WASHINGTON — Democrats have spent much of the presidential campaign warning that Donald Trump is a threat to the rule of law, to faith in public institutions — and even to truth itself.
By pardoning his son, President Joe Biden undermined each of those arguments while giving Trump political cover to pursue far-right ambitions that Democrats fear will damage the country, some party lawmakers and strategists said Monday.
The sweeping pardon means Hunter Biden will not face any punishment for criminal convictions in two separate cases, one involving gun charges and the other involving tax evasion.
Furthermore, the pardon that Biden repeatedly promised he would never grant protects his son from any federal violations he committed over the past decade.
A father’s natural desire to protect his son who is struggling with drug and alcohol addiction is something people might appreciate.
“Do you know any fathers who wouldn’t have done the same thing?” outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin, IW-Va., asked NBC News on Monday.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., told reporters: “I’ll put it this way: If it was my son, I would pardon him too.”
But in justifying the pardon, Biden went beyond a father’s love, questioning federal prosecutors in much the same way Trump has claimed he is the victim of partisan prosecution.
Hunter Biden, the president said in a statement on Sunday, was being “selectively and unfairly prosecuted.” The legal saga was “tainted” by “raw politics” that caused a “miscarriage of justice,” he added.
Nowhere does he use Trump’s favorite phrase: “Witch hunt!” – but the meaning is the same.
A senior law enforcement official called the White House’s approach “ridiculous,” noting that it was Biden who decided shortly after taking office in 2021 to retain David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, to continue an investigation into Hunter Biden to put.
“They took a gamble that didn’t turn out the way they hoped,” said former Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley.
Now that he has spared his son any punishment, Biden and, by extension, other Democratic leaders may lose some of the moral authority needed to object to future pardons granted by Trump.
Trump has already said he would “absolutely” consider pardoning all the rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. If he persists, Trump may try to blunt the fallout by appealing to Biden’s pardon.
“Whatever Trump plans to do in pardoning the January 6 criminals, he will use it as justification,” said Ty Cobb, a former special counsel in Trump’s White House who is a critic of the ex-president become. “And his supporters will certainly accept it as justification. That is a tragedy for the country.”
The rationale Biden used to pardon his son provides grist to Trump’s argument that there is rot in the justice system that needs to be removed. It will help Trump make his case and possibly fire some career lawyers trying to enforce the law, critics of the pardon say.
Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt used Biden’s pardon to substantiate Trump’s arguments in an interview with Fox News on Monday evening.
“Joe Biden’s pardon for Hunter Biden proves that President Trump’s signature campaign promise to end the weaponization of our justice system must happen,” she said, adding, “President Trump made that promise. He’s going to make it happen. He is going to root out corruption.”
Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist, said in an interview: “The unfortunate thing here is him [Biden] has in fact legitimized these accusations against the Justice Department, and they will reverberate for the next four years. That’s the problem.”
The new Trump team already views the Justice Department with great suspicion. A goal of the MAGA movement is to dismantle what supporters call the “deep state” made up of career government officials, and the Justice Department is clearly in Trump’s crosshairs.
Trump’s pick to lead the department, Pam Bondi, has said in the past that prosecutors who filed charges against Trump were members of a “deep state” bent on undermining Trump. She said last year that the “plaintiffs will be prosecuted, the bad ones.”
The Department of Justice is one of the most powerful and important institutions in the US. Prosecutors can turn people’s lives upside down and undermine their savings through investigations, lawsuits and subpoenas. Robert H. Jackson, a former U.S. attorney general, warned in a 1940 speech that “although the prosecutor is at his best one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of is the most beneficial forces in our society. the worst.”
If Americans lose confidence in the Justice Department’s impartiality, it could breed cynicism about the rule of law. Democrats have argued that Trump has fueled a collective distrust of institutions like the Justice Department with his repeated claims that he is an ongoing target of rogue prosecutors.
Now it is Biden who is pushing the rule of law and justifying the pardon for what prosecutors see as the false claim that Hunter Biden is being singled out for political reasons.
A judge has already ruled that there is no basis for the idea that Hunter Biden is the victim of selective prosecution. In a ruling filed in April, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi, who is overseeing the tax case, said Hunter Biden “fails to present a reasonable inference, let alone clear evidence, of discriminatory effect and purpose “, according to an order detailing attorneys’ claims that he was targeted.
Whether it is Trump or Biden who smears federal prosecutors, trust in government suffers. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, trust in public institutions in the US has been declining since the 1960s. In April, only 22% of Americans said they trusted the government to do the right thing most of the time. Sixty years ago this was 77%.
Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., said Monday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press Now”: “We need the American people to have confidence in important institutions like the Justice Department. … And I think what happened in the last 24 hours has hurt that.”
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., a typically solid Biden ally, condemned the pardon.
“I just think what he did was wrong. It will only further erode people’s confidence in the Ministry of Justice and in our legal system in general,” says Peters, who will be re-elected in 2026.
Another casualty of the pardon is a piece of Biden’s legacy. He has always prided himself on being a truth-teller and giving what he calls “my word as Biden.”
But Biden had promised he would not pardon his son, and he did so. That now-false vow was also echoed by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who tried to defend it Monday, insisting Biden had not lied.
“He said he came to this decision over the weekend, and he said he struggled with this and because he believes in the justice system, but he also believes that the raw politics has infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice,” she said to reporters. aboard Air Force One.
Rice University presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said, “The perception that Biden was selling — ‘I give you my word as Biden’ — doesn’t hold up. In that case there is a further erosion of his legacy. “
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
