Pardon me for thinking

You can approve, disapprove, or not care about President Biden's pardon of his son and in each case you would be right.

A historian I enjoyed reading on Twitter, who has since moved on to BlueSky during its post-election Trump-resistance phase, announced there that he was “getting close to blocking anyone in my mentions arguing that the Biden pardon of his son is a big deal. It's just not. I absolutely do not care. You cannot make me. Do not try.”

To demonstrate how much he absolutely did not care, he posted or reposted comments about the topic 11 times over five hours, by turns minimizing the significance of the president’s broad pardon of his son or dismissing it as unworthy of discussion.

In addition to threatening to block anyone questioning the position he was repeatedly declaring, this highly-online historian made a flourish of canceling his Washington Post subscription because it published a centerpiece story about it and some of their opinion columnists weighed in. A curiously punitive attitude, this, toward journalists paid to cover the president and columnists paid to analyze and reflect, over something allegedly of no consequence.

There is no doubt that it is newsworthy: President Joe Biden, in the final weeks of his presidency, issued a historically broad pardon of his son, Hunter, ahead of his being sentenced on federal tax and weapon convictions. The grant of clemency covers any crime Hunter Biden may have committed from 2014 through last Sunday – just about a decade of his life – including the felonies of which he was duly convicted.

It is a landmark use of the presidential pardon power for its length of time, broadness of scope and the recipient being such a close relative of the president. “Ford pardoned Nixon!” comes the protest, skipping over the shorter time frame of that pardon, the political context, and the fact that Richard Nixon was not Gerald Ford’s child.

It is a singularly bold and sweeping use of clemency powers by a president on behalf of a member of his immediate family, after that relative was convicted or pleaded guilty in two federal courts – and after the president explicitly promised not to do this very thing.

From there, it cannot be surprising or offensive that political columnists would address it. The profusion of interviews with academics and legal experts and opinions of political journalists present a range of vantage points on what Biden did, what previous presidents have done, how Donald Trump used that power in his first term and how he was promised to use it in his second, its soundness as a matter of ethics or political strategy.

Getting mad at the New York Times or the Washington Post et al for producing news and analysis when a president uses his office to give his son a get-out-of-jail-for-free card and a preemptive pass for any potential federal crimes, after evidently lying that he would not do so, is not a good look, but they can do what they want with their subscriptions and social media accounts. Vive la résistance.

It can simultaneously be true that Hunter Biden was treated badly, cruelly humiliated, used as a way to torment the president and spin up conspiracist rubbish for political motives; and that he was guilty of the specific crimes with which he was charged and should be sentenced appropriately.

Whatever his virtues, Joe Biden has lied many times in his public life. Since June, when he was still a candidate for reelection, he had promised not to use his presidential powers to shield his son from accountability. Hunter Biden pleaded guilty, with no plea agreement, to tax offenses that could have resulted in 17 years of prison time. Separately, he was convicted of purchasing and possessing a firearm after lying on gun-purchase paperwork that he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs, even though he was. The president professed confidence in the judicial system and ruled out a pardon – until Sunday, when he decried a “miscarriage of justice” days ahead of his son’s criminal sentence.

If the concern was for potential further targeting of the younger Biden by a Justice department under Trump, it would not have been difficult to craft a pardon excluding “all offenses charged or prosecuted (including any that have resulted in convictions) by Special Counsel David C. Weiss in Docket No. 1:23-cr-00061-MN in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware and Docket No. 2:23-CR-00599-MCS-1 in the United States District Court for the Central District of California”; or commuted the penalties and crafted the pardon to shield against specific threats without a blanket pass on accountability.

That way, Hunter Biden could still face justice for the crimes of which he had been convicted or confessed guilt, while protecting him from other politically-motivated prosecutions. (It is not obvious that Republicans would have grounds or motivation to visit further misery on the younger Biden anyway.)

As presented, it looks to me very much like Joe Biden used the power at his disposal to rescue his son, and in so doing has reinforced cynicism about his party’s, and his social class’s, commitment to an impartial rule of law.

It does not bear on Trump, who has already used his powers to pardon and appoint liberally for the benefit of his own friends, family, business partners and, ultimately, himself. If anything, it might make it harder for Democrats to criticize Trump’s use of the pardon to reward loyalty.

But I hope you won’t cancel me for saying these things.