In an unprecedented act, President Joe Biden has recently pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, raising a multitude of questions and attracting criticism from an array of legal and political scholars. Many analysts see this act as a glaring disregard for the Justice Department, while others downplay it merely as a charade of politics. The pardon, remarkable for covering an eleven-year period, followed Hunter being found guilty of three separate federal firearms violations and earlier admitting guilt in federal tax evasion charges.
The decision taken by the president has stirred public questions regarding the objectivity of the justice system and the driving forces behind the president’s choice. Critically, this pardon was seen as a validation that the Justice Department has been exploiting the legal system and taking a weaponizing approach towards criminal justice, according to Harvard Law School’s esteemed Professor Emeritus, Alan Dershowitz.
From Dershowitz’s perspective, the pardon represents more than an act of fatherly mercy; it is a searing censure of Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, and special counsel David Weiss, appointed by Garland in 2023 under Republican pressure. The pressure was to ostensibly investigate Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals, which his GOP opponents claimed were ingeniously strategized to favor Joe Biden.
Dershowitz went further in asserting, ‘It’s not only a rebuke to Garland and Weiss but the entire system,’ illustrating the extent of his criticism. This sentiment was echoed by the senior counsel of the conservative Article III Project, Will Chamberlain, who suggested that Biden’s pardon and its subsequent condemnation imply a critique of Garland, who would have had to approve major investigative steps.
Of particular interest, there was an op-ed recently in the Washington Post where Biden’s decision was portrayed as an ‘unquestionable legal right’. However, they suggested the move maligned the Justice Department under Garland. Biden’s pardon, it argued, gave the incoming President-elect Donald Trump the opportunity to equate the Hunter Biden pardon with any subsequent maneuvers he may take against the neutral administration of justice.
Garland remained remarkably silent about the sensational pardoning of the president’s son. His last comments on pardoning dated back to last August, when asked about the rumored pardon plans of former President Trump for defendants involved in the January 6 riot of 2021.
Andy McCarthy, a previous federal prosecutor, was much more skeptical, seeing Biden’s criticisms of Garland’s Justice Department as nothing more than theatrical. According to McCarthy, Biden was fully aware that the things he was saying about his son were false and that, contrarily, Hunter was handed special treatment rather than being selectively prosecuted.
Furthermore, McCarthy pressed that Weiss failed to execute a thorough investigation while Garland attempted to cover up Hunter’s case. This approach, however, backfired once a pre-negotiated plea agreement exploded in front of a federal judge in Delaware in July 2023. Meanwhile, Biden was busy pointing the finger at Republicans in Congress, alleging they had essentially provoked an investigation into his son, Hunter.
In what could be described as a typical political maneuver, however, Biden continued to insist that Hunter was only singled out because he was the president’s son, a move that could clearly be seen as an attempt at deflection. Weiss’s lead prosecutor, Leo Wise, strongly contested the president’s assertion on Tuesday, stating that no court agreed when the defendants falsely claimed that the charges were due to an improper motive.
In McCarthy’s opinion, the pardon was nothing more than a fallback option that Biden had in his arsenal if other tactics proved ineffectual. The appointment of Weiss as special counsel merely served as a convenient facade to give the appearance that the prosecution of Hunter Biden was in the hands of an ‘independent’ lawyer.
Questionably, Weiss is actually the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, meaning that if Biden genuinely believed Weiss had abused his authority, he had the power to terminate him at any time. ‘So the whole thing is nonsense,’ quipped McCarthy, expressing his obvious skepticism of the whole process.
In the same vein, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, chimed in, suggesting that Hunter Biden was able to evade any repercussions partly because of his flaunting of his privileged status among the D.C. elite. The notion of the president using his pardon power to effectively protect his son certainly raises questions about the integrity of the justice system.
The Republicans have long charged that the presidential family, mainly through business deals managed by Hunter, abused their influence to amass over $20 million since the conclusion of Biden’s vice presidency in 2015. The glaring question remains, what actions Republicans are planning to take in the upcoming 119th Congress to advance their investigation into whether the current president benefited from these alleged operations.
With the pardoning of Hunter Biden, he can no longer be prosecuted for any suspected activities since around 2014. However, the blanket pardon means he can be brought in to testify under oath in future court hearings or congressional inquiries, which only conjures up more speculation and political scrutiny.