The Scandalous Hunter Biden Pardon

National Review Online

Monday, December 02, 2024

 

The sun rising in the morning was less likely than Joe Biden’s failure to honor his promise not to pardon his son. No matter how indignantly the president and his staff repeated this vow while he campaigned for reelection — and then while Vice President Harris campaigned after Biden was supplanted as the Democratic nominee — it was always certain that, once the election was over, Hunter would be granted full clemency. Indeed, the question was put repeatedly because Biden’s “no pardon” guarantee insulted the public’s intelligence.

 

The inevitable came on Sunday night, at the end of a holiday weekend. Biden has largely faded into irrelevance since his party dumped him after his disastrous debate performance in late June. But, by then, a jury had already found Hunter guilty on felony gun charges in Delaware, and the president’s son was staring at a September trial on criminal tax charges that would implicate his father because they were based on the millions Hunter derived from the Biden family business of peddling Joe’s political influence. Consequently, the prospect of a self-interested presidential pardon remained a campaign issue, and Biden’s post-election betrayal of his commitment not to grant one was always going to be major news.

 

The president knew the pardon would be scandalous. There are signs that he tried to soften the blow to his legacy. Following Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the election, Biden’s Justice Department moved swiftly to dismiss the criminal cases it had brought against the president-elect. Legally, it was not much of a concession — longstanding DOJ guidance proscribes criminal prosecution of a sitting president. Politically, however, leaving the cases open and forcing a Trump-led DOJ to dismiss them would have been messy for Trump; by relieving his successor of that headache, Biden appeared magnanimous. Perhaps the public could be persuaded to look at the preordained Hunter pardon as part of a clemency package — an ending of both the Biden and Trump cases that would turn the national page from a deeply divisive era.

 

If this was the play, it’s not working.

 

Biden’s half-century political career is littered with mendacity, self-dealing, and crass calculations. The president could have looked the country in the eye a year ago and said he was issuing a pardon because he had already lost his older son to cancer and could not bear the imprisonment of his drug-addicted, habitually self-destructive younger son. Yes, it would have been an abuse of power. It would even further have put the lie to his pretensions that his name is synonymous with integrity. Americans, however, are a forgiving people. They’d have understood a father’s love for his (now 54-year-old) child if the president had just been honest about it. But that is not the Biden way.

 

Hunter was in these straits because he has lived a life of privilege. Despite his substance abuse and debauchery, he made millions selling access to his father, with his father’s knowing assent, to agents of foreign powers — including corrupt and anti-American regimes. To the great frustration of investigators, the Biden Justice Department steered their probe away from the president, narrowly focusing on Hunter’s tax crimes (which were too blatant to ignore). Prosecutors dragged their feet to ensure that the financial crimes stemming from Joe Biden’s time as Obama administration vice president could not be charged due to the lapsing statute of limitations.

 

Hunter had also lied about his drug abuse on a federal form in obtaining a gun which was lost near a school. The average American would promptly have been indicted — and certainly would not have had the Secret Service come by the gun dealer’s store to try airbrushing the evidence. But this was the president’s son, so no charges were brought for years; then, with the statute of limitations running out, the Biden DOJ tried to make all of Hunter’s legal troubles disappear in a sweetheart plea deal: In exchange for guilty pleas to two puny tax misdemeanors (with a Biden DOJ recommendation of no jail time), all the tax felonies would be dropped, while the gun charges would be “diverted” and then vanish.

 

The deal imploded when an alert federal judge questioned its stark irregularities. Embarrassed by the scandal, the DOJ had no choice but to prosecute — but all the while knowing that a pardon was ineluctable.

 

Hunter’s litigation strategy made that clear. He would admit no wrong and went to trial on the gun case despite overwhelming evidence and certain guilty verdicts. In the tax case, he pled guilty during jury selection in order to spare Democrats a trial spotlighting the lucrative Biden family business in the weeks just prior to the election. In the unusual arrangement, though, Hunter refused to acknowledge guilt and pled guilty to all nine counts. He never tried to work out a more reasonable plea with less prison exposure because he knew he didn’t need to worry about such details. Dad would take care of it.

 

And now the president has done just that. But not before tending to the politics.

 

Biden’s DOJ tried to make the case disappear before the campaign heated up. When that didn’t work, the president let his son be subjected to two prosecutions because a pardon at that point would have wounded his reelection effort. It would also have stepped all over the effort to prosecute Trump and then build a campaign around the theme that Trump was a unique danger to norms and the rule of law. Then in the campaign stretch run, with his son theoretically facing 25 years’ imprisonment, the president vowed there would be no clemency because an election-eve pardon would have set him up as the scapegoat if Harris lost. And now, with the election finally over, here comes the pardon.

 

The president is as predictable as, well, the pardon of his son. Naturally then, we were treated in his Sunday night pardon announcement to the laughable claim that Hunter was singled out for prosecution (by Biden’s own DOJ!) because of politics. The truth, of course, is that he was given preferential treatment because of politics. Biden spent decades writing laws increasing the penalties for federal gun and tax crimes and urging their stricter enforcement. It is late in the day for him to be shocked that he got what he legislated for.

 

It fits Biden’s legacy well: a tawdry move by a tawdry man that will be remembered best for easing Trump’s way to issue more controversial and dubious pardons of his own and minimize the blowback from an increasingly cynical public.