Joe Biden has been criticised by some of his own supporters for issuing a pardon to his son Hunter that he had previously sworn not to give.
The president’s volte face drew predictable fire from Republicans, led by president-elect Donald Trump, who called it a “miscarriage of justice” and used it to raise the case of the jailed ringleaders of the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol, who he has suggested he will pardon when he returns to the White House.
“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Yet it was condemnation from fellow Democrats – some of whom said he had handed Trump justification for his own use of the presidential pardon power – that seemed likely to carry greater sting.
Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, said Biden had risked his own reputation and legacy.
“While as a father I certainly understand President @JoeBiden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country,” Polis posted on X.
“This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.
“When you become President, your role is Pater familias of the nation. Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not a President and not a President’s son.”
Hunter Biden was convicted by a court in Delaware last June of lying on a gun licence application at a time when he was addicted to cocaine. He was later convicted of separate tax evasion charges in a court in California.
He was scheduled to be sentenced for both convictions in hearings this month.
Biden justified his pardon by insisting that Hunter’s prosecutions had been driven by “raw politics” and would not have been pressed had his father not been president.
That interpretation was rejected by Greg Stanton, a Democrat House member for Arizona.
“I respect President Biden, but I think he got this one wrong,” he posted on social media.
“This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”
Joe Walsh, an anti-Trump former Republican congressman who endorsed Biden for president, called the pardon deflating because it enabled Trump to validate his own much-criticised pardons of friends and supporters.
“This just furthers the cynicism that people have about politics,” he told MSNBC. “That cynicism strengthens Trump because Trump can just say: ‘I’m not a unique threat. Everybody does this. If I do something for my kid, my son-in-law, look, Joe Biden does the same thing.’ I get it, but this was a selfish move by Biden which politically only strengthens Trump.”
In the Atlantic magazine, Jonathan Chait argued that the president had undermined the democratic values that he had previously championed.
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“Principles become much harder to defend when their most famous defenders have compromised them flagrantly,” he wrote.
“With the pardon decision, like his stubborn insistence on running for a second term he couldn’t win, Biden chose to prioritize his own feelings over the defense of his country.”
Some Democrats leaped to Biden’s defence.
“Hunter. Here’s the reality. No US [attorney] would have charged this case given the underlying facts,” Eric Holder, an attorney general under Barack Obama, wrote on X.
“Had his name been Joe Smith the resolution would have been – fundamentally and more fairly – a declination. Pardon warranted.”
Jasmine Crocket, a Texas member of the House of Representatives, went further, saying: “Let me be the first to congratulate the president.”
“At the end of the day, we know that we have a 34-count convicted felon that is about to walk into the White House,” she told MSNBC, referring to Trump’s conviction by a New York court on document falsification charges relating to hush money paid to a porn actor.
Alluding to allegations against several of Trump’s cabinet nominees, she added: “For anyone that wants to clutch their pearls now because [Biden] decided that he was going to pardon his son, I would say take a look in the mirror because we also know that … this cabinet has more people accused of sexual assault than any incoming cabinet probably in the history of America.”
Sarah Longwell, another anti-Trump Republican strategist who endorsed Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, wrote: “‘Trump is worse’ is never a good argument to justify bad behavior.
“Biden knows it’s wrong. That’s why he committed over and over to not doing it. It doesn’t make him the same as Trump. It doesn’t erase how singularly corrupt Trump’s current appointments are. It’s simply wrong and we should say so, lest we forget that right and wrong still exist and awareness of it matters in our President.