Biden ends up agreeing (at least in part) with Trump

This Monday’s flight from Cape Verde to Angola was a nightmare for Karine Jean-Pierre. The White House spokesperson was peppered with questions from journalists who were aboard Air Force One accompanying the president on his first visit to Africa. Almost all the questions were about the same thing: Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden. Despite his skills, his dialectical ability and his experience, Jean-Pierre had the impossible mission of presenting the contradictory as coherent: that Biden trusts in justice because it is not politicized and that he forgives his son because his cases were politicized. With the pardon, Biden has ended up agreeing, at least in part, with his nemesis: Donald Trump. If the Democrat can maintain that the case against Hunter Biden was tainted, it is no longer possible to disqualify Trump for saying that his accusations were also tainted. Not only that: the pardon of Hunter Biden is a red carpet for the president-elect’s purposes of pardoning those convicted of the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The outgoing president had said he would not pardon his son. His behavior had been exemplary so far. He respected that Attorney General Merrick Garland, appointed by himself, granted special prosecutor powers to the person in charge of the investigations into Hunter Biden. He let the investigation of the case progress, he was cautious in his statements and avoided any kind of interference. When his son was unanimously found guilty by a popular jury in Wilmington (Delaware), an overwhelmingly Democratic city where the train station is named after the president, Biden assured that he abided by the ruling and its consequences. When push comes to shove, however, fatherly love has been more powerful than exemplary leadership as president.

Biden did not want to wait for the sentences against his son to be known for the two cases in which he was found guilty of 12 crimes. Three are related to the illegal purchase and possession of a gun; nine are for tax fraud. Biden is right that most similar cases do not go to trial and that a plea deal was derailed at the last minute amid political pressures. It is possible, however, that based on these reasons, the convictions would not have involved his son’s imprisonment, but rather fines and a period of probation. But there were no guarantees that this would be the case. And with a prison sentence on the table, a pardon would have been an even tougher pill to swallow.

Karine Jean-Pierre was asked on Air Force One if Biden’s pardon was a consequence of Trump’s victory at the polls. The White House spokesperson did not want to go into hypothetical assumptions, but the scenario would have undoubtedly been different. If Kamala Harris had been elected, Biden could have waited to know the severity of the sentences, for the judicial appeals to be resolved and, ultimately, for his successor to grant the pardon. With Trump’s victory, however, the possibility of additional judicial harassment against Hunter Biden, who has been in the Republicans’ crosshairs for years, opened up. Biden’s pardon not only forgives his son for the crimes of which he has been convicted, but also for any others that he may have committed from January 1, 2014 to January 1, 2024. This shields him from the ideas of revenge that the Trumpists have expressed. Trump, curiously, has oscillated between promising revenge and leaving the door open to pardoning Hunter Biden himself. But all of those are just that, hypothetical scenarios.

Biden, now in retirement, does not assume an electoral cost for his decision, but he does assume a political cost for his legacy. He is not the first president to pardon his relatives (nor will he surely be the last), but all the rhetoric of respect for the independence of justice is blown up not only with the pardon, but also with his arguments for granting it.

“It is clear that Hunter received different treatment,” he said in his statement. “The accusations in their cases only came after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” he argued. “No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases can come to any conclusion other than that Hunter has been singled out just because he is my son, and that is wrong. Attempts have been made to break Hunter, who has been sober for five and a half years, despite relentless attacks and targeted persecution. By trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me, and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. “Enough is enough,” he added, to reach a conclusion that crystallizes the president’s contradiction: “I believe in the judicial system, but as I have dealt with this, I also believe that naked politics has infected this process and led to an error.” judicial”.

Karine Jean-Pierre tried to defend aboard Air Force One that the two things are compatible. He insisted that the president’s son had only been persecuted and convicted because his last name is Biden, that everything would have been different if it were a Hunter Smith. However, he was unable to give a reasonable explanation to almost any of the questions posed to him by journalists. Is Hunter Biden the only case in which there has been “selective persecution”, the only case “infected” by politics? Is that “enough is enough” consistent with believing in justice?

The cases of Hunter Biden and Donald Trump are very different. The seriousness of the events is not even remotely comparable. But if the president maintains that the case against Hunter – who had pleaded guilty to most of the crimes for which he was awaiting conviction – was politicized, a Pandora’s box opens. Maintaining that the Department of Justice and judges are always independent and fair, except in the case of the president’s son, does not have a pass. Therefore, no matter how different the cases are, Trump has the same right to defend that his accusations and persecutions are also contaminated, that they are a witch hunt. At the very least, the moral superiority that the president had exhibited until now disappears.

Presidents usually leave office with the approval of pardons. Sometimes they are to repair injustices and other times, to free family members and political allies from the weight of the law. Jean-Pierre anticipated that Biden will approve more pardons before leaving the White House on January 20, 2025. The novelty this time is that his replacement may also arrive approving pardons. In fact, Trump’s reaction to clemency with Hunter Biden was to point out those convicted of the assault on the Capitol, whom he calls “hostages.” That there will be grace measures for this is almost a fact. That Democrats have lost some of the authority to criticize him, too.