The pardon power is an absolute power of the Executive, which is why it traditionally has been used with discretion. Biden’s pardon of his son, showed how much he cared for that norm, along with all the other norms of conduct trampled on by the administration of which he is the figurehead. Despite their protestations to be champions of democracy, this administration cared only about raw power. Their legacy will be to intensify the blood sport aspects of politics in this country, an ominous development for the Republic.
Don’t pardons have to be for a specific named crime? This is nuts.
No they do not. The only thing a pardon cannot apply to is future crime.
The dating of the pardon also shows the incredible corruption of Biden himself, as it reaches all the way back to the second Obama term.
Wonder when we’ll get the tell-all book of the Hunter events. It will sell very well.
IMO, the purpose of a pardon should be to correct cockeyed results reached by courts, which will commonly be the result of misconduct by prosecutors and or judges. If Gov. Hochul were anything but a tedious hack, the Trump convictions would have been annulled within days with an astringent statement from the governor that the commonweal does not benefit from misconduct by juries, judges, or prosecutors. Another purpose should be to take account of facts which have come to light after verdicts.
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On the federal level, applications for pardons are screened by an office of the Department of Justice populated with lawyers. This is a bad business and the office should be shut down. Have an office at the White House itself and have it staffed with people who have some background in a variety of disciplines (law among them) who demonstrate in interviews and questionnaires that they’re not idiots, intellectually or morally.
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You occasionally hear of people granted pardons because they ‘expressed remorse; or they were ‘model prisoners’ or they’d lived ‘exemplary lives’ later. Gov. Huckabee was supposedly concerned with hypotheses about whether or not they would re-offend. All of these should be deemed irrelevant considerations.
The time frame of the pardon is so broad that I wonder why he didn’t just pardon all crimes that Hunter Biden committed at any point in his life. Such an action wouldn’t really be any more egregious than pardoning all crimes over an 11 year period and would avoid the question “what happened in 2014 to make that the starting point?”
Why now?
He’s still got over a month before he heads out the door. It’s been a month since the election.
Seems odd to do it on a random Monday (the beginning of the news cycle) in December.
His some is up for sentencing on December 12. His son was probably pleading for it over Thanksgiving. Left unsaid, probably, was that he could not rely upon Kamala to grant the pardon if Biden wakes up dead one morning before January 20, 2025.
Statute of Limitations.
The Saviors of Democracy strike once again. He will pardon himself on the way out the door, probably on new year’s eve asserting that it is important that the country to heal. And the news media will laud him for his magnanimity.
The loud sigh you hear is from James Buchanan’s grave knowing that he is now no longer regarded as the worst President ever.
Agreed!
…the worst President ever.
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