CNN
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President Joe Biden made history Sunday by pardoning his son Hunter Biden, who was convicted on gun and tax charges.
The Constitution gives the President of the United States the unique power to grant pardons for federal crimes. “The President shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for crimes against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”
Presidents have granted pardons for friends, donors, political allies, and political causes, but there will be no president until Biden pardons his son.
Biden claimed in a statement that his son’s criminal case “only arose after several political opponents in Congress attacked me and incited me to contest my election.”
He argued that Hunter Biden could be prosecuted simply because he is the president’s son, especially on the sole charge of lying on documents needed to purchase a handgun.
Indeed, Republicans have long sought to link Hunter Biden’s lucrative business career to his father. And don’t forget: then-President Donald Trump’s attempt to have Ukraine investigate Hunter Biden’s ties to a natural gas company led to his first impeachment.
Hunter Biden’s personal battle with addiction and the business career he built in his father’s name have clearly become a political liability for Joe Biden. The federal investigation into Hunter Biden is a multi-year affair. It began in 2018 during the Trump presidency and continued throughout the Joe Biden administration. With the pardon, Biden broke a clear promise not to interfere with the justice system on behalf of his son, which would tarnish his presidential legacy.
Only two other presidents have pardoned family members, according to Alexis Coe, author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington.
► Bill Clinton pardons his half-brother Roger on drug charges.
► President Trump pardoned his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, who was convicted of witness tampering, tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions. Mr. Kushner is currently slated to become the U.S. ambassador to France.
In 2023, Coe wrote a piece for CNN about the long list of presidential sons that poses particular problems for their fathers. She told me that legislators never anticipated that the pardon power would be used for intimate relationships.
“When the framers of the Constitution discussed presidential pardons in the Constitutional Convention, I guarantee you that a future in which it would be used as a release card for first families was not among their concerns,” she said. After Biden pardoned his son, he said: “It is supposed to inspire unity and justice,” a last resort for those who have been failed by the system. Now, the risk is that amnesty becomes the norm as a kind of privilege of access.
Interestingly, family pardons were not the most controversial for either Clinton or Trump.
Mr. Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich was even more shocking than that of his half-brother.
President Trump has a long list of political allies, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former aide Stephen Bannon, who is on trial for defrauding investors on his border wall project. pardoned. Mr. Bannon was later convicted of other federal charges related to failing to respond to a congressional subpoena and served time in prison. He also faces state charges related to an alleged private border wall project.
The current debate over the president and the judiciary is shifting from the fact that Trump’s election eliminated many of his legal problems to the fact that his son’s legal problems will be resolved in the wake of the Democratic Party’s devastating defeat. The pivot will likely depend on Biden’s decision. President Trump’s sentencing for a felony in New York has been postponed indefinitely, and federal charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election and manipulating classified data have been dropped.
Republicans have long argued that there is a two-tiered judiciary and that they are unfairly targeted, but CNN compiled a list of recent federal prosecutions and found that Republican members of Congress are facing criminal investigations at higher rates. There was no evidence of confrontation.
In pardoning his son, Biden said Americans should still have faith in the justice system. But in his son’s case, he said, “I also believe that raw politics infected the process and that led to a miscarriage of justice.”
It’s a harsh indictment of the justice system as President Trump promises big changes, including putting allies in charge of the Justice Department and FBI. Trump, in particular, was seriously considering whether he could issue a pardon himself during his first term in the White House.
Pardons involve an application, review, and grant process, which is conducted through a special division of the Department of Justice.
According to a review of the pardon power by the Congressional Research Service, the bureau lists various criteria that ordinary people must meet before applying for a pardon, including good behavior after conviction, acceptance of responsibility, and need for relief. This includes information such as gender, recommendations from authorities, etc.
Biden also used his pardon powers more broadly to wipe out simple marijuana convictions on federal land and in Washington, D.C., in 2022. The mass pardon was carried out in the weeks before the 2022 midterm elections. Sunday’s unusual pardon occurred during the lame duck period after Democrats lost the White House in the November election, but while Biden was still president. It is during the final weeks of a president’s term that he often uses his pardon power in the most controversial ways.
