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People who know President Joe Biden well knew that, when push came to shove, Biden would pardon his son, Hunter Biden, before he left office. Biden is due to leave office in less than two months.
Among those in Connecticut who know Biden well are current Attorney General William Tong and past Connecticut Attorney General for 20 years, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal.
The “Full written statement from President Joe Biden on his decision to pardon his son” supplied by the Associated Press may easily have been written by President Elect Donald Trump’s legal staff concerning the President-Elect’s many trials and tribulations.
“Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” the President wrote.
That sentence cannot be fairly parsed. Biden is asserting 1) “Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” and 2) “I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word (emphasis mine)…” But, of course, the pardon issued by Hunter’s dad is 1) a subordination of justice, and 2) the President cannot both and at the same time issue a pardon and claim to have kept his word that he would not issue a pardon. Aristotle’s law of contradiction – contrary proposition cannot both be true -- applies both to lowly bank robbers and pardon granting presidents.
Biden continues, “The charges in his [Hunter Biden’s] cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election… No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only [emphasis mine] because he is my son – and that is wrong.”
It may be worthwhile to point out in passing that it was Democrat leaders, not Republicans, that successfully opposed Biden’s reelection.
If it is not wrong to prosecute a man, former President Donald Trump, because, as we have so often been told, “No man,” including a president, “is above the law,” why is current President (for two more months) Biden elevating his son above prosecutable presidents? Isn’t that wrong?
“There has been an effort to break Hunter,” Hunter’s dad tells us, “ – 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.”
President Biden has convinced himself that his son Hunter is in some sense innocent of the charges for which he was convicted. He certainly is not arguing for an appeal of the convictions, for a pardon presumes the guilty party has been convicted but the sentence should be vacated because, in Hunter Biden’s case, the convicted party was in the throes of an overpowering addiction.
Should we throw the prison bars open and vacate every conviction of every criminal who may plausible claim “My addiction made me do it?” Most criminals, indeed nearly all criminals, have in the past had plausible reasons for having committed crime. Asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton disarmingly replied, “because that’s where the money is.” Hunter Biden, after all, is not an innocent turkey that may with impunity be pardoned by presidents at Thanksgiving for crimes turkeys cannot commit. The only crime the Thanksgiving turkey committed was to be a delectable Thanksgiving meal. Had the turkey been a Badger, say, no pardon would have been necessary.
President Biden closed his full written statement on his decision to pardon his son on a somewhat honest – nonpolitical – note: “For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision [emphasis mine].”
Indeed, who would not, were he president authorized to pardon criminals, pardon his own son before leaving office? There was, of course, no miscarriage of justice. Like most mafia figures who are at the center of most engaging crime movies, Biden prizes his role as pater familias above his role, almost at its terminus, of President of the United States.
“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country,” wrote novelist and social critic E. M. Forester in a 1938 essay titled “What I Believe.”
The sentiment is perfectly understandable, though not always advisable.
