The pardon

As everyone who follows the news has heard, president Biden pardoned his son Hunter yesterday.  Biden's statement, Hunter's statement, and the text of the pardon can be read in full here.

One objection to this action can easily be dismissed -- the claim that it gives Trump an excuse to unjustly pardon cronies and family members of his own.  Trump needs no precedent to behave corruptly.  He will behave corruptly no matter what Democrats do or do not do.  He gave unjustified pardons during his first term and will do so again during his second.  Biden's pardon yesterday will make no difference to that at all.

That being said, the optics of this are terrible.  The party loyalists and the ideologically committed will support it, of course, but to the broad mass of voters, it's just a high-profile affirmation that there is one law for us regular people, and another for the powerful and their families.  That the wealthy elite, Democrat or Republican, look after their own and shield them from consequences, while an ordinary person in the same situation would be left to his fate.

It's likely that every Democrat running for office in 2026 will be asked whether he or she agrees with Biden's action -- and will thus face the choice of repudiating the previous Democratic president or affirming a position which most voters will have come to see as elitist.

It's true, as Biden points out, that the prosecution in this case was itself bogus and corrupt -- that felony charges are almost never brought in circumstances like those of this case, and that Hunter was targeted as a crooked way of getting at the president.  It may also be that Biden feels little loyalty or concern for a party whose leaders helped to hound him out of the presidential race at the behest of the billionaire donor class, which objected to his plans to raise their taxes during a second term.

But Biden has been aware for months that prosecution of Hunter was bogus.  And he repeatedly promised that he would not issue a pardon.  He should not have made such promises if he was not absolutely sure he would keep them.

And Hunter Biden is not the only high-profile figure at risk of unjust prosecution and punishment.  Trump has repeatedly threatened to use his power to persecute people he considers enemies -- and he brands people as enemies at the tiniest provocation.  Where are the pardons for those at risk of prosecution for purely imaginary offenses, if Trump succeeds in packing the revelant federal offices with toadies who will go after anyone he tells them to?  In particular, what about Anthony Fauci, one of our greatest warriors in the struggle against disease for decades, who is now the target of some of the wingnut world's most lurid and ludicrous conspiracy delusions?  Ford gave Nixon a blanket pardon for anything he might have done in office, broadly shielding him from any federal prosecution.  This would be no different.

Biden has done far more for the people of this country than he's given credit for, and history's eventual verdict on his presidency will certainly be kinder than that of his contemporaries.  But now, that favorable verdict will always bear this asterisk.