An abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”. It’s quite something to make Donald Trump sound righteous and statesmanlike, but he’s right, for a change. In the dying days of his administration, poor old Joe Biden has somehow managed to make Trump look good.
He has, understandably but unforgivably, done what he always said he would not do – and put family before country. He has legitimatised judicial nepotism. He’s fed the conspiracy theorists.
Granting his son Hunter Biden an unconditional presidential pardon for anything and everything the black sheep of the family might have gotten up to over the last decade has done incalculable damage to Biden’s own legacy, to the office of the presidency – and the country itself.
At a stroke of the presidential pen, Joe Biden has legitimised the notion that the US justice system has been biased and weaponised. He has given Trump all the precedent and – one hesitates to use the phrase – moral authority to spray a golden shower of pardons over the 6 January insurrectionists, Alex Jones, Steve Bannon – and, indeed, potentially hundreds of Trump family members and associates who missed out on a comprehensive pardon last time Trump was in office.
Not only that, but it gives Trump every excuse (and he never needed much of one) to weaponise the justice system and to deploy the FBI and other federal law enforcement to persecute political enemies and innocent public servants who were doing their jobs.
Of course, herein lies the key to Biden’s decision, because of his fear that Trump would use his power to exact his self-declared aim of “retribution” – and his son would be “selectively and unfairly prosecuted”.
President Biden will have heard Trump’s vengeful rhetoric, but perhaps it was the prospective sacking of the current FBI chief, James Wray – and his replacement by Trump zealot Kash Patel – that forced Biden to break his solemn pledge. He will not have done so lightly.
He must have imagined that Trump and his cronies would find some way to put Hunter Biden in the electric chair, or else drive Hunter to such dark despair and isolation that he, Joe Biden, would lose another son before his time. Any parent would have some sympathy for that.
Yet, ironically, the move sullies the Biden family name, emboldens Trump with a priceless inaugural gift and erodes what remains of Americans’ trust in their government and system of justice. It looks like one system of justice for friends and family of the elite – of both parties – and another for all of us.
Granted, successive presidents (not least Trump in 2021) have doled out some highly questionable acts of clemency. Bill Clinton’s farewell crop in 2001 included a pardon for his half-brother Roger for drug-related charges. Donald Trump himself, now so outraged by nepotism, granted a pardon to his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, for serious offences.
As things stand, Kushner Senior is about to become US ambassador to Paris – a nice job – while another Trump daughter (Tiffany)’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, will be the Middle East envoy. We all recall the senior advisory roles played by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in the 2017-21 era.
We should not be surprised to see Barron Trump installed as head of the Internal Revenue Service, ideal training for a young man with a bright future in the always fiscally adventurous Trump Organization.
What the boy lacks in experience he makes up for in DNA and a disquieting resemblance to his dad (which surely counts for much). It all feels a bit mafia-like, and that is what makes it all the more dismaying that Biden has apparently thought to himself, “What’s good for a Trump is good enough for any Biden”.
It’s dismal. And it’s wrong.
It’s also wrong that the pardon dates back to 2014 – covering, suspiciously, Biden Jr’s bizarre (and lucrative) sojourn in Ukraine. It was always a strange thing that the son of the vice-president of the United States should have found himself, with no previous experience in natural resources, or the region, at the age of 44, catapulted into an extraordinarily well-paid and senior-level job at a Ukrainian energy giant. He couldn’t even speak the language.
What was Joe thinking then, allowing his son to take such a role, with all the temptations and reputational risks it necessarily entailed?
When Trump, as president, made his notorious call to Zelensky looking for dirt on Hunter Biden, he knew what he was doing. It won’t stop him looking for that same dirt now – pardon or not – and he will do everything in his power to destroy what remains of Joe Biden’s legacy.
Who will pardon Joe Biden for the damage he’s done?