Eli Lake writes for the Free Press about the fallout emerging from President Biden’s pardon of his son.
In what might be the greatest subtweet of 2024, outgoing Democratic congressman Dean Phillips spoke for many Americans when he posted on X: “Let’s just say the quiet part out loud, certain Americans are indeed above the law and influence is always for sale.”
Phillips was, of course, responding to the big news on Sunday that President Joe Biden had pardoned his son Hunter —something he had repeatedly vowed he would never do. In the “grant of clemency” Biden issued, he said that Hunter was off the hook “For those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”
Every president hands out pardons at the end of his time in office—but not like this. When Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother for a 1985 felony drug conviction, Roger Clinton had already served a year in prison. The current president pardoned his son before he was even sentenced.
So the president has not just gifted his son with a get-out-of-jail-free card for Hunter Biden’s embarrassing gun charge. He has not just wiped the slate clean for his tax code violations. The presidential pardon also applies to Hunter’s most egregious offense: his well-documented efforts to peddling access to his dad, when Biden was vice president, to foreign interests ranging from a Chinese state-run bank to a well-heeled Kazakhstan oligarch.
That should outrage anyone who cares about our justice system. But it’s particularly galling that it comes from a president who was running for reelection (until he dropped out in July) on the theme that he was preserving our republic’s democratic norms.
“That’s why a lot of Democrats this morning are assessing our party and its principles,” Phillips told The Free Press. “I still believe Democrats are a party of integrity, but this pardon makes that position complicated at best.”
