Analysis
With his
pardon of son Hunter, Joe Biden delivers a heartfelt hypocrisy
David Smith
in
Washington
The
president and supporters argue Hunter Biden would never have been charged were
it not for his name – and any father might have done the same. But this
exercise of power also looks like a validation of Donald Trump
Sun 1 Dec
2024 23.46 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/02/hunter-biden-pardon-joe-biden-comment
A loving act
of mercy by a father who has already known much sorrow? Or a hypocritical
political manoeuvre reminiscent of his great foe? Maybe both can be true.
Joe Biden’s
announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter, who is facing
sentencing in two criminal cases, is likely to have been the product of a
Shakespearean struggle between head and heart.
On the one
hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. “From the
day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s
decision-making,” he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on
Sunday. To undermine the separation of powers goes against every fibre of his
political being.
On the other
hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with
references to his parents. As a senator, he once took a train from Washington
to Wilmington, Delaware, so he could blow out the candles on a birthday cake
for his eight-year-old daughter, Ashley, at the station, then cross the
platform and take the next train back to work.
Biden was
profoundly shaped by the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and
13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident and, much later, the death of his
son Beau from brain cancer. In that context, Hunter’s status as the first child
of a sitting president to face criminal charges will have pained his father in
what Ernest Hemingway called “the broken places”.
Hunter was
convicted this summer of lying about his drug use when he bought a gun. Joe
Biden categorically ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling
reporters: “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon
him.” Hunter also pleaded guilty in a separate tax evasion trial and was due to
be sentenced in both cases later this month.
Biden
reportedly spent months agonising over what to do. The scales were almost
certainly tilted by Donald Trump’s victory in last month’s presidential
election. The prospect of leaving Hunter to the tender mercies of Trump’s
sure-to-be politicised, retribution-driven justice department was too much to
bear. Biden typically takes advice from close family and is likely to have
reached the decision after talking it over during what was an intimate
Thanksgiving weekend.
“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,” the president said in a statement, calling it “a miscarriage of
justice”.
He added:
“There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years
sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In
trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to
believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”
Joe Biden’s
defenders will certainly contend that, if Hunter had been an ordinary citizen,
the gun case would not have come this far, and his father was simply righting
that wrong. Republicans spent years hyping investigations into Hunter that
failed to produce a shred of evidence linking his father to corruption.
Eric Holder,
a former attorney general, wrote on social media that no US attorney “would
have charged this case given the underlying facts. After a five-year
investigation the facts as discovered only made that clear. Had his name been
Joe Smith the resolution would have been – fundamentally and more fairly – a
declination. Pardon warranted.”
It was also
noted that this is hardly the first time pardons have smacked of nepotism. Bill
Clinton as president pardoned his half-brother for old cocaine charges, and
Trump pardoned the father of Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, for tax evasion and
retaliating against a cooperating witness, though in both cases those men had
already served their prison terms. Trump also used the dog days of his first
presidency to pardon the rogues’ gallery of Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Paul
Manafort and Roger Stone.
And yet for
many Americans there will be something jarring about the double standard of a
president pardoning a member of his own family ahead of numerous other worthy
cases. Republicans in the House of Representatives naturally pounced with more
hyperbole about the “Biden crime family”.
But there
were also more thoughtful objections. Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of
Colorado, wrote on social media: “While as a father I certainly understand
President Joe Biden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am
disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country. This is a bad
precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his
reputation.”
Joe Walsh, a
former Republican congressman turned Trump critic, said on the MSNBC network:
“Joe Biden repeatedly said he wouldn’t do this so he repeatedly lied. This just
furthers cynicism that people have about politics and that cynicism strengthens
Trump because Trump can say, ‘I’m not a unique threat. Everybody does this. If
I do something for my kid, my son-in-law, whatever, look, Joe Biden does the
same thing.’ I get it but this was a selfish move by Biden, which politically
only strengthens Trump. It’s just deflating.”
The Trump
context is impossible to ignore in this moral maze. Next month he will become
the first convicted criminal sworn in as president, though three cases against
him have all but perished. He is already moving to appoint loyalists to the FBI
and justice department.
Michelle
Obama once advised, when they go low, we go high. On Sunday Joe Biden, 82 and
heading for the exit with little to lose, decided to go low. Perhaps it was
what any parent would have done.
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