriated Donald Trump’s 2020 pardons as an unpardonable abuse of power. Some clemencies are indeed warranted — but again and again, Trump served himself and his allies, flying in the face of the crucial principle that those who break the law, whether or not they’re well connected, should pay the consequences.

The same can be said of Trump’s plans to exonerate those he calls “J-6 Hostages,” who were in fact violent rioters who breached the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

Should that Trump clemency come to some or all of the more than 1,200 people criminally charged, the argument against it has been hollowed out by Biden. For a man who knows how dangerous Trump can be, the outgoing president just basically gave the incoming president a hall pass.

Now the man who styled himself as the anti-Trump has fallen into the Trumpian trap of putting family before country.

Biden has also broken his word. In June, after Hunter was convicted by a jury of three felony crimes related to lying on federal gun-check forms, the president — who earlier had insisted on allowing his Justice Department to pursue the case against his son, as a matter of fairness — said “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”

That didn’t change when Biden dropped out of the race the next month. And it didn’t change in September, when Hunter pleaded guilty to nine more federal crimes, three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses.

Days after Trump won the White House again, Biden’s press secretary was asked again about the pardon possibility, and again repeated the line: “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no.”

Sunday, as he served up a clean slate on a silver plate, Biden said, “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.”

If the president had this concern, why didn’t he express it when charges were being brought? After the conviction? Any other time?

And if the concern is that a Trump Justice Department led by Pam Bondi — with Kash Patel the FBI director — is going to weaponize indictments and prosecutions and go after Hunter again, well, we wouldn’t be entirely surprised. Trump has made no secret of his plans to go after his political opponents, who he considers enemies.

Yes, it is true that not many Americans are routinely prosecuted for making false representations to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Still, in the fiscal year that Hunter Biden bought his gun, 478 people were referred for lying on that form. Federal prosecutors pursued 298 of those individuals.

No doubt those include plenty of people with parents and children and spouses and sympathetic cases. But the law’s the law — and background checks are, according to Joe Biden himself, absolutely essential laws without which America can’t be kept safe from gun violence.

On Saturday, Hunter’s lawyers published a 52-page document, “The political prosecutions of Hunter Biden,” arguing that he was targeted only because of his father. That is a fine point to make before the courts and perhaps Hunter would have prevailed and had the convictions thrown out. But dad short-circuited that the next day, at the end of the family Thanksgiving holiday on Nantucket, even bypassing the DOJ’s pardon attorney’s office.

Biden has been historically stingy in handing out pardons and commutations despite hundreds if not thousands of worthy candidates. That makes his singling out of his son for mercy especially glaring.

As Biden departs the scene his pardon is also a body blow to the Democratic Party when it is already leaderless and reeling. If Trump’s argument, however false, is that the Justice Department was rigged against him and others — this becomes proof the playing field is not even. Biden, who left the party flailing with his disastrous debate performance, has done it again.

Principles all went out the window when push came to shove. Shame on you, Joe.