President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was facing the possibility of a prison sentence on federal gun charges and federal tax evasion charges. Thanks to a presidential pardon, the defendant no longer has anything to worry about. My MSNBC colleague Hayley Miller explained:
President Joe Biden on Sunday issued a “full and unconditional” pardon for his son Hunter Biden, who has been dogged by Republican attacks for years. … The pardon is expected to cover both his gun charges and his tax charges, reported NBC News, the first outlet to report on the decision. It covers any offenses the 54-year-old “has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”
There’s no shortage of angles to a story like this one, but broadly speaking, there are two sides to the story. On the one hand, there’s the outgoing president, who argued that his adult son wouldn’t even have been prosecuted if his last name weren’t Biden. The pardon, by this reasoning, is about advancing the cause of justice and righting a prosecutorial wrong.
On the other hand, there’s the simple fact that Biden publicly said he wouldn’t intervene in his son’s case and had no intention of issuing a presidential pardon. Then he did the opposite, causing an uproar among Republicans.
Complicating matters, both arguments have merit. Would Hunter Biden have faced a prison sentence if he weren’t related to the president? Probably not. Should presidents keep their word when they make public commitments? Of course. It’s relatively easy to make the case that, in this instance, both the president and his critics have a point.
The one person, however, who should sit this one out, is Donald Trump, who apparently couldn’t help himself.
Shortly after the White House announced the pardon for the incumbent president’s son, the Republican president-elect published an item to his social media platform that read, “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
First, Jan. 6 criminals are not “hostages.”
Second, if we’re going to talk about pardons, abuses and miscarriages of justice, Trump might not like where the conversation ends up.
Indeed, by any fair measure, Trump’s record on pardons is arguably the worst in American history. During his first term, he effectively wielded his pardon power as a corrupt weapon, rewarding loyalists, completing cover-ups, undermining federal law enforcement, and doling out perverse favors to the politically connected. Trump’s list of scandalous pardon abuses is so long, it could be a lengthy book. The names should be familiar: Paul Manafort. Michael Flynn. Steve Bannon. Roger Stone. Seven different Republican members of Congress who were locked up for corruption crimes. Trump saw presidential pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for his friends and associates, engaging in the kind of brazen corruption that would’ve defined his term were it not eclipsed by other breathtaking scandals. If prominent GOP voices want Biden to pay a political price for pardoning his son, fine. He said he wouldn’t do this, then he did it anyway, and in the process, he invited political attacks that are rooted in fact for a change. But if Trump thinks he has the moral high ground on the issue, that’s bonkers.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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