For nearly his entire tenure, President Joe Biden's White House largely steered clear of interfering in federal investigations and prosecutions, sticking to a promise Biden had made as a 2020 candidate, legal experts say. That all changed Dec. 1, when Biden used his presidential pardon power to end federal prosecutions of his son, Hunter, for any offenses over a 10-year period, including the two cases he was about to be sentenced for.
"No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong," Biden wrote in a statement announcing the pardon. The statement continued, "Here's the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice."
The pardon's most immediate effect was to end the federal cases against Hunter Biden. He was found guilty by a Delaware jury of three charges related to lying about his drug use on a federal gun purchase form. Separately, the younger Biden pleaded guilty to charges related to filing and paying taxes from 2016 to 2019.
The "full and unconditional pardon" that Joe Biden issued covers "offenses against the United States which (Hunter Biden) has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024." This immunizes Hunter Biden against potential efforts by the incoming Trump administration to prosecute him on other matters from his past, such as his work on behalf of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Biden had initially shown restraint in letting the legal cases play out, said Stanley Brand, a Penn State University distinguished fellow in law and government.
"He let the special counsel cases (against Hunter Biden) go forward to trial," Brand said. The pardon came "after the process was completed. This is the 'act of grace' that the Supreme Court has characterized as the pardon power."
And the broad pardon Biden granted his son is linked to Republicans' longstanding efforts to target Hunter Biden, said James Robenalt, a lawyer who has written and taught about the Watergate scandal and presidential power.
Trump "had already made a living attacking Hunter" and has now said he will appoint top officials such as Kash Patel as FBI director, whose rhetoric has echoed the president-elect's on using the federal government's powers to seek vengeance against political enemies, Robenalt said.
Frank O. Bowman III, a University of Missouri law professor emeritus, said Biden's pardon "'interferes' with a prosecution in the sense that it prevents the final act in the case, punishment, from occurring." Bowman said that "the fact that he's the presidents' son shouldn't entitle him to special consideration. And by giving him special consideration, Biden gives cover to Trump to do far worse."
The Hunter Biden pardon could allow Trump to justify similar decisions, because "whatever protections exist to prevent interference are soft policies and 'norms,'" rather than laws, Brand said.
"Years ago, the White House would not extend pardons without a thorough vetting by an assigned pardon attorney at the Justice Department," said Joan E. Meyer, who is of counsel to the law firm Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP. "That procedure appears to have been abandoned. Today's presidential pardons are haphazard, political and done without any assessment of how it damages the justice system."
Whatever the justification for the pardon, it represents a big enough shift to qualify this pledge as Promise Broken.
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