What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[garbon]

I am a bit surprised over the hysteria caused by Biden doing what we knew he would do.  A very strong case could be made in favor of pardoning Hunter Biden even if he was unrelated to the president.  No one had been prosecuted previously solely for making a false statement on a gun permit application.  Biden had already paid all of his back taxes, interest, and penalties, and criminal prosecution is almost unheard-of solely for tax evasion in such cases.  His is a classic case for clemency.  The fact that he would be highly vulnerable to politically-motivated prosecutions by a Trump-directed Justice Department, just of because who he is, is a further argument in favor of a pardon.

Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, and democracy was only infinitesimally utterly destroyed by it.

I think what BB and you have highlighted is we have lost all sense of history in these historical times.

[crazy canuck]

I think people have lost all sense of how precarious the institutions of the US are at the moment.

Biden has justified his act to pardon his son on the basis that the prosecution had become politized.   There is little that can do more damage to a justice system then to accept that its processes are subject to political pressure. And now we have the President of the United States making exactly that argument for pardoning his own son. 

[Valmy]

Well to me it is everything I already hate about how Presidential pardons are used plus the fact that he promised NOT to pardon Hunter. He could have done so at any time, of course. But he wanted justice to be done or whatever.

I really hate this "tradition" of pardoning all your friends, relatives, and donors on the way out. I am not sure when this started but certainly every president from Bill Clinton onward has done so. I assume, but have no recollection, that it goes back quite a bit further than that.

Pardons should be used when justice demands it, not because your big donors need your help.

[crazy canuck]

Was Clinton the first one to pardon a family member?  I have a vague memory of Carter not doing that for his brother, but could be wrong.

[grumbler]

Was Clinton the first one to pardon a family member?  I have a vague memory of Carter not doing that for his brother, but could be wrong.

Charles Kushner, father of Jared, was pardoned by end-of-term Trump for tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering (all of which charges he pled guilty to).  He's now to become the ambassador to France.

So just Clinton, Trump, and Biden.

[Barrister]

I am a bit surprised over the hysteria caused by Biden doing what we knew he would do.  A very strong case could be made in favor of pardoning Hunter Biden even if he was unrelated to the president.  No one had been prosecuted previously solely for making a false statement on a gun permit application.  Biden had already paid all of his back taxes, interest, and penalties, and criminal prosecution is almost unheard-of solely for tax evasion in such cases.  His is a classic case for clemency.  The fact that he would be highly vulnerable to politically-motivated prosecutions by a Trump-directed Justice Department, just of because who he is, is a further argument in favor of a pardon.

Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, and democracy was only infinitesimally utterly destroyed by it.

I think what BB and you have highlighted is we have lost all sense of history in these historical times.

Are you agreeing with me, or disagreeing?

I don't know that I'd go so far as to say Hunter Biden would have a "very strong case" for a pardon.  I think it's clear he's being pardoned because A: he's Joe Biden's son and B: he's at risk of politically-motivated prosecutions by a Trump DOJ.

I wish Biden hadn't done it (in particular - after promising he wouldn't).  But in this Trumpian "defining deviancy down" kind of era it's hard to get very worked up over it.

[garbon]

I am a bit surprised over the hysteria caused by Biden doing what we knew he would do.  A very strong case could be made in favor of pardoning Hunter Biden even if he was unrelated to the president.  No one had been prosecuted previously solely for making a false statement on a gun permit application.  Biden had already paid all of his back taxes, interest, and penalties, and criminal prosecution is almost unheard-of solely for tax evasion in such cases.  His is a classic case for clemency.  The fact that he would be highly vulnerable to politically-motivated prosecutions by a Trump-directed Justice Department, just of because who he is, is a further argument in favor of a pardon.

Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, and democracy was only infinitesimally utterly destroyed by it.

I think what BB and you have highlighted is we have lost all sense of history in these historical times.

Are you agreeing with me, or disagreeing?

I don't know that I'd go so far as to say Hunter Biden would have a "very strong case" for a pardon.  I think it's clear he's being pardoned because A: he's Joe Biden's son and B: he's at risk of politically-motivated prosecutions by a Trump DOJ.

I wish Biden hadn't done it (in particular - after promising he wouldn't).  But in this Trumpian "defining deviancy down" kind of era it's hard to get very worked up over it.

I am agreeing but also trying to be snarky about how news reporting is always on about how "historic" events are these days.

[Barrister]

I really hate this "tradition" of pardoning all your friends, relatives, and donors on the way out. I am not sure when this started but certainly every president from Bill Clinton onward has done so. I assume, but have no recollection, that it goes back quite a bit further than that.

Pardons should be used when justice demands it, not because your big donors need your help.

I did a quick search through the history of presidential pardons for an earlier post.  It was interesting because you can definitely find some real stinkers.  The Peter Yeller one was one I'd never heard of before and does not reflect well on Carter.  I had no idea that Nixon commuted Jimmy Hoffa's sentence - smells bad.

You can maybe point to George HW Bush for starting to issue pardons on his way out the door - he pardoned the Iran-Contra participants on Christmnas Eve, 1992 (after he'd already lost the election).  That being said I do really think it went to the next level under Clinton, who was probably second most to Trump in abusing it.  Bush 31 and Obama had some questionable pardons, but nothing quite so crass.


Funny enough we really don't have an equivalent here in Canada.  I mean yes, we have pardons - but it's through a bureaucratic process and not just at the pleasure of any one individual in government.  Reportedly Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was quite annoyed to find out she couldn't pardon certain people once she became Premier.

[Barrister]

trying to be snarky about how news reporting is always on about how "historic" events are these days.

Fair.

[Sheilbh]

The US President got the power because state governors had the power (because Royal governors had had that power because the king had had that power).  The idea was that it was a safeguard against injustices that the legal system could not address.

I'm not sure when the end-of-term bulk pardons became popular.  I'll look into it.

Yeah. My understanding was that it was basically the prerogative of mercy which in the UK system was the monarch's being adapted (always think the American President's constitutional role is basically not a million miles from an early 19th century British monarch). I think other constitutional systems often have some form of mercy or clemency.

In the UK now they're very, very rare (and like most prerogative powers, exercised by the monarch on advice from ministers). In part this is because there's a Criminal Cases Review Commission which exists to examine (and potentially overturn) possible miscarriages of justice, which used to be a big reason for mercy (I suspect lack of death penalty also makes it less of an important route).

The last pardon I can think of was posthumous for Alan Turing (I think during Gordon Brown's minsitry). That wasn't uncontroversial, because the argument was that if Turing was getting pardoned all gay men convicted under those crimes should also be pardoned - the Home Office response to that was that those crimes around "unnatural acts" were broad and covered things that are still criminal and they didn't have records of who was, say, convicted of consenting gay sex over the age of consent that are now morally acceptable v things that are still crimes. So it ended up just being a symbolic gesture for one particularly famous gay (although why they couldn't also pardon Sir John Gielgud for cottaging in Chelsea is beyond me).