In the big scheme of things, President Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter, might initially appear rather unremarkable. Consider some of the villains who have benefited from past administrations: Bill Clinton’s transactional forgiveness of Marc Rich, a fugitive billionaire whose ex-wife’s generous donations to the Clinton Library surely did not go unnoticed; or the absolution of Clinton’s own brother, Roger, whose brushes with the law were numerous and entirely unbecoming. Then there was Barack Obama’s controversial commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence, a decision that cast aside the gravity of Manning’s breaches of national security in favor of mercy; a mercy that was proven to be misguided, as subsequent events demonstrated when Manning wound up back in prison for obstructing a grand jury investigation. And, of course, we need not so quickly forget President Trump pardoning loyalists Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone, as well as his son’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner. There are countless other examples from presidents of both parties. Pardons have long been wielded as weapons of caprice, with justifications ranging from plausible to plainly absurd, if any justification is offered at all.
Biden’s case, however, is not merely a matter of personal loyalty, it is something altogether more sordid. This is no simple tale of a father’s devotion to his troubled son. It is instead a chilling reminder of how the machinery of justice, supposedly impartial, can be recalibrated to suit the needs of the powerful.
Before the most recent election, Biden assured the public that justice would be allowed to take its course unimpeded by the heavy hand of politics. He would not pardon his son, he repeatedly told us. This, after initially denying Hunter Biden’s transgressions altogether, dismissed as conspiracy or irrelevance. Then followed a transparently lenient plea deal, negotiated by President Biden’s own Justice Department. When that deal fell apart under judicial and public scrutiny, we were reassured once again that the president would honor the rule of law, wherever it led. But those assurances dissolved the moment the election was over, and while this will certainly not be the last time a politician makes a promise on the campaign trail that he has no intention of keeping, this particular act, done with such brazenness, raises uncomfortable questions about the president’s character and his sincerity of his commitment to justice.
By pardoning Hunter Biden, the president has not only shielded his son from accountability but also opened a Pandora’s box of moral and legal dilemmas. If Hunter Biden’s offenses — tax fraud, firearm possession by a drug user, and influence peddling — are deemed unworthy of prosecution, then how do we justify the prosecution of these or similar offenses committed by other Americans? Will the president now extend this newfound clemency to those languishing in prison for analogous crimes, who lack the privilege of powerful advocates or familial ties to the Oval Office? Of course not. They’re not special like his dear, precious Hunter.
The pardon power, as enshrined in the Constitution, is a curious relic of monarchy, a vestige of the divine right of kings to temper justice with mercy. It is, by design, discretionary, a tool to correct miscarriages of justice, to soften the blunt edge of the law where circumstances warrant, or to offer redemption where rehabilitation has been achieved. What it should never become, and yet inevitably did become, is a private indulgence. To pardon Hunter Biden while leaving thousands of similarly convicted citizens to languish is not an act of mercy but of privileged favoritism, a nepotistic perversion of justice that undermines the very foundations of equality before the law.
We cannot expect to normalize such acts of selective clemency without eroding the public’s already fragile faith in the integrity of its institutions. To wield the power to pardon recklessly, or worse, self-servingly, is to transform it from a mechanism of rectitude into a cynical tool of convenience.
Pardons, by their nature, are inherently political acts, but they need not be self-serving. By pardoning his son, Biden has not simply exercised his constitutional authority; he has diminished it, and his legacy, and worse, his office.
The damage done by this act extends far beyond Hunter Biden’s legal troubles. It reaffirms the belief that power, rather than principle, reigns supreme in Washington. The pardon power was meant to embody mercy and justice, but when wielded as a tool of familial loyalty, it becomes something altogether more corrosive: a testament not to the rule of law but to its selective application.
