WASHINGTON — Democrats have spent much of their presidential campaign warning that Donald Trump is a threat to the rule of law, trust in public institutions and even truth itself.
Some party lawmakers and strategists said Monday that President Joe Biden, in pardoning his son, would reverse each of those claims and pursue far-right ambitions that Democrats fear will harm the country. He said he gave President Trump political protection in order to do so.
This sweeping pardon means Hunter Biden will not face any penalties even if he is convicted in two separate cases, one for firearms charges and one for tax evasion.
More than that, the pardon, which Biden has repeatedly vowed never to grant, would absolve his son of any federal crimes he may have committed over the past decade.
People may appreciate a father’s understandable desire to protect his son as he struggles with drug and alcohol addiction.
“Did you know a father who didn’t do the same thing?” retiring Sen. Joe Manchin, R-West Virginia, asked NBC News on Monday.
“Let me tell you this: If that was my son, I would forgive him, too,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) told reporters.
But Biden played up more than paternal love in justifying the pardon, blaming federal prosecutors in much the same way that Trump claimed to be the victim of partisan persecution.
The president said in a statement Sunday that Hunter Biden was “selectively and unfairly prosecuted.” He added that the legal narrative had been “infected” with “raw politics” and created a “miscarriage of justice.”
President Trump’s favorite phrase, “Witch hunt!” is nowhere to be found. –But the meaning is the same.
A senior law enforcement official called the White House’s approach “ridiculous” and decided to retain Delaware State Attorney David Weiss to continue the investigation into Hunter Biden shortly after he took office in 2021. He pointed out that it was Biden.
“They took a gamble and it didn’t pay off as expected,” said Anthony Cawley, a former Justice Department spokesman.
By allowing his son to escape punishment, Biden, and by extension other Democratic leaders, could lose some of the moral authority they need to oppose future pardons granted by Trump. .
President Trump has already said he would “absolutely” consider pardoning each of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. If he does so, President Trump may try to slow the situation by invoking a Biden pardon.
“Whatever President Trump plans to do with pardons for felons on January 6th, he will use that to justify it,” said former Trump White House special who has become a critic of President Donald Trump. Prosecutor Ty Cobb said. “And certainly his supporters will accept that as justification. That’s a tragedy for this country.”
The rationale Biden used to pardon his son is the backbone of Trump’s argument that there is corruption in the judicial system that needs to be removed. Critics of the pardon said it would serve to strengthen President Trump’s case and could lead to the firing of some career lawyers trying to enforce the law.
In fact, President Trump’s press secretary, Caroline Levitt, used Biden’s pardon to bolster Trump’s case in an interview with Fox News on Monday night.
“Joe Biden’s pardon of Hunter Biden proves the need to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise to end the weaponization of the justice system.” He’s going to get it done. He’s going to eradicate corruption.”
“The unfortunate thing here is that he (Biden) is basically justifying these charges against the Department of Justice, and that’s going to have repercussions for the next four years,” Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis said in an interview. I guess so.” That’s the problem. ”
The incoming Trump team already views the Justice Department with considerable suspicion. The MAGA movement aims to dismantle what supporters call the “deep state” of career civil servants, and the Justice Department is an obvious target of President Trump.
Pam Bondi, who was nominated by President Trump to head the department, has said in the past that the prosecutors who prosecuted Trump are part of the “deep state” trying to undermine him. “The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad guys will be prosecuted,” she said last year.
The Justice Department is one of the most powerful and important agencies in the United States, and prosecutors can upend people’s lives and eat into their savings through investigations, trials, and subpoenas. Former U.S. Attorney General Robert H. Jackson warned in a 1940 speech: It’s the worst. ”
If Americans lose confidence in the impartiality of the Justice Department, cynicism about the rule of law could emerge. Democrats argue that Trump is stirring up collective distrust in institutions such as the Justice Department by repeatedly claiming that he continues to be targeted by corrupt prosecutors.
Now it is Biden who is putting a strain on the rule of law, justifying a pardon for what prosecutors consider to be false claims that Hunter Biden was chosen for political reasons.
A judge has already ruled that there is no merit to the idea that Hunter Biden is the victim of selective prosecution. In a ruling filed in April, U.S. District Judge Mark Scalsi, who is overseeing the tax case, said Hunter Biden had “no clear evidence of discriminatory effect or discriminatory purpose, let alone a reasonable He has not been able to provide any inference.” His lawyer claims he was targeted.
Whether it’s President Trump or Biden, slandering federal prosecutors undermines trust in government. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, trust in public institutions has been declining in the United States since the 1960s. As of April, only 22% of Americans said they trusted the government to do the right thing most of the time. Sixty years ago, this number was 77%.
“I think it’s a good thing,” Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., said Monday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press Now.” …And I think what happened in the last 24 hours hurt that. ”
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), typically a staunch Biden supporter, denounced the pardon.
“I just think what he did was wrong, and this only further erodes public confidence in the Department of Justice and our entire judicial system,” said Peters, who is up for re-election in 2026.
Another casualty of the pardon is part of Biden’s legacy. He has always prided himself on being a truth teller and has stated what he calls “my words as Biden.”
But Biden promised not to pardon his son, and he did. This now false oath was echoed by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who also sought to defend it on Monday, insisting that Biden was not lying.
“He said he came to this decision this weekend because he was troubled by it and because he believes in the justice system, but he also believes that raw politics infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice.” she told reporters. Aboard Air Force One.
“The perception that Biden was selling — ‘giving his word as Biden’ — doesn’t hold up,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “So his legacy would be further undermined in that case. It will happen,” he said. ”
