Sorry, folks, but I just don’t buy the argument that it was fine for Joe Biden to have pardoned son Hunter not just for the tax evasion and gun charges for which he was convicted but for any other federal crime he may have done between 2014 and 2024. There has not been such a sweeping pardon since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon– and it creates a dangerous template for Trump II to follow.

The President and his spokesperson repeatedly promised that he would not pardon his son. The crimes of which a jury found Hunter Biden guilty were not inconsequential. (In 1993, then-Senator Biden pushed for stiffer penalties for violations of firearm transaction records laws, now regularly implemented today.) There’s only so much that can be forgiven on the basis of Hunter’s personal battles with drug and alcohol addiction. Should he bear no responsibility for those criminal violations? What would happen to a black or poor white person accused of similar crimes?

Yes, one can sympathize with the son’s personal problems, and the father’s angst in witnessing his son’s struggles. There were nine tax-related criminal charges to which Hunter plead guilty, and, yes, he has already paid back the $2 million he owed in back taxes and penalties. But this was more than untidy accounting. While he was thumbing his nose at those taxpayers who grit their teeth and pay what they owe, Hunter was stiffing the government even as he was allegedly spending the money on drugs, escort services, luxury hotels, fancy cars and other personal indulgences.

There were also the smarmy ways Hunter Biden used his father’s position to lucratively further his own business interests, including in Ukraine and China. His influence peddling was blatantly unethical, and he criminally failed to registered as a foreign lobbyist. Ironically, his pardon may spur a GOP-controlled Congress to hold hearings into those activities, despite their having been investigated with no charges brought to date. He no longer has Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination, but, if called to testify, he would be outside the historically broad scope of the pardon and could be held liable for refusing to testify or lying to Congress.

The federal gun charges of which he was found guilty involved lying on a gun application form about his drug addiction and then illegally possessing a gun. Both father and son insist Hunter was prosecuted to humiliate the President and that the process was unfair and politically motivated. Excuse me, but wasn’t that Donald Trump’s complaint about a politically motivated Department of Justice?

The President, of course, steadfastly has insisted that, throughout his Presidency, he has kept hands off any Justice Department action. His maintaining he wouldn’t pardon his son seemed a validation of that commitment.

It’s disappointing that the President has now done a 180. Not that Donald Trump hasn’t previously done worse, including his pardons of political cronies Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Steven Bannon, George Papadopoulos and Mike Flynn on a variety of felonies. And don’t forget how he pardoned son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father for 16 counts of federal tax evasion and one count of retaliating against a witness. Trump has recently proposed that Charles Kushner be made ambassador to France! In his second term, the former President has promised to pardon those convicted of insurrection on January 6th 2021 and currently serving jail time. So it goes……..

There are stiff mandatory minimum sentences for federal gun offenses, with jail time significantly reduced for plea bargains. Any sentence for Hunter Biden would have been lessened by his being a first-time offender and one who did not use the gun for a crime. Hunter’s lawyer had arranged a plea bargain, but the deal fell apart, rejected by a judge based on the way the deal was structured. According to reports, the Hunter Biden pardon did not conform to Justice Department guidelines for providing pardons.

Biden has resolutely insisted that Donald Trump’s conviction for using hush money illegally to cover up a sexual encounter and other indictments of the President-elect were implemented by a politics-free Justice Department. You might infer truth in that claim from Merrick Garland’s slowness to take action against Donald Trump. But, in my humble opinion, Biden’s pardon this weekend has made his purity much harder to assert. He certainly has contaminated the standard to which he and fellow Democrats have insisted they hold dear. Ironically, the President’s reversal may have inoculated Trump prospectively, freeing him to convert pardons from an act of grace to a dangerous tool in a free-boot politicization of the judicial system.

In making public his decision to pardon Hunter, President Biden said, “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.” The statement is not without its emotional impact. But would we be similarly touched if Trump had pardoned any of his kids if they had been convicted of conflicts of interest and abusing their White House connections?

Republicans, of course, will have a field day with Joe Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter. In the end, this disappointing move may not appreciably alter the course of events. Even if the President had not put family over principle and had stuck with his earlier pledges of non-intervention, that could not be expected to temper Trump’s explicit promise to use the Justice Department as his own tool of vengeance.

If Biden is willing to pardon Hunter, perhaps he should abandon all restraint and prospectively pardon everyone who went after Trump – all the lawyers, other officials and private citizens on the former President’s enemies list, all of whom Trump has pledged to go after. Think Liz Cheney, Mark Milley, Jack Smith, Anthony Fauci. Biden has pardoned far fewer than many of his predecessors and his turned his back on legitimate claims for clemency for many unfairly incarcerated.

We’re in deep trouble, and nothing stands between us and the total prostitution of our judicial standards but the slender hope that enough U.S. Senators will listen to their better angels and block the worst of Trump’s nominees. They indirectly blocked AG nominee Matt Gaetz, but I’m less sanguine about their action on backup nominee Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose chairmanship of the America First Policy Institute makes clear she is not opposed to weaponizing the Justice Department. There’s also FBI director-nominee Kash Patel, who has threatened to shut down FBI headquarters in Washington and otherwise take a chain-saw approach to long-time professionals serving the government. Biden’s action makes their confirmation more likely.

And that, dear readers, leaves us in an extremely unhealthy place.

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